‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop roughs her up
She was just doing her job
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Derek Hawkins.
By all accounts, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit was professional and restrained when she told a Salt Lake City police detective he wasn’t allowed to draw blood from a badly injured patient.
First, the detective didn’t have a warrant.
Second, the patient wasn’t conscious, so he couldn’t give consent.
Without that, the detective was barred from collecting blood samples — not just by hospital policy, but by basic constitutional law.
Still, Detective Jeff Payne insisted that he be let in to take the blood, saying the nurse would be arrested and charged if she refused.
Nurse Alex Wubbels politely stood her ground. She got her supervisor on the phone so Payne could hear the decision loud and clear.
“Sir,” said the supervisor, “you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.”
Then Payne snapped. He tries to swat the phone out of her hand.
“We’re done here,” he yells.
He grabs Wubbels by the arms and shoves her through the automatic doors outside the building.
“Help! Help me! Stop! You’re assaulting me! Stop! I’ve done nothing wrong! This is crazy!” screamed a bewildered Wubbels. Payne cuffed her hands behind her back.
The detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.
How it all began
A suspect speeding away from police in a pickup truck on a local highway smashed head-on into a truck driver, as local media reported. Medics sedated the truck driver, who was severely burned, and took him to the University of Utah Hospital. He arrived in a comatose state, according to the Deseret News. The suspect died in the crash.
A neighboring police department sent Payne, a trained police phlebotomist, to collect blood from the patient and check for illicit substances, as the Tribune reported. The goal was reportedly to protect the trucker, who was not suspected of a crime.
His lieutenant ordered him to arrest Wubbels if she refused to let him draw a sample, according to the Tribune.
An internal investigation
The explosive July 26 encounter was captured on officers’ body cameras and is now the subject of an internal investigation by the police department, as the Salt Lake Tribune reported Thursday. A 19-minute video from the body camera of a fellow officer shows the bitter argument that unfolded on the floor of the hospital’s burn unit. (Things get especially rough around the 6-minute mark).
- Payne had been suspended from the department’s blood draw unit but remained on active duty.
- Shearer said Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown had seen the video and called it “very alarming,” according to the Deseret News.
The aftermath
Wubbels was right. The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that blood can only be drawn from drivers for probable cause, with a warrant.
Wubbels, who was not criminally charged, played the footage at a news conference Thursday with her attorney. They called on police to rethink their treatment of hospital workers and said they had not ruled out legal action.
“I just feel betrayed, I feel angry, I feel a lot of things,” Wubbels said. “And I’m still confused.”
As a health-care worker, she said it was her job to keep her patients safe.
“A blood draw, it just gets thrown around like it’s some simple thing,” she said, according to the Deseret News. “But your blood is your blood. That’s your property.”
For now, Wubbels is not taking any legal action against police. But she’s not ruling it out.
