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Alex Wubbels, badge heavy, contempt of cop, Jeff Payne, Mike Brown, Salt Lake City, Sim Gill, William Gray
Nurse Alex Wubbels
Something professional police officers fear, and guard against, is becoming badge heavy. A badge heavy officer is one that comes to believe he has ultimate power. Because he is a police officer, he must be obeyed without question, and the law, to say nothing of proper police procedure, applies not at all to him. He speaks, others jump. He acts, others bleed. Such a case recently occurred in Salt Lake City, as Fox News reports:
A Utah nurse screamed “help me” after a cop handcuffed her for refusing to draw blood on an unconscious patient July 26, police body camera footage showed.
The video showed University of Utah Hospital nurse Alex Wubbels, an Alpine skier who participated in the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympic games, calmly explaining to Salt Lake Detective Jeff Payne that she could not draw blood from a patient who had been injured in a car accident, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.
Wubbels told Payne the patient was required to give consent for a blood sample or be under arrest. Otherwise, she said police needed a warrant. Payne threatened to imprison Wubbels if he was not given the blood sample, according to the video.
‘I either go away with blood in vials or body in tow,’ Payne is shown saying.
Here, Officer Payne has made another fundamental mistake: he’s backed himself into a corner, and can’t save face without making good on his unsupportable threat. In such a situation, no amount of common sense will prevail, even though Nurse Wubbels did her best to help Payne avoid making a fool of himself:
Wubbels being manhandled by Payne.
Wubbels, who was on the phone with her supervisor, explained the situation to the supervisor, who agreed with the nurse and reportedly told the cop, ‘sir, you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.’
Wubbels yelled, ‘Help! Stop! I did nothing wrong!’ while being handcuffed.
Wubbels was absolutely right about that. But why was Payne so determined to get a blood sample? Reason.com explains:
In fact, the claim that this blood draw was part of an ‘investigation’ at all adds another layer of revulsion to Payne’s behavior. The unconscious man Payne wanted blood from was not suspected of any crime and had done nothing wrong. He was, in fact, a victim of a crime.
The patient, William Gray of Idaho, was driving a semi truck in Northern Utah when he was struck head-on by a man who veered into oncoming traffic on a highway in Wellsville on July 27. That driver, who died in the crash, was fleeing from the police in a high-speed chase. Utah Highway Patrol officers were responding to calls about an erratic driver, and the man, Marco Torres, 26, led police on a chase rather than get pulled over and detained.
So Gray’s terrible injuries were a consequence of a police chase that he had absolutely nothing to do with. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to the coverage of the arrest, Payne said that he wanted to draw blood from Gray to check for drugs in order to “protect” him in some fashion, not to punish him, and that he was ordered to go collect his blood by police in Logan. It is not made clear in any coverage what exactly the police would protecting him from by drawing his blood without his consent while he was unconscious. Payne also said it was his watch commander, Lt. James Tracy, who told him to arrest Wubbels if she refused to draw blood.
In other words, Payne had no lawful, logical reason for his demands, even if a higher-ranking officer did direct him to arrest Wubbels. So what happened? Did Payne take Wubbels to jail? Back to Fox:
Wubbels was not charged and police have started an internal investigation. Payne remained on duty although he was suspended from blood-draw duties.
Christina Judd, a spokesperson for the Salt Lake City Police, has apologized to the hospital and said the department was alarmed by what they witnessed in the video.
Judd said the department was working to investigate what went wrong and is seeking to repair the ‘unfortunate rift’ it has caused.
‘University of Utah Health supports Nurse Wubbles and her decision to focus first and foremost on the care and well-being of her patient,’ said Suzanne Winchester, the hospital’s media relations manager. ‘She followed procedures and protocols in this matter and was acting in her patient’s best interest. We have worked with our law enforcement partners on this issue to ensure an appropriate process for moving forward.
