The "few bad apples" defense for cops is over.

After watching this horrifying, yet to me, unsurprising, video of intensive care burn unit charge nurse Alex Wubbels being physically assaulted and detained by Salt Lake City Police Detective Jeff Payne and then lectured by Lieutenant James Tracy for simply doing her job to the letter of federal HIPAA laws, I have come to conclusion that the relationship between the People and their servant law enforcement officers may very well have just "crossed the Rubicon".

The relationship between hospital caregivers and the police is thought to have been a close one, but as a registered nurse (licensed 2009) with MANY family members who are also RNs, all licensed longer than me, and many coworkers who are obviously also RNs, I can tell you that there is little reason to think our relationship with the police would be close.

Law enforcement officers generally have little to offer medical staff in way of assistance until a patient actually becomes violent with a weapon. This is an exceedingly rare occurrence, and as we all know, the police would need to be called just like anyone at their home would do so. In almost all other instances, the hospital staff, including the RNs, techs and security (if there is any) would deal with the violence themselves initially.

As far as the medical staff assisting law enforcement, we have only information, and little more. However, this healthcare information is part of that patient's personal information, therefore falling under the Fourth Amendment right to privacy. If your personal health information is not private, then NOTHING is.

All healthcare professionals, including RNs, are PROHIBITED BY FEDERAL LAW (HIPAA) from releasing a patient's health related information to ANYONE without specific criteria being met first.

1. Patient must consent. An unconscious patient can not consent.

2. Patient must be under arrest, and therefore in the protective custody of the law enforcement or correctional entity.

3. A warrant must be properly obtained from a judge. This isn't 1999. This can be done electronically or telephonically in as little as ten minutes.

At least one of those criteria must be met. In this particular incident, NONE of those criteria were met. This was THOROUGHLY explained to the officers by Alex Wubbels and by her hospital administrator. The lawful policy, agreed to previously by the SLCPD, was printed and shown to the officers. The officers were asked if they had a warrant, to which they replied that they did not. The nurse explained that the patient had already received medications to make them more "comfortable". For those who don't work in the medical field, the burn patient was surely given narcotic pain killers. This would have tainted any blood toxicology reports. This was explained to the officers as well.

None of this mattered. Detective Jeff Payne aggressively, unnecessarily and unlawfully assaulted Alex Wubbels, dragged her outside, handcuffed her and put her in his car. This was an obvious, inexcusable and ILLEGAL abuse of power. To add insult to injury, Lieutenant James Tracy came in and started to lecture her about what she had done wrong. These were lies, of course, because she had done nothing wrong at all. Tracy began citing now defunct laws, struck down in 2007 by the Supreme Court.

Turns out that Alex Wubbels knew the law better than both of them and followed it, unlike both of them. If you are ever so inclined, trying quoting a law or legal statute to a law enforcement officer and see where that gets you. I guarantee it will not work out in your favor. Rational discussion with a LEO does not help your situation once they've made up their mind, no matter how correct you are.

The fact that THREE police officers were present at the time of the assault and were later supported by a supervisor tells me that this was a systemic problem, a pattern of behavior, in this department. Tracy himself told Wubbels he had been doing it this way for "22 years". This incident took place in July, and only now has the officer been suspended, and only after Alex Wubbels and her attorney released the video.

The hostile attitude and intimidation tactics shown in the video are consistent with my own professional experiences and the experiences of my friends and family members who work and have worked as RNs in many states. Admittedly, none of us have been assaulted and manhandeled yet, but the hostility and attempts at intimidation seem to be standard operation procedure.

This apparent close relationship between law enforcement and hospital staff has always been a mystery to me. Myth might be a better word. And now we are supposed to repair it after this? Repair it back to what? Back to when LEOs only used VERBAL intimidation tactics instead of cuffing us and tossing us into the car? Back to when we were only demanded to break federal law instead of being physically forced to?

And when this is the experience of a great many nurses throughout the country, is it really just "a few bad apples" behaving this way? At what point are we allowed to get angry and demand a large scale change?

The "few bad apples" defense is important to law enforcement, and they might have just lost that.