Justice, Police

Issue Spotter: How Many Cops Need To Be Fired Based On These Facts?

If you answer 'one,' you fail. YOU are part of the problem.

By  
on

(Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)

There are going to be a lot of calls today to fire Detective Jeff Payne. Payne was caught on a body camera harassing, assaulting, and arresting a nurse in Utah who refused to let him violate the Fourth Amendment. Payne wanted to draw blood from an unconscious, badly burned hospital patient, without a warrant. Nurse Alex Wubbels told him “no,” then start sobbing as Payne did what cops do when they don’t get their way.

Thankfully, Alex Wubbels is white, so we can nationally agree that Wubbels was blameless and just doing her job. A black nurse would be told that she was “rude” or “uppity” to the officer and, while “technically correct” about the law, she got what she probably deserved.

But anyway, the Washington Post frames Payne’s actions like this:

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.”

Payne snapped. He seized hold of the nurse, shoved her out of the building and cuffed her hands behind her back. A bewildered Wubbels screamed “help me” and “you’re assaulting me” as the detective forced her into an unmarked car and accused her of interfering with an investigation.

That’s the mainstream narrative. Payne “snapped.” Payne is a “bad apple.” BOO, DETECTIVE PAYNE.

Please. Payne may have acted a bit aggressively, but he was well within the bounds of normal terrorist behavior. When you get in the way of these people — the police — you can expect this kind of reaction. Frustrated cops respond within a range of overt threats of extra-judicial harassment, to murder.

Sponsored

The assault and false imprisonment Wubbels received is WELL WITHIN normal parameters (though, because again she’s white, she might not have known that). Wubbels can be heard on the video saying “help, help” and “this is crazy.” She sounds like a woman who spends a lot of time swimming with killer whales, just realizing that she’s swimming with killer whales. Cops assault people, she’s lucky they didn’t kill her. Welcome to the world you’ve been living in all this time.

Detective Payne should be ARRESTED. He is a criminal. We have video evidence of his crime. Payne doesn’t just need to be fired, he needs to go to JAIL.

But who is going to arrest him? Another cop?

See, if you want to solve this problem (and I’ll note, YOU DON’T, because secretly you’re willing to suffer the occasional murder and constitutional violation so long as you feel “safe”), you have to arrest ALL THE OTHER COPS in this story that aided and abetted Payne’s behavior.

* Was Payne filming himself? No. He’s got a partner who actually has his body cam on. The sidekick’s legal contribution to the situation was “So why don’t we just write a search warrant?” Payne — the one who “snapped,” the “bad apple” Payne — has to be the one to tell this dimwit that they don’t have probable cause for a search warrant. The cop that didn’t assault the nurse was eager to violate the Constitution in hopes that the nurse would fall for it. When she didn’t (because Alex Wubbels seems to know her stuff), who knows what he would have done to her.

Sponsored

In any event, the partner did NOTHING to stop Payne from roughing up a woman. He watched the crime go down and did nothing.

FIRE HIS ASS.

* “Another officer arrives and tells her she should have allowed Payne to collect the samples he asked for. He says she obstructed justice and prevented Payne from doing his job.” FIRE HIS ASS.

* Payne claims that his lieutenant “ordered him to arrest Wubbels if she refused to let him draw a sample.” That’s an allegation but if true, FIRE HIS ASS.

* “Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown had seen the video and called it ‘very alarming,’ according to the Deseret News.” After the video surfaced, a police spokesperson said, get this: “Payne had been suspended from the department’s blood draw unit but remained on active duty.”

FIRE POLICE CHIEF MIKE BROWN. That’s the most obvious call of all. He’s got an officer who got out constitution-ed by a BURN VICTIM’S NURSE, and responded by falsely imprisoning her, and all he can think of to say is “very alarming,” while keeping the joker on active duty? FIRE HIS ASS FIRST.

I don’t see one bad apple, I see at least five officers who need to lose their jobs and one who needs to be put in jail, and that’s BEFORE a thorough investigation into the department’s training and procedures has been conducted.

If people were serious about stopping police terrorism, this video would lead to a goddamn PURGE.

Instead, I wouldn’t bet the change in my couch that anybody but Payne will be held accountable, and Payne’s “accountability” is probably going to be the “full pension parachute” kind.

So don’t tell me the cop “snapped.” The cop ACTED LIKE A COP. This is what they do. This is what they’ll continue to do until there is political will for actual police reform.

‘This is crazy,’ sobs Utah hospital nurse as cop roughs her up, arrests her for doing her job [Washington Post]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

Topics

, , , , , , ,