Analysis:
Among the first things any patrol officer learns is the law and procedure relating to blood draws. They’re taught this in their basic law enforcement academy and in their local field training program. This is information they need in their daily jobs. Any officer with any experience has applied that knowledge many times.
This is clearly a case of contempt of cop. It’s a logical and inevitable result of being badge heavy. The officer issues an edict, some unfortunate person—in this case, a nurse—declines to do what he demands, and his ego cannot abide such resistance, thus his angry and excessive behavior toward Wubbels.
Several news accounts suggest Wubbels was not arrested and was not charged. Only part of this is accurate. She was not ultimately charged with a crime because she committed no crime. However, Wubbels was manhandled, handcuffed, and forced into a police vehicle, where, by all accounts, she was forced to sit, without air conditioning, for some 20 minutes.
Police officers may, under some narrowly defined circumstances, handcuff people, even confine them in a police car or elsewhere for a short time. However, this is legitimate only when officers have a clear and compelling safety reason for doing it. Even so, when there is no longer a safety issue, the people handcuffed or confined must be released. In this case, there was certainly no safety issue involved.
An arrest occurs, whether an officer says “you’re under arrest” or not, when a reasonable person believes they are not free to go. If you’ve ever received a traffic ticket, gentle readers, you have been arrested. While you were stopped, waiting for the ticket, you were not free to go. The officer, as a matter of policy and practicality, did not take you into physical custody, take you to jail, and force you to post a bond to be released, though he could have. For traffic violations and other minor offenses, that would take entirely too much time and effort, and it’s accordingly rare, but you were arrested nonetheless. You were not free to go, and if you tried, you would surely end up in jail.
Nurse Wubbels was not only manhandled and handcuffed, she was confined in a police car for a considerable period of time until wiser and more professional judgment was applied and she was released. Would a reasonable person so treated think they were free to go? Certainly not; Wubbels was falsely arrested.
So what? She wasn’t inconvenienced very much or for long. That’s not the issue. The power to arrest is a significant power, and is never to be taken lightly. False arrest is always a big deal. When it’s discovered, professional police officers undo the mistake as quickly as possible and apologize profusely and sincerely. The other, perhaps even larger issue is the relationship between the police and medical personnel. Police officers sometimes make mistakes, and as long as they’re not too serious—no one was injured or killed—they can usually recover from them.
Police officers and paramedics, EMTs, nurses and doctors work together every day. No competent police officer wants to have a bad relationship with people who might, at any moment, be responsible for trying to save their life. Officers also understand their priorities may not be the priorities of nurses and doctors at any given moment. With that in mind, they tread softly, deferring to medical personnel while carefully finding a way to do their jobs. It’s always better to be friendly and cooperative when possible. Usually, this balancing act works well, and everyone gets along, which is good because they all know each other’s reputations and behave accordingly. Cops and medics talk shop. By roughly handling Wubbels, Payne all but destroyed a relationship many years in the making. This, rather than the mistake over the false arrest, will likely be the determining factor for discipline, that and Payne’s rough and unnecessary manhandling of Wubbels.
Wubbels is reportedly still considering whether to file a lawsuit, which would surely be quickly settled out of court. It also appears Payne is in departmental, even criminal trouble, as local station KUTV reports:
The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office and Unified Police have launched an independent criminal investigation of the arrest at the center of a now-viral video from the University of Utah ER. [skip]
‘This is an ever evolving situation, and we will do what is necessary to fully investigate the issue, uphold the integrity of the Salt Lake City Police Department, and strengthen the trust with our community,’ Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown said in a prepared statement.
‘I want to be very clear we take this very seriously,’ Brown said. we will have to let the process play out. I haven’t made any decisions I haven’t reviewed the whole thing yet. I want people to trust in the process.’ [skip]
‘In fairness to all those involved I have requested a criminal investigation into the incident so that the District Attorney’s office could screen the matter after gathering all the facts. Our office had not received any materials on the matter thus far and in the interest of justice and given the prima facie evidence a criminal investigation is warranted,’ [District Attorney Sim] Gill wrote.
