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Police say syringes will help stop drunk driving
By REBECCA BOONE (AP) – 22 hours ago
BOISE, Idaho — When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he'll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver's arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.
"I was looking at people's arms and hands, thinking, 'I could draw from that,'" Dowell said.
It's all part of training he and a select cadre of officers in Idaho and Texas have received in recent months to draw blood from those suspected of drunken or drugged driving. The federal program's aim is to determine if blood draws by cops can be an effective tool against drunk drivers and aid in their prosecution.
If the results seem promising after a year or two, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police nationwide to undergo similar training.
For years, defense attorneys in Idaho advised clients to always refuse breath tests, Ada County Deputy Prosecutor Christine Starr said. When the state toughened the penalties for refusing the tests a few years ago, the problem lessened, but it's still the main reason that drunk driving cases go to trial in the Boise region, Starr said.
Idaho had a 20 percent breath test refusal rate in 2005, compared with 22 percent nationally, according to an NHTSA study.
Starr hopes the new system will cut down on the number of drunken driving trials. Officers can't hold down a suspect and force them to breath into a tube, she noted, but they can forcefully take blood — a practice that's been upheld by Idaho's Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
The nation's highest court ruled in 1966 that police could have blood tests forcibly done on a drunk driving suspect without a warrant, as long as the draw was based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner.
The practice of cops drawing blood, implemented first in 1995 in Arizona, has also raised concerns about safety and the credibility of the evidence.
"I would imagine that a lot of people would be wary of having their blood drawn by an officer on the hood of their police vehicle," said Steve Oberman, chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' DUI Committee.
The officer phlebotomists are generally trained under the same program as their state's hospital or clinical phlebotomists, but they do it under a highly compressed schedule, and some of the curriculum is cut.
That's because officers don't need to know how to draw blood from a foot or other difficult sites, or from an infant or medically fragile patient, said Nicole Watson, the College of Western Idaho phlebotomy instructor teaching the Idaho officers.
Instead, they are trained on the elbow crease, the forearm and the back of the hand. If none are accessible, they'll take the suspect to the hospital for testing.
In a nondescript Boise office building where the Nampa officers were trained, Dowell scanned his subject and prepared to draw blood. Chase Abston, an officer taking his turn playing a suspect, recoiled a bit, pressing his back deeper into the gray pleather chair.
Dowell slid a fine-gauge needle into the back of Abston's hand. Abston, who had been holding his breath, slowly exhaled as his blood began to flow.
All the officers seemed like they'd be more comfortable if their colleagues were wielding sidearms instead of syringes. But halfway through the second day of training, with about 10 venipunctures each under their belts, they relaxed enough to trade barbs alongside needle jabs.
They're making quick progress, Watson said. Their training will be complete after they have logged 75 successful blood draws.
Once they're back on patrol, they will draw blood of any suspected drunk driver who refuses a breath test. They'll use force if they need to, such as getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect and potentially strap them down, Watson said.
Though most legal experts agree blood tests measure blood alcohol more accurately than breath tests, Oberman said the tests can be fraught with problems, too.
Vials can be mixed up, preservative levels in the tubes used to collect the blood can be off, or the blood can be stored improperly, causing it to ferment and boosting the alcohol content.
Oberman said law enforcement agencies should also be concerned "about possible malpractice cases over somebody who was not properly trained."
Alan Haywood, Arizona's law enforcement phlebotomy coordinator who is directing the training programs in Idaho and Texas, said officers are exposed to some extra on-the-job risk if they draw blood, but that any concern is mitigated by good training and safe practices.
"If we can't get the evidence safely, we're not going to endanger the officers or the public to collect that evidence," he said.
The Phoenix Police Department only uses blood tests for impaired driving cases. Detective Kemp Layden, who oversees drug recognition, phlebotomy and field sobriety, said the city now has about 120 officers certified to draw blood. Typically, a suspect is brought to a precinct or mobile booking van for the blood draw.
Under the state's implied consent law, drivers who refuse to voluntarily submit to the test lose their license for a year, so most comply. For the approximately 5 percent who refuse, the officer obtains a search warrant from an on-call judge and the suspect can be restrained if needed to obtain a sample, Layden said.
Between 300 to 400 blood tests are done in an average month in the nation's fifth-largest city.
During holiday months that number can rise to 500, said Layden, who reviews each case to make sure legal procedures were followed.
Outside of Arizona, some law enforcement agencies in Utah have officer phlebotomists, and police in Dalworthington Gardens, Texas are cross-trained as paramedics and have been drawing blood for about three years. The NHTSA is in talks with Houston, Texas about doing the phlebotomy training there, he said.
They're all attracted by Arizona's anecdotal evidence.
"What we found was that the refusal rates of chemical testing lowered significantly since this program began," Haywood said. "Arizona we had about a 20 percent refusal rate in 1995, and today we see about an 8 to 9 percent refusal rate."
Associated Press writer Bob Christie in Phoenix contributed to this report.
Posts: 2965 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Monday, September 14, 2009
The Associated Press reports today on a truly chilling and nightmarish police program that we have highlighted before – cops forcibly jabbing a syringe into your arm and extracting blood if you are “suspected” of drunk-driving.
The opening two paragraphs in the AP report [1]alone sound like something straight out of a twilight zone episode where vampires have taken over America and turned it into a tyrannical police state in order to satisfy their blood lust. Sound overstated? Read it for yourself.
When police officer Darryll Dowell is on patrol in the southwestern Idaho city of Nampa, he’ll pull up at a stoplight and usually start casing the vehicle. Nowadays, his eyes will also focus on the driver’s arms, as he tries to search for a plump, bouncy vein.
“I was looking at people’s arms and hands, thinking, ‘I could draw from that,’” Dowell said.
The article then goes on to describe how officers in Texas and Idaho are training to withdraw blood from “suspects” as a replacement for the standard breathalyzer test, primarily because police can’t make anyone breathe into a tube but apparently, in the “land of the free,” they can forcibly hold someone down and jab a needle into their arm and take their blood, “a practice that’s been upheld by Idaho’s Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court,” according to the report.
The U.S. Supreme Court also once ruled that black people were slaves [2], property of their slaveowners with no inherent rights whatsoever, and that those designated to be “feeble minded” by the government could be sterilized [3] – in neither case was either of these rulings in accordance with natural God given rights bestowed upon mankind, as history has shown.
Likewise, cops forcibly jabbing needles in people who are merely “suspected” of being drunk drivers is a total abomination, a complete violation of basic human rights under the Nuremberg code, and one that will likely lead to many injuries and infections – not to mention a cascade of lawsuits.
Despite being littered with internal checkpoints that are now starting to pop up all over America, not even the Nazis or the Soviets sank to the depth of having their goons forcibly stick needles into people’s arms to take their blood.
The practice of cops drawing blood at the side of the road has been in place in some areas since 1995 but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has indicated that the program is ultimately intended to be introduced nationwide.
Nicole Watson, the College of Western Idaho phlebotomy instructor teaching the Idaho officers, described how the process would unfold.
Once they’re back on patrol, they will draw blood of any suspected drunk driver who refuses a breath test. They’ll use force if they