UNIVERSITY OF UTAH – A nurse is calling for change within the Salt Lake City Police Department after she says an officer overstepped his bounds and handcuffed her after she wouldn’t draw blood from a patient.
The complaint stems from an incident at University Hospital late July. Alexandra Wubbels says a police officer told her she was required to do a blood draw on one of the victims of a fatal crash. However, she called her supervisors and they instructed her not to, since the situation didn’t meet the requirements for conducting a blood draw on an unconscious person. After several minutes of Wubbels speaking with Detective Jeff Payne and her bosses, Payne informed Wubbels she was under arrest, cuffed her and placed her in a patrol car. Wubbels screamed, “You’re assaulting me! Stop!” and “This is unnecessary.”
With her attorney by her side, Wubbels explains, “My fear became something I could no longer control.”
She says she feels angry and confused every time she watches the body camera video of the arrest. “Of course it hurts to relive it. It just makes me so… I just feel betrayed.”
She’s not considering a lawsuit against the police department, yet. Wubbels has had conversations with the department and she’s encouraged with the changes that have been made. However, she says she’s heard stories about other nurses in other hospitals also being pressured by officers. She says, “We’re dealing with Salt Lake City Police, right, but, there are police agencies all over this state. They need to be having conversations about what is appropriate intervention.”
Investigators with the Salt Lake Police Department say officials were alarmed with what they saw in the video. “Immediately upon seeing the video, they opened an internal affairs investigation. The officer was removed from the blood draw program,” according to Sergeant Brandon Shearer. He also says they’ve made some improvements to their blood draw policy, but, he’s not at liberty to say what those changes are.