A year ago, the Supreme Court ruled blood draws without permission require a search warrant, though breathalyzer tests don’t. Reason.com has the details.
One can be certain of one thing: Payne will be facing departmental discipline, and possibly, criminal charges, and those decisions will be made quickly. This is not a difficult case. The facts are simple and there is little evidence to collect or process beyond an interview with Payne and the Lt. he claims told him to arrest Wubbels. If the LT. did in fact give him such stunningly bad advice, he is in real trouble too (a “second police officer” who remains unidentified has been placed on administrative duties with Payne), but ultimately, Payne has an obligation to refuse unlawful orders.
The speed with which this case will be decided stands in stark contrast to the Justine Damond case where the local prosecutor, with a case little more demanding, is claiming it will be necessary to take 4-6 months for a charging decision.
Should Payne be fired? That will depend in large part on his past history and the degree of damage to police/community relations his superiors believe he has caused in this incident. One thing is certain: he should never again have anything to do with medical personnel. Unfortunately, Payne’s actions will be seen as many as yet another indictment of America’s police officers at a time when they don’t need that kind of publicity.
As for Payne, there will be bloodletting, and he’s opened his own wound.
The Alex Wubbels Case Archive may be found here.
Stately McDaniel Manor 
Apparently the hospital has decided that police offers are no longer allowed to talk to nurses on duty and must only talk to the administrative supervisor about what they want. And the UoU PD officer who was there and did nothing is apparently not getting any love from the chief, what apparently claims he found out what happened when it hit the news. Never good to have your bosses bosses boss find out something bad and embarrassing happened on your watch days later from the newspaper.
Dear Kevin:
Quite so. Officer Payne has made it much more difficult for the police to do their jobs. I’ll be doing a follow up article on this in the near future.
I worked several years as a paramedic in the “war zone” of a major U.S. city and have been threatened with arrest for refusing to follow police orders on a few occasions. I was never arrested due to the fact that the orders given were in each instance totally unnecessary and in direct conflict with state laws covering emergency medicine standards. I found that virtually all the “problems” occurred with around 5 officers out of a force of about 2,000, usually sergeants with many years time on the force. The disturbing part was that, as you said there is usually good rapport with police and medics and we talk, they all had a long history of little man syndrome and no one, including internal affairs, would do anything except cover for them.
I believe a huge part of the public relations problems police now have is caused by the refusal to to cleanse the department of the less than 1% that cause the problems and instead let them attain a rank that keeps them on the street with additional authority. Police departments need to heed the old medical advice “physician heal thyself”.
One bad apple ruins the entire barrel.
The fact that they won’t pull this 1% out of the barrel is what shows that the rest of the barrel is also ruined, and you just can’t see the rot from when you are standing.
This nurse is showing great restraint in her decision to file suit. My wife and one daughter are both experienced trauma nurses and have worked many hours in large inner city hospitals. The see a lot of the lowlife element and horrible accident victims and GSW’s that make up any large metro area daily patient load. They both deal with police and corrections staff all the time. Both said there wouldn’t be any thinking about a lawsuit if this had been them. It would have happened asap. Both also fault the hospital administration for just being on the phone. Admin should have been there in person dealing with illegal demands. This isn’t just a little “rift” as the chief seemed to dismiss. It was an assault on a medical provider which is a felony. Same as if the nurse or anyone else had punched the officer.
I have 2 observations. #1, thank God Nurse Wubbels didn’t work in MN with the jittery Officer Noor or she’d be lying dead next to the patient’s gurney. #2, in attempting to understand why Officer Unfriendly in SLC felt such an urgent need to draw the trucker’s blood, I can only conclude they were hoping he was hopped up on something so they could try to transfer blame to him for the accident, which, some would say, was caused by the cops in pursuit of the runaway perp. I’m also wondering if the other LEOs in the high-speed chase wanted to call it off, and Payne wouldn’t hear of it. I’m thinking there’s most certainly a reason Payne was trying to ram through that blood draw.
