UNBELIEVABLE – Nurse Arrested For Simply Doing Her Job After Cops Attempt To Illegally Obtain Blood Sample From Suspect

This is a PRIME example of the arrogance and unwillingness to follow the law that we too often see out of our leadership from police departments. 

http://s.oregonlive.com/KvXXm9I

UNBELIEVABLE. This is what always happens. If a pig feels like they are being shown up, and someone dares not to comply with their orders, lawful or not, they lose it, and arrest the person. I’m glad she got a $500,000 settlement.

https://youtu.be/dhrRdEyy5CY

EXPLANATION “…[sic]it’s ok to violate their rights because they can theoretically sue us later if they can figure it out”. -Police Lieutenant

BY. Jerry Derecha

She proceeds to very clearly explain to him that there are 3 pieces of criteria that would give law enforcement the legal authority to ask for blood to be withdrawn.  In this case, she was very clear that the officers did not have a single one of those pieces of criteria, so, therefore, they had zero legal justification in this particular situation to demand blood to be drawn from the patient.

Here’s where it gets incredible.  (You can hear him speaking in the video, I will find the exact start time in the video so you can see and hear for yourself).  

He goes on to tell the nurse that she is erroneous in her judgement of this situation and was only protecting the suspect in this case by taking this stance.

  He also arrogantly asserts that she cannot act as his attorney.  Even though she was clearly doing nothing of the sort.  Since she dared to prevent them from illegally obtaining the patient’s blood sample, she was accused of acting as the patients legal defense team.  Unreal… God this one makes me so mad.

She again, tries to explain to them that she is simply following the legal procedural guidelines that the hospital adheres to.  Further explaining that if this policy guides me to make the decision that you guys cannot take blood, then you are not legally able to take blood.  

So here’s what he says next, this made my blood boil. He says something along the lines of

“[sic] I have been doing this for 20 years, ok, and if we do something that turns out to be something that was not done legally, then that person has civil recourse he can take and would get any charges they would have had against him dropped”.  

Police Lieutenant

This is his explanation to her. This is why the police detective threw a hissy fit and decided to throw a nurse into a squad car in handcuffs for not complying with his illegal order to draw blood from a patient involved In a motor vehicle crash they happen to be currently investigating.  This is just astonishing to me. This police lieutenant basically just admits that they have been continuously obstructing cases as part of department policy!!!

In short he’s saying that he can do whatever he wants at the time, and if he gets called out for violating someone’s rights later on, it will simply be remedied by the courts. He’s essentially saying that because the defendant technically has the ability to get the charges thrown own via adjudication, that grants them the right to sloppily arrest anyone they want without sufficient predication.

In this case the police commander has convinced himself that the hospital is obliged to comply with any and all orders from his department, despite what hospital guidelines may exist prohibiting any illegal sampling and storing of an individual’s blood. 

He audaciously asserts that the hospital “shouldn’t worry” about breaking any laws, or the possibility of infringing on anyone’s rights, since these individuals can go ahead and sue them (the police department/or hospital) if they are able to determine that blood was improperly collected by law enforcement.  Is this guy serious?  This is the explanation he gave to the nurse as she sat in hand cuffs.

Exactly dumbass!  This hospital follows the law in order to avoid potential litigation and civil liability! 

Apparently this is the way that the officers within this department had been administering, or failing to administer “due process” for years.   These law enforcement officers seem to have been emploring the practice of regularly pushing aside rules like these in order to get the evidence they want, when they want it (in most cases, evidence to incriminate one of their suspects). 

Then, after the fact, if the defendant can even determine if their rights were violated somewhere along the way, obtain a lawyer, and go ahead and sue them, then, this is the point the suspect would be granted the opportunity to obtain justice and due process.  Due process in this case should not have to involve getting the charges that were filed using illegally obtained evidence, thrown out.

He goes on to further explain how he is tired of this hospitals’ policies interfering with their police investigations.  He’s essentially upset that this particular hospital follows the law, and has rules and regulations in place to protect the rights of their patients within their care, while also protecting the hospital from any civil suits. 

He’s butt hurt that this hospital doesn’t let the police obtain evidence illegally like the other hospitals apparently do. Other facilities that are unwittingly allowing the detectives to intimidate and manipulate hospital staff into providing them with forensic evidence from patients.  Clearly based on their reaction towards this nurse, they have likely been doing this by threatening force, arrest and/or detainment against countless other doctors and nurses from other hospitals.

What he is basically asserting to this nurse is that his department always deprive their suspects of due process, and violate their rights in order to obtain evidence.  He says that this is ok since they can sue them later on if they are able to determine that their rights were in fact violated.  This is beyond infuriating to hear this coming from a police commander.

Determining this and interpreting all this case law would involve hiring and paying an attorney to audit the details of the case and find where in fact their clients had their rights violated.  Not everyone can afford to do this.

For a police department to purposely deprive defendants of due process, in a systematic fashion as part of the agency’s policy must be criminal.  The Lieutenant doesn’t seem to mind that unneeded time and money is being spent in a courtroom to sometimes adjudicate the defendent of charges that were obtained via unlawful actions.  I’m so glad that this guy was fired along with the arresting detective.