Detective Jeff Payne Of Utah Fired After Video Showed Him Manhandling Nurse

The Salt Lake City Police Department in Utah has fired a police detective, who was filmed forcefully handcuffing and roughly detaining a nurse at the University Hospital in Salt Lake City for refusing to allow him to draw blood from a sedated patient, a Salt Lake Police spokesman said Tuesday.

A department spokesman, Sgt. Brandon Shearer, confirmed that the Utah officer, Detective Jeff Payne, who had been put on administrative leave since the episode came into the spotlight, which had been captured by police body camera, was fired on Tuesday. Detective Payne’s supervisor, Lt. James Tracy, who was also at the scene, was also demoted to the rank of officer.

In a disciplinary letter obtained by the Associated Press, the Salt Lake City police chief, Mike Brown, wrote that Detective Payne’s behavior was “inappropriate, unreasonable, unwarranted, discourteous, disrespectful,” and had caused “significant disrepute” to the department.

“You demonstrated extremely poor professional judgment (especially for an officer with 27 years of experience), which calls into question your ability to effectively serve the public and the department,” he wrote.

According to AP, in a similar letter to Tracy, Chief Brown described a “lack of judgment and leadership” on Tracy’s part as evidenced by his order to detain nurse Alex Wubbels, without understanding the entire situation. “As a result,” Chief Brown wrote, “I no longer believe that you can retain a leadership position in the department.”

The incident received widespread national attention last month and the police bodycam footage went viral after being released by Wubbels and her lawyer in September.

Footage of the July 26 incident showed the on-duty nurse at University Hospital in Salt Lake City forcefully being handcuffed and dragged into a police car after she refused to let the police detective draw blood from an unconscious patient, without the patient’s consent, citing the hospital's policies.

The hospital surveillance footage and police bodycam footage of the entire incident showed detective Payne asking Wubbels to let him draw a blood sample from an unconscious patient, who had been in a car crash that led to a death in Cache County, Utah, earlier that day.

Wubbels was seen turning Payne down stating hospital policies, talking on the phone to other hospital officials and repeating the policies. Despite all of this, Payne appeared to grow tired of listening to her objections and said "We're done here. We're done," before shoving her out the door and handcuffing her.

Wubbels had been held in a police car but later released without charges.

Gordon Crabtree, CEO of the University of Utah Hospital, later told USA Today that hospital security should have intervened during the incident. He also said they could have changed the hospital policy to allow police officers only to speak to senior nurse supervisors.

"To our nurses and staff — this will not happen again," Crabtree said. "Nurse Wubbels was placed in an unfair and unwarranted position (and) her actions were nothing less than exemplary."

"I just feel betrayed, I feel angry, I feel a lot of things," Wubbels said during a news conference after the video's release. "I am still confused. I’m a healthcare worker. The only job I have is to keep my patients safe," USA Today reported.