Dear janc1955:
That’s certainly a reasonable possibility.
Dear janc1955:
Apparently the Salt Lake City Police are not quite as easily startled as the Minneapolis Police.
The City of Salt Lake is a liberal bastion surrounded by a sea of red over the rest of the state. The major of Salt Lake City is a strong left liberal and she has all the baggage of Minneapolis. As I recall, she is also in a non traditional relationship. Salt Lake City police have had their share of controversies over the last decade and the Cities contribution to the latest homeless shelter debacle has forced the state government to attempt mitigation of the long term homeless shelter issues attracted by the City.
This is drilled into every medical practitioner in the US from the very first day of their training — when you perform any procedure that requires you to touch a patient, especially if you are required to break the skin (which is required for a blood draw), and you do not have consent or a court order, that is battery.
This cop was ordering her to commit battery. That should be the very minimum of what he himself is charged with (and is certainly guilty of.)
Dear everlastingphelps:
Quite so. Police officers are taught any false arrest is potentially assault and battery. Considering the video of a much larger Payne viciously grabbing and wrestling Wubbels outdoors and into submission, if the prosecutor decides to pursue this, Payne is likely headed for jail and the unemployment line, and rightfully so.
If he is going to jail (and he probably should), the supervisor who ordered him to make the arrest should share his cell, unless the supervisor was provided with inaccurate information about the situation. As a matter of fact, in another case, that Payne was instructed to make the arrest could even be a mitigating circumstance though not a defense, since it’s his duty to refuse to obey an unlawful order. In this particular case, it’s not mitigating. He was clearly chomping at the bit to make the arrest, and all the supervisor did was to take off the leash to allow him to do what he clearly wanted to do, anyway.
As for the case itself, if he is charged with a crime, he had better take any reasonable plea. A jury of reasonable, decent people watching that video convicts him before they even finish taking their seats in the deliberation room. It was one of the sickening things I’ve watched in a long time.
There is more to this story – Officer Payne, in his frustration volunteered to another officer while his body cam is recording that he would deliver all the indigent patients from his other job as an EMT to the U of U and take the “good” patients elsewhere. He was fired by that ambulance company this morning after an investigation over the holiday and an interview with him on Tuesday. The first paragraph of this article describes “badge heavy”. Very eloquent and exactly on point.
Mike,
Thank you for a clear, “let’s look at all sides before judgment” discussion in many of these cases. Your research cuts through the “Bias” of the MSM and discusses the facts of the case.
I would love to hear your take on the current Michael Bennett lawsuit form Las Vegas. Too much assuming going on in both the local and particularly sports media.
Dear Michael L Braden:
Thanks, and thanks for the heads up on the Bennett case. I’m always interested in Las Vegas and it’s deadly police. At first glance, however, I doubt it’s a matter of race. It appears to be nothing more than officers that could have handled things a great deal better. It’s certainly no excuse for dumping on America. But we’ll see. More to investigate…
Nurse Wubbles is a two time Olympic skier. She is royalty in Utah. She has no need to even file an intent to sue because the PD is eager to grovel and make her an offer that she will eagerely accept.
This situation reminds me of my father’s death back when I was only one year old. The transmission on his car locked up while he was towing a horse trailer during what is called a “Tulare fog” in the San Yanquin valley. A truck loaded with steel rear ended the horse trailer, killing my dad and injuring my brother and the horse. The collusion was suffeciently violent that the truck driver killed himself. The trucking company hired a scum suckibg whore of an attorney who filed a lawsuit against my deceased father’s estate seeking money to buy a new truck to replace the aging, 1946 Mack tractor that was allegedly totoled and also repair the aging Mack tractor that was allegedly totolled. This abuse of a recently widowed mother took an enormous toll on her and contributed to her death a year later.
