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ER nurses for justice -

Thursday, September 24, 2009


This story from the Chicago Sun-Times about a police officer being sued for handcuffing an ER nurse who refused to draw blood from a DWI suspect against hospital protocol and holding her in the back of his cruiser for 45 minutes is disturbing for a couple of reasons. Let’s run down the bullet points:

  • Asking an emergency room nurse to violate hospital protocol in order to better ensure that the concentration of alcohol in the suspect’s blood will be higher disrupts the flow of events in a situation in which there are real, actual stakes. It’s essentially saying that the gathering of evidence is more important than treating people in an emergency situation.
  • It’s the exact sort of “attitude adjustment” for daring to argue with a police officer that makes so many Americans distrustful of the police. It reaffirms something that a lot of us feel – that the police expect to be treated deferentially in all situations, which fuels a particular kind of resentment: What you want me to do isn’t always, in every situation, more important than what I’m already doing.
  • It removes a friggin’ emergency room nurse from the emergency room for forty-five minutes for no good reason. The reason we respect the police is that they devote their lives to increasing safety and protecting us. When they instead decide to remove someone whose job is to provide medical care for people in an emergency situation from their role because they’re upset that they weren’t being treated like the boss of the room, they’re putting innocent people’s lives at risk. Not even the lives of people who are innocent because, like, they haven’t been convicted of anything yet, but they’re suspects so let’s give ‘em some leeway (As with, say, tasing people). No, yanking a nurse out of the emergency room – especially a head nurse who’s responsible for triage – means there’s one less qualified person available to stabilize grandma after the heart attack. So for those who would dismiss the suit because, boo-hoo, she had to sit in the back of a car for less than an hour with handcuffs on – you’re missing the point. The cop didn’t just violate the nurse’s rights, he threatened the health and safety of everyone in the emergency room. Because he was mad that she wouldn’t break the rules and do what he said.

Again, this sort of abuse of power is why it’s hard to justify the demonization of DWI suspects. Not because DWI isn’t incredibly dangerous and incredibly serious. But because when you insist that anyone accused of doing it is a terrible criminal, you justify things like putting an entire emergency room at risk just to teach a nurse who insists on following the rules (and on treating sick people as a more important part of her job than gathering evidence) a lesson for having the temerity to say no to a police officer who’s absolutely convinced of his own righteousness.

EDIT: More on this here and here and here and here.

(Linda Cardellini from ER image via NBC.com, because typing “nurse & police” into Flickr brings up a bunch of inappropriate Halloween costume pictures but not much else.)

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posted by Dan   permalink   0 Comments

Just one more word regarding the Professor Gates fiasco -

Thursday, July 30, 2009

It is my opinion that the crime he actually committed was one not found in any Penal Code. A crime committed by individuals that, although usually done unknowingly, can result in their immediate arrest. That crime is “Failing the Attitude Test.”

As a criminal defense attorney, I see it often. The most common scenario is someone gets into an argument with a police officer and is charged with public intoxication. For example, a recent client, a young woman, called police to report her concern over threats made by an ex-boyfriend. The ex had threatened her and her new boyfriend that evening, and she was afraid he might come to her home. When police showed up to investigate, sure enough, the ex-boyfriend drove by. Police stopped and questioned him. When the decision was made to not pursue the matter any further my client became angry and walked out to the street to let the officers know how displeased she was. Moments later she was charged with public intoxication and arrested.

I believe what happened with Professor Gates was a similar situation. He was angry and responded in a not-so-pleasant manner. This upset the police and they arrested him. Everyone is focusing on the fact that he is black and calling it a race issue, and to some degree it is. It is not hard to imagine how things could get ugly when someone like Gates, a black Harvard professor, acutely aware of how race can come into play when dealing with authority, finds himself being interrogated in his own home. Black authority figure confronts white authority figure and the person with the power to arrest wins. So race added fuel to the fire, but race isn’t a mandatory ingredient for a situation like this to occur. Just ask former candidate for Travis County District Attorney, Mindy Montford. After the car she was riding in was stopped by police, she got out to advise the driver of his rights. When told by police to get back into the car she complied, but the damage was done. She was charged and arrested for public intoxication. It seems the only mandatory ingredient for a public intoxication arrest is an attitude perceived as confrontational by the police.

In all of these incidents charges were later dismissed, but of course by then, the punishment had already been exacted. And it’s not right. Police officers are professionals when it comes to confrontational situations and as such, should remain above the fray. Their duty is to de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation, not add to it. Citizens can get nervous, say distasteful things, and over-react. Police officers must stay calm, not over-react, and never take a situation personally. It’s the professional thing to do. It’s the safe thing to do. It’s the right thing to do.

So what I hope we learn from the "teaching moment" at the “beer summit” between President Obama, Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley together is how to prevent some of these confrontations in the future. But you know, we can always find something to fight about. Already breweries are arguing over which beer should be served. As Gilda Radner from Saturday Night Live episodes of long ago would say…“it’s always something.”

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