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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:06AM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:04PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:04PM (#591018) Journal

    I'll tell you what is too much and too little. Police departments and individual officers are still not getting the message after years of being in the public eye and poisoning the public trust.

    Therefore the award is FAR too small. The judgements need to get much bigger until police departments get the message and start pro-actively doing something. Otherwise, you can expect this situation to continue getting worse and worse. (Which is what I actually expect is going to happen. I don't want to go there, so I won't go on with the depressing prediction of where we'll end up.)

    Police need to get thicker skin. Someone flipping them off is an opinion. An opinion created by how bad police officers have poisoned the public trust. The other police officers need to own that and stop standing behind bad officers. It won't get fixed until that happens.

    Police need to stop trying to escalate situations and think for a second before they act.

    Examples from many public videos:
    * arresting a lawyer for standing up for her client, the arrest is for "resisting arrest"
    * asking what you are being pulled over for should not constitute a reason for arrest
    * people standing up for their rights should be respected -- people should not even have to take such an active stand for their rights
    * people's rights should be respected AS THE DEFAULT

    Thus, I have reluctantly formed an opinion that something needs to be done. Much larger judgements might help send a message. Another is that police officers should have to carry their own individual liability insurance -- even if subsidized by the department. Just like other professions have to carry individual liability insurance. But bad cops wouldn't be able to get insurance, the insurance underwriters would have motive to investigate bad officers, and the police unions and police departments would be powerless to affect the insurance underwriters.

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    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:23PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:23PM (#591123)

    Therefore the award is FAR too small. The judgements need to get much bigger until police departments get the message and start pro-actively doing something.

    I disagree. The award is not too small, it seems enough to compensate the victim.

    BUT what must be done to reduce future victims is prosecuting the cops for their crimes. And no half-hearted bullshit about it. Not bigger awards.

    I don't get why people are so keen on huge fines to "the group" when they can just throw the culprits in prison. All this "big fines to the org" are the reason why bad CEOs and cops keep doing evil stuff. Nothing really significant happens to them. The more sociopathic or evil they are the less it matters to them that the group suffers. Yeah they get yelled at, or they lose their jobs and end up working for a different Police Department/Company, big fucking deal.

    When you start throwing cops and CEOs in prison then you will see the rest change their behavior more quickly.

    Prison is a greater deterrent to cops and CEOs than to normal crooks.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:27PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:27PM (#591173) Journal

      I'm not thinking bigger awards. I'm thinking bigger judgements. The victim does need to be compensated. But I'm thinking of what is called "punitive damages". That is, a financial judgement intended to punish and send a message. And it is a real thing. It should be done -- especially if a police department knew or should have known that they have some bad cops.

      I would be fine with throwing the bad cops in prison. But that just doesn't seem to happen. In some cases, the department takes little to no action, or even actively tries to cover up the crimes of their officers.

      I strongly agree that prison is a bigger deterrent. But it seldom seems to happen except in the most extreme cases. And even those are very difficult to prosecute against (gasp!) an upstanding police officer who has served for years with the department, or with many different police departments. Thus I'm looking at other potential solutions that might get the department to take real action. Prison is a deterrent to the individual. I'm thinking of deterrents for the department as well. The two are not mutually exclusive either.

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      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:30PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:30PM (#591177)

      Bigger fines may be achievable and, if big enough, may get their superiors to lean on the bad cops.
      To throw bad cops in jail however, you have to depend on other cops to throw them. Ain't gonna happen. "Thin blue line" and "bro's stand together" and all that other gang loyalty bullshit.