Mike, You seem impressed with the speed with which the department, town, and prosecutor are pursuing this case, and I hope you have good reason to be. However, and I hope you can confirm or refute this, I’ve seen it reported that this event actually occurred over a month ago and has only come to light, and gotten this action, because the nurse released the video herself. If this is true, then in addition to the hospital staff, the officer, the other officer who whose body cam apparently caught the event, at least one University Police officer, and the Lieutenant on the phone with the officer all knew about it. And yet, if the month’s delay is true, nobody did anything about it until the video was made public. The reports imply that the officer was not put on leave(!) until the video became public. I must jump to the conclusion that the nurse released the video because she was frustrated that nothing was being done, which does not speak well for the powers that be.
Video was obtained by the attorney representing Wubbles on Thursday morning and released soon after to the local media. It went viral within a few hours. The mayor viewed the video on Friday morning, called the Chief in for a talk, then the investigation began, the apologies from the mayor began, and the ball got rolling.
Thank you. Can you tell me the date of the actual event? ABC says it happened July 26, but I don’t have all that much faith in ABC. If correct, it would seem that it took a month, and the attorney releasing the video (that I’ll bet he had trouble obtaining), before the ball got rolling. The only one I’ve seen that seems to have done the right thing at the right time is the owner of the ambulance service who fired the officer as a part time EMT as soon as he saw the video. If the nurse’s supervisor knew what happened, why didn’t the hospital do anything or change their policy until the video was released? Why wasn’t an internal investigation already underway when the video was released? Why wasn’t the officer put on administrative leave until the video was released? Why didn’t the police chief apologize until the video was released? Call me unimpressed with the response of the powers that be. There were at least a dozen witnesses in the video, including at least 4 in uniform and as many in scrubs, yet it seems nothing was done until the video was released. If I was the nurse, I would be even more pissed off than she seems to be.
Dear Skinnedknuckles:
I’m referring only to the apparent relative speed with which departmental discipline and potential charges will be handled, not with any issue regarding when the incident occurred relative to when it became widely known. The point is such things should be handled professionally and fairly, but where professionals are involved, that doesn’t take months to accomplish.
This does seem odd. Normally, anything like this would be known by the medical and law enforcement communities within hours of its occurrence. Professional law enforcement administrators would be talking, in person, to their medical counterparts as soon as possible to resolve any issues, perhaps even with the hope of keeping it out of the public eye. Whether that happened here, or perhaps whether the higher ups tried to bury everything and really ticked off the people that actually do the work, remains to be seen.
The incident occurred on the afternoon of July 26. That morning was when the 18-wheeler was hit head on by the vehicle running from police that crossed over a 4 lane divided highway into oncoming traffic. The 18-wheeler was in the far lane and the sedan hit head on at a high rate of speed well above the 60 mph speed limit. That driver was pronounced dead at the scene after his vehicle was engulfed in flames. The 18-wheeler driver was life flighted to the U of U burn unit (the best in the intermountain area) with potentially life threatening burns. I understand he was upgraded to serious today in the burn unit still.
It took an attorney to get the body camera released. I don’t know if it was a court order or a FOIA. I think originally this was attempted to be kept low profile until the attorney got the video…. then there was an eclipse…. and you know the rest of the story. My opinion is it was discovered nothing was being done with the officer payne, the attorney discovered that and then the wheels came off the salt lake city bus when the video went viral.
U of U evidently came out quickly and made it clear the nurse did the right thing at the outset but asked their U of U police chief (the hospital and school is so massive they need their own police force) to take a look at how his department handled it – coming back with a “shucks – we goofed and should have been more supportive of the nurse” type of moment for the press.
Now it escalated again this afternoon. Salt Lake County DA Sim Gill asked the FBI to take over the investigation. I think he is up for re-election in November.
