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from the in-soviet-russia-you-pay-nurse dept.
NPR reports a nurse in Utah who was arrested on July 26th in Utah has reached a $500,000 settlement with the city and hospital system. Nurse Alex Wubbels was arrested by Detective Jeff Payne for refusing to take a blood sample from a patient without the patient's consent or a warrant. When she tried to present the detective with the hospital policy on the subject, the Detective announced she was under arrest and took her away in handcuffs. The Detective has since been fired after it was initially reported that he was "counseled."
At the beginning of the [body camera] video, she is seen calmly reading the officer the hospital's policy not to allow blood to be drawn without a warrant or the patient's consent, unless the patient is under arrest. "This is something you guys agreed to with this hospital," she explains. Then the officer lunges at Wubbels, forces her outside and handcuffs her as she screams that she has done nothing wrong. The footage drew widespread outrage when it was released by the nurse and her attorney. It became part of a broader conversation about police use of force.
The Washington Post reported, "Wubbels said she will donate some of the proceeds to a fund that will help people obtain body camera footage and provide free legal aid for open records requests. She is also planning to use the money to raise awareness about workplace violence against nurses." Alex Wubbels, in a guest blog post at the American Nurses Association, describes the campaign as #EndNurseAbuse. Workplace violence against nurses is not something covered that often outside the profession, and yet something every ER worker knows about. Usually, though, it isn't the police who are the perpetrators.
(Score: 5, Informative) by RedBear on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:21AM (1 child)
These kinds of settlement figures are far less about compensating an individual (hard to put a price on that in most circumstances) and much more about attempting to penalize a powerful organization like the city government to put pressure on their employees to behave better. In that sense I believe half a million is a joke. If they were hit with a ten million settlement cost for the unlawful abuse of authority by their employees (the two police officers directly involved in the decisions that led to the false arrest), they would be far more likely to direct the people in charge of the police department to condition their employees to avoid such illegal authoritarian behavior. Cities make endless small settlements like this without ever being successfully prompted to modify their behavior.
Let us remember that this was pure abuse of authority and false arrest. If I understood the circumstances correctly the unconscious patient who had been in an accident was a former police officer, and the cop at the hospital was trying to obtain evidence to be used in the patient's defense. He and his lieutenant were willing to violate the law to protect a fellow (former) "boy in blue", and the nurse was falsely detained for standing up for the patient's civil rights as proscribed by both law and hospital policy. That is just as much corruption as illegally obtaining or fabricating evidence to attempt to convict someone, and should be very strongly discouraged by our justice system. Every time the police are exposed as believing they are above the law we should come down on them like a ton of bricks. A half-million settlement is more like a slap on the wrist, and the police department won't even notice.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:12PM
So when will the offending cops be prosecuted for the crimes they did?
That'll be more effective than taking money from various departments and organizations.