To: Salt Lake City PD
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Officer Himmler
Dear SLCPD,
If this piece of walking garbage with a badge…:
…is still working for the SLCPD, you are flirting with forfeiting any legitimacy as a “law enforcement” organization.
And don’t respond with “do you think you could do his job?” I, the law-abiding citizen, hire him to do a job, and part of the job is not violating the civil rights of my fellow citizens!
This is not a feudal kingdom, and police aren’t knights to whom citizens must bow and scrape like peasants. Some cops seem to have a hard time with that. It’s gotta stop.
Give the nurse a promotion! More of us should ask police “do you have a warrant for this information? Can I see it?” before allowing them to proceed.
This case reminds me of a much smaller thing that happened to me while visiting SLC. I was on a one lane highway exit, and a police officer tried to pass me on a one lane exit ramp. Bubblegum machine was not going. So I noted the cruiser # and gave the police a call about the matter, as it was a clear danger to the driving public, and of course he had the *(&)() bubblegum machine on top of his cruiser which would have gotten me to instantly pull over if he’d really needed to pass.
Just curious, what do you think should have been done (other than never hiring this dunderhead in the first place) to defuse/prevent this situation? One suggestion: Hospital administrator should have called the local precinct, asked for the captain, and said, “I am about to file a lawsuit for false arrest, police brutality, and assorted civil rights violations. Would you like to speak to the officer?”
Well, if you’re hired to enforce the laws it might be a good idea to, you know, actually know what the law is. True, the Supreme Court ruling was only 10 years ago, so it may not have had time to trickle down to the “point of the spear”.
[Sits quietly with folded hands…]
Per J. Ewing’s comment, one tactic that homeschooling families use often with good results is to, when a police officer or social services worker shows up and demands to interview children in private or some such thing, simply dial the HSLDA (Home School Legal Defence Association) and invite the officer to talk with the family’s lawyer. I believe a whole range of activist groups, including the NRA, have services with “lawyer on retainer” where people occasionally contacted illegally can have someone explain the law to a public official.
Might be time, if hospitals get this a lot, for hospitals to do the same thing. It’s worth noting as well that in extreme cases, HSLDA does go after the jobs of especially egregious offenders, often successfully.
It’s worse than you think. Watch the video. Read a few follow-up stories.
The patient was the victim, not the suspect, so the officer was not investigating the patient for committing a crime and therefore had no reason to draw a blood sample. He probably couldn’t get a warrant for one because a warrant requires probable cause to believe this person committed a crime. The only way to obtain this patient’s blood sample was by consent which, being unconscious, he couldn’t give. If the nurse had complied with the detective’s order to violate the patient’s constitutional rights, any evidence obtained would have been inadmissible in court. The nurse knew that, the hospital administration knew that, they cited the Supreme Court law saying so. The detective checked with his lieutenant who authorized the nurse’s arrest so apparently nobody in the PD knows the law.
The incident happened in July but the City sat on it until the video went viral so their apology now rings hollow. And the officer’s comments about taking good patients elsewhere makes clear that he has personal issues with this hospital’s stubborn refusal to break the law. Why not, he only got a slap on the wrist – removed from the Blood Draw unit but still on the force. The Thin Blue Line leaped up to defend an out-of-control officer.
Also, notice the local newspaper’s take. On September 1st, the nurse was “screaming” and “refusing.”http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/utah-nurse-arrested-after-complying-with-hospital-policy-that-bars-taking-blood-from-unconscious-victim/ The implication is she’s a nut and deserved it.
Then the video went viral, the city apologized, the nurse got a lawyer and she went on TV. Oops, now, suddenly, she’s the reasonable one and the cop is the jerk. Suddenly, everybody wants to avoid misunderstandings like the one that was plain from the video on day one but not the way the local paper reported the story. http://www.sltrib.com/news/health/2017/09/04/on-today-nurse-alex-wubbels-again-says-police-need-to-police-themselves-to-regain-trust/
This story stinks all the way up the line.