Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Sep 02, 2017 11:00 pm

iMURDAu wrote:If there's good cops out there why aren't they policing the police force? Stories like this are why I laugh a little bit when I see "the thin blue line" shit on bumper stickers and t-shirts. Cops want respect and adoration but they don't give a fuck about the law. They just want you to follow their orders.

It can be difficult for any group to control its most extreme elements. Really, I think much of the responsibility falls on the Supreme Court. The judiciary is supposed to hold the other branches accountable when they violate individual rights; but when it comes to police work, the Court has consistently prioritized protecting misbehaving officers over making victims whole. Qualified immunity, at this point, protects officers from liability when they commit all but the most egregious rights violations.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby iMURDAu » Sun Sep 03, 2017 1:13 am

Is it really that hard to control the extremists though? There aren't too many workplaces I'm aware of that have employees who violate the civil rights of citizens on a regular basis.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Sep 03, 2017 1:16 am

There aren't too many workplaces around where employees have the opportunity to violate citizens' civil rights on a regular basis. The Constitution guarantees you protection from abuse by police officers, not Domino's drivers.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

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He tested with Turing,
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and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Sep 03, 2017 1:25 am

What about medical staff doing the bidding of police officers? Would that man have been entitled to any legal recourse had the nurse just puppied up and followed orders?
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby SandTea » Sun Sep 03, 2017 1:51 am

DamianaRaven wrote:Would that man have been entitled to any legal recourse had the nurse just puppied up and followed orders?


Unfortunately, probably, but not from the cop. From the nurse or hospital (who would then fire the nurse for costing them money, I'm betting). The nurse then could try to blame the cop but as avi said cops get special protection.

I'm super curious about how that cop explains his actions to friends and family. I'm a pretty good bullshitter and I'm having a hard time coming up with something sympathetic. Other than "this used to be procedure and I didn't know it changed" or just straight victim blaming, I'm struggling.

Anecdotally, in my area there are mainly two careers. Cops and nurses. I would love to fly on the wall if his significant other was a nurse. (if he has one)
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:00 am

According to the HuffPost article I read, his official story is that he was collecting the blood sample to protect the guy from accusations of drunk driving (which, of course, no one would be making after hearing he got hit head-on by a police chase) and certainly not to fish for any excuse they could find to blame him for their own stupidity.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby Learned Nand » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:25 am

To be clear, I don't think the cop in this case is protected by qualified immunity. Qualified immunity protects officers from civil liability unless they violate a right whose existence was "'clearly established' at the at the time of the challenged conduct". Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, at 733 (2011), quoting Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). In most cases, to prove that a right is clearly established, it helps to have an on-point case holding that the particular challenged conduct was unconstitutional.

We have such a case in this instance. The Supreme Court ruled in Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141 (2013) that, in the absence of some kind of exigency, warrantless blood draws are unconstitutional. Of course, exigent circumstances could be common in such situations. For example, if a warrant cannot be acquired before a drunk driver's liver processes the alcohol out of his system, then it may be necessary to draw blood without a warrant.

However, the officer here doesn't seem to have argued that there was any kind of exigency. In fact, he made clear on the video that he didn't think there was probable cause to draw blood in the first place. Probable cause would be required even in exigent circumstances.

The officer's last line of defense was that he was relying on Utah's implied consent law, which had expired in 2007. Were this a reasonable misunderstanding of state law, that defense might work for the officer, as the Supreme Court held in Heien v. North Carolina, 135 S. Ct. 530 (2014) that a police officer's reasonable mistake of state law does not render a search unreasonable. However, the Supreme Court has provided us with another specific, on point case holding that the officer's challenged conduct was unlawful. The Supreme Court ruled in Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S. Ct. 2160 (2016) that states could not compel warrantless blood tests through implied consent laws.

The defense of qualified immunity has grown pretty strong, but the officer's conduct in this case matched an exact pattern of behavior that the Supreme Court has recently and clearly explained to be unconstitutional. Qualified immunity protects "all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law." Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335 (1986). The officer falls into at least one of these categories, if not both.

(I can't speak with as much confidence about the nurse's potential liability and I don't think it's relevant to this case. Maybe she would have been liable for malpractice; maybe she wouldn't have been because duress is a defense; maybe duress isn't a defense but she could seek indemnification from the officer. I don't know enough about the particulars of tort suits to say.)
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
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He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby iMURDAu » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:33 am

aviel wrote:There aren't too many workplaces around where employees have the opportunity to violate citizens' civil rights on a regular basis. The Constitution guarantees you protection from abuse by police officers, not Domino's drivers.


Okay well how about if Domino's drivers started shooting people who didn't give a tip when one was demanded? How long would that be tolerated? Domino's would deal with that or they'd be out of business. The police aren't going anywhere.