Via KSL.com
When asked about that reasoning Tuesday, Chief Mike Brown said, “Look, hindsight’s 20-20.”
“If we knew everything or if things had been different, perhaps we would have put them on admin leave right out of the chute,” Brown said. “I don’t have an answer that really makes people feel good about that right now other than please rest assured we will hold our officers accountable. We initiated that internal investigation right out of the chute.”
Brown said his command staff saw the video within 24 hours of the incident, while he did not see it until Thursday. The chief is typically separated from the evidence of an internal investigation until it is complete, the city FAQ sheet states.
Brown called the incident an “outlier of outliers” and an “unfortunate situation” that will never happen again.
Here is the video link for the crash involving 43 year old William Gray, a reserve officer of Rigby Idaho Police Department as he is driving his 18-wheeler and becomes the victim of the crash the precipitated this whole incident with Wubbels. It is Utah Highway Patrol dash camera video (about 38 seconds). Quite spectacular.
The local liberal rag, Salt Lake Tribune, had a good summary this morning along with the following quotes:
“Three investigations are underway: one by the police department’s internal affairs division, one by the department’s civilian review board and one by Salt Lake County’s Unified Police Department. On Thursday, Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill announced that he was asking the FBI to also assist on the criminal probe.
Meanwhile, the police department and mayor’s office are continuing efforts to combat an onslaught of public criticism since the video was released a week ago. On Thursday, police Chief Mike Brown appeared on the KUER program RadioWest.
Brown said he was ”alarmed” and “concerned” after seeing the video for the first time last week, though he also added that the incident was an “outlier” that should not reflect on the rest of his department. He said he has tried to stay insulated from the various investigations, especially the internal affairs probe, because he will ”make the final decision,” after those investigators present their findings to him.
The host, Doug Fabrizio, asked how much damage the episode had done to the department’s reputation.
“It hurts. We got a black eye,” Brown said. ”We worked so hard for the past couple years through our training and outreach and everything we’ve done — to take this on the chin? We’ll make it better, but it hurts.”
My opinion is the civilian review board will come in first probably in a few more weeks immediately after the accident investigation report from the original head-on up near Logan. After that, Unified Police won’t come in until after Salt Lake County is complete. Who knows what the FBI is about. It might be due to the HIPAA issues with the original body camera footage that was released that include patient names and information observable in the background on the white boards. It might also be due to the HIPAA issues with the patient involved?
Dear Utah Chris:
HIPAA would not involve the FBI, who investigate civil rights violations in such cases, but the law really doesn’t apply here. As you say, who knows what’s up with the FBI today? We only know they’re politically compromised and fundamentally untrustworthy.
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=45727028&nid=148&title=lieutenant-involved-in-u-nurse-arrest-retains-counsel
Watch commander was placed on leave today.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/09/09/watch-commander-on-duty-during-nurse-arrest-has-been-placed-on-leave-attorney-says-hes-received-death-threats-and-asks-for-patience/
and….Detective Payne alleged he was trying to save the commercial driver’s license of the rig driver.
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/09/09/slc-detectives-attorney-says-officer-wanted-blood-drawn-to-help-the-unconscious-patient-keep-his-commercial-driver-license/
Dear Utah Chris:
Thanks for the links! I have a new article up. There would be no reason for Payne to try to do that. Gray was an innocent victim. There would be no reason for his CDL to be at risk.
Agreed on the CDL. It is an obvious attempt for Det. Payne legal team to obscure the issues in front of the media. By all accounts, Gray is indeed innocent to this whole matter. Anyone could have been driving that big rig in that collision. I don’t recall how I was referenced to your site – I think it was the Minneapolis affair with Justine Damond from Powerline or ConservativeTreehouse – I don’t recall, but have been making a point to visit regularly since then due to your analytical approach to covering these issues. Thanks.
Dear Utah Chris:
Thanks! Glad to have you.
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