This is really terrible and disgusting, and this cop needs to be fired yesterday.
Watch below:
More from CNN:
Salt Lake City police apologized Friday for arresting a nurse who, citing hospital policy, refused to let officers draw blood from an unconscious accident victim. The arrest of Alex Wubbels, who was later released without charge, was captured on body camera video that the police chief said was alarming.
The incident happened July 26, when an accident victim was admitted to the University of Utah Hospital burn unit in a coma. Though the man was not a suspect in the crash, which killed the other driver, police asked for his blood to be drawn.
Wubbels, the charge nurse in the burn unit, presented the officers with a printout of hospital policy on drawing blood and said their request did not meet the criteria. Hospital policy specified police needed either a judge’s order or the patient’s consent, or the patient needed to be under arrest, before obtaining a blood sample.
“I’m just trying to do what I’m supposed to do. That’s all,” Wubbels tells the officers, according to the body camera video.Wubbels’ attorney, Karra Porter, said Friday the university and Salt Lake City police had agreed to the policy more than a year ago and “the officers here appeared to be unaware of” it.
This really makes my blood boil because she did nothing wrong and he could have called in to find out if she was right about the policy. She wasn’t a suspect in any way at all.
If you’re an advocate for police, as I am, you should be outraged too. It’s THIS kind of crap that puts other cops in danger, because it makes them ALL look like violent irrational thugs. That guy needs to be fired immediately,* for the sake of the honor of the police force, and to keep the compact between the community and law enforcement.
*unless an investigation finds some kind of weird detail that totally changes the entire story, like the nurse is actually a shape-shifting lizard alien and reached for his gun or something.