Basically my point is there are places in America where it isn't a good idea to get pulled over if you look a certain way but with the exception of sports leagues is there any business that is publicly known nationwide for outright thuggery? It would have to be that bad behaviors aren't tolerated and people who display those behaviors either aren't hired or get terminated.

Btw the "protection" that is "guaranteed" by the constitution doesn't seem to apply all the time.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby Kate » Sun Sep 03, 2017 5:27 am

There are examples of districts where things are run well and bad cops get weeded out. They're just not really newsworthy (which is great, I guess?). For newsworthy, David Brown comes to mind.

I've known a lot of cops, and I think as much as you definitely get the power-hungry jerkoffs who are attracted to the job in the first place because of the power, you get the ones who are passionate about helping their communities and genuinely care and want to protect people. It's not fair to lump them all in together, and someone at the bottom can't do a lot to influence his or her fellow officers beyond example.

The problem we're facing is systemic more than it is a problem with individual cops. Yeah, you've got the jerkoffs who should in no way be in that position, but then you have the system that allows them, the union that backs them, the bosses that promote them. If you make too much noise in a system that is stacked against justice, you're at risk of being kicked out and leaving a void to be filled by a jerkoff. Like Stephen Mader, an officer who almost saved a man's life until his coworkers showed up to the scene. So naturally, he was fired. He didn't even object to someone else doing a dick thing; he did the non-dick thing and it got him kicked out.

What can rank and file cops do in the face of this, realistically? It's great in movies when the good guys stand up for what's right in the face of the Big Bad, but in a system of abuse where unions have contracts with cities that make it nearly impossible to fire the bad guys even if they're identified by their coworkers, and where the idea of transparency is so foreign that only the most learned of scholars can find it on a map, it's nearly impossible. Add to that the difficulty of it basically being a fraternity, for good reason. Your lives are on the line, you need to trust your fellow officers to have your back in dangerous situations, you watch your coworker's wives become widows and their children lose their fathers and mothers and you step in to take care of them because that could have just as easily been you. It is a Herculean feat to make change at that level.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby iMURDAu » Sun Sep 03, 2017 12:43 pm

Between Kate's post and avi's post where he said the SCOTUS needs to handle it, it seems there is no viable solution.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby DamianaRaven » Sun Sep 03, 2017 1:06 pm

CarrieVS wrote:Possibly, although by 'good' patients he may just mean patients who are likely to have insurance or be able to pay their bill.


Sorting people out by their ability to pay and then taking them to the "ghetto hospital" instead of whichever one is closest is (among other shady practices) called patient dumping and it is, in fact, illegal.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby mancityfooty » Sun Sep 03, 2017 2:18 pm

iMURDAu wrote:Okay well how about if Domino's drivers started shooting people who didn't give a tip when one was demanded?


I'd say that's what you get for ordering from Domino's.

this whole thing started out as a nurse who was doing her job and transformed into a volunteer cop from another state who drives a truck for his main job.
illegal as fuck and why is this guy still doing his second job?
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby Kate » Sun Sep 03, 2017 3:31 pm

I didn't mean to make it sound hopeless, I think it's more that it needs to be addressed at the top levels and the corruption need to be rooted out from there. I'm normally small government but I think legislation that ensures transparency and makes de-escalation training mandatory would go a long way. I think making it so unions cannot protect bad cops would be good too. And breaking up the incestuous relationship between cops and prosecuters is also a good idea to the extent that it's possible to do so.

If you live in a place where you can vote for your Sheriff, vote accordingly. Same with judges. Write to your congressmen. Don't vote for tough on crime candidates who not only support abusive cops but expand police forces beyond what's necessary, creating demand that is often filled with people who are not fit to serve. Joe Blue is between a rock and a hard place, but as long as we aren't actively engaged in a confrontation with police when we make our stand, we have a little more leeway than he does to clamor for change.*

*He can of course do all these things as well, just like any civilian can, as long as it doesn't get back to people who can illegally punish him for it.
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby octoberpumpkin » Sun Sep 03, 2017 3:40 pm

Kate's linked article:

In Afghanistan, the rules of engagement sometimes were stricter than use-of-force rules for civilian police in America.


Anyone else see a problem with this or is it just me?
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Re: Police "Arrest" Nurse For Refusing to Break the Law

Postby DanteHoratio » Mon Sep 04, 2017 5:48 pm

iMURDAu wrote:Is it really that hard to control the extremists though? There aren't too many workplaces I'm aware of that have employees who violate the civil rights of citizens on a regular basis.

The problem is the good cops have everything to lose and nothing to gain from trying to control the bad cops. The bad cops could murder the family of the good cops.
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