Cop Violently Arrests Nurse For Not Drawing Blood From Unconscious Patient

Footage has surfaced of a Utah nurse being dragged out of an emergency room and handcuffed by Salt Lake City Police Detective Jeff Payne after she refused to draw blood from an unconscious patient.

The footage, shot by Payne’s body camera and by a colleague on their phone, shows nurse Alex Wubbels calmly explaining, with the support of hospital management, that she can’t let the cops take blood from an unconscious patient if they don’t have a warrant (Payne didn’t).

Despite her story being backed up by her boss on the phone, Payne apparently became enraged by Wubbels’ (calm, polite) resistance. The footage shows him suddenly grabbing her, dragging her outside, cuffing her and putting her in his police car.

After 20 minutes, she was released from the car without charge – because Payne discovered that the unconscious patient, who’d been involved in a fatal car crash, had already had his blood taken.

In an interview, Wubbels said that Payne “attacked me and assaulted me and dragged me out of my emergency department“.

Payne has been placed on administrative leave while the Salt Lake City Police Department investigates the incident.

The mayor of Salt Lake City and the chief of police have both contacted Wubbels to apologise. Payne’s violent outburst has been condemned by the hospital and by the American nurse’s union National Nurses United.

Wubbels herself remains astonishingly calm about the whole thing, even while being harangued for juicy soundbites in interviews – more evidence that nurses are basically superhumans who we all take for granted.

Meanwhile, Payne hasn’t even been sent to anger management. It’s bloody lucky he had his body cam on him and switched on, or it’s likely this would be another incident of police brutality ignored, swept under the rug or entirely disbelieved. It’s also lucky that Wubbels is a white woman, or, knowing the current climate in the US, she probably would have ended up dead.

Get it together, America. You can’t arrest a nurse just for doing her job.

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