Police Perspective: This is absolute proof that cameras cause police misbehaviour. Before these terrible devices were everywhere, there was no such thing as police brutality. 
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The cop doing the roughing is responsible. So are any other officers on the scene. Especially any superior officer. They are either accomplices or facilitators.
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I couldn’t help thinking something along those lines about the reaction to Heather Heyer’s murder: Pretty white girl gets murdered and suddenly authority figures lose their shit in 3 … 2 …
To be clear: this is absolutely NOT a dig at Ms. Heyer. She is a hero. People who waited until pretty white girls began to get killed before speaking out against white supremacists are less than heros. See also; the reaction after Justine Damond was killed.
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Once upon a time, being involved in legal proceedings, especially criminal proceedings was supposed to be a source of shame and a cause for opprobrium.
When did that change?
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He worked hard to get in to Vampire Squad!
That doesn’t seem to make any sense either. If they were worried about that, all they had to do is wait - anything in the truckdriver’s system would either be gone soon enough (so no problem) or would hang around (in which case, testing later makes no difference).
If they really needed to take a sample quickly - that’s what judges and warrants are for.
That makes more sense to me.
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I see you coming at what I said from the wrong direction, which explains why it makes no sense to you. I put the cart behind the horse. YMMV.
Lets assume I was suggesting something rational, but towards an end you maybe haven’t conceived of yet?
Oh you silly. It doesn’t have to be logical. It just has to somewhat believable, on the level of “he was resisting arrest” and “he was coming straight for me so I shot him in the back.”
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Oh oh! While we’re playing word games, can we play the pronoun game as well? That’s ever so much fun! Screw clarity of communication, lets play games!
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He misunderstood me, I wasn’t asked to clarify. I don’t misunderstand you, you are not being asked to clarify. Please don’t do that here now. Thanks.
If you want a private communication, use the messaging service. If you post stuff on the public forums, anyone gets to comment on it. This is a fairly basic feature of web forums - I’m surprised you didn’t already know about it.
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I’m quite prepared to admit I don’t understand what either of you are on about…
Buggrit, millennium hand and shrimp?
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i have no idea what you’re on about. You’re complaining, not me.
Have a great morning, evening, bedtime, naptime, mealtime, or eventide.
Ok. Would you please be so kind as to clarify? 
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Nobody has indicated, in the quoted stories, that anyone was trying to prove anything about the patient other than that he did NOT have drugs in his system. Nobody was trying to show he was on something.
Your assumption/statement to the contrary is unsupported by all primary sources I have come across on this subject. Could you let us know who, among those on the scene, has stated your reasoning for the testing, because I believe it is an incorrect assumption on your part, and gets the quintessence of the situation wrong from the gate. Please reconsider.
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Ah, I think that gets to the heart of it - thank you. I agree with your last sentence and wasn’t trying to assert nor did I assume the contrary.
I was being cynical.
My reasoning was that if the police were concerned that defence lawyers (for the deceased?) might try and argue that the truckdriver was on something, the police wouldn’t need to prove that he wasn’t.
It would be for the ‘defence’ lawyers to prove he was.
Therefore, it would be in the police’s interest to allow whatever might have been in the truckdriver’s bloodstream to work its way through his system.
Time would remove whatever evidence of any drugs there might be. Taking a blood sample might be counterproductive because it might show that he was on something.
A later sample that tested positive for anything could be explained away in all sorts of ways, a positive sample taken right after the accident might be embarrassing.
Therefore if the police were looking to argue that their guy wasn’t on anything, best to wait.
Ok, if I were going to be even more cynical, I could posit that maybe the cops wanted to take sample which they could then assert was ‘clean’ even if it wasn’t. They could then use that to dispute any later positive sample.
I don’t see how that could work though.
In reality I suspect this is simply one of those situations where the police for some reason or other, probably ‘procedure’, decided that a sample needed to be taken right away and being cops weren’t prepared to take “no, please get a warrant” for an answer.
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“whatever might have been in… bloodstream” is the cynical assumption that I see. And the very one I believe officer handsy was trying to avoid.
You may be assuming I mean defense in terms of the driver going to jail or not? I mean defense in the capital sense. All the way back in my first or second comment i mention how hard it is, and how much more evidence is needed, to achieve a capital penalty.
The defense lawyer in that case would be calling ‘doubt’ on the state of the innocent victim. Of course he or she would, that’s their job. I don’t have any proof that was the goal, but I can’t imagine any other need to draw that blood.
Thanks for your thoughts though. Very informative.
And the nurse said that they’d accept an e-warrant, so they could have zipped one through in a hurry.
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Ok, now I’m really confused
Capital penalty for what? Which defense lawyers? Who are these hypothetical lawyers acting for?
As I say I can see there being some sort of internal mandate to the effect that if an officer is involved in a traffic accident (especially if there’s a fatality), the officer is to provide a blood sample asap so that the department can either exonerate their guy from being on anything (as I think you are suggesting) or at least get their PR machine/lawyers spun up if it turns out he was on something.
Or it could simply be that their rules are that anyone involved in a fatal accident is to have samples taken asap.
Me neither. The bit I really don’t understand is the aggressive attitude to obstruction - except well, insert cartman.gif here.
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When you’re rich — and most especially, extremely caucasian — it’s always been like that in this country, to at least some degree. And that goes for their minions/lapdogs, as well.
Re: Why the Utah police wanted to test the victim, your theory might be more likely if the police dep’t. the victim worked for hadn’t thanked the nurse for defending the victim’s rights ^^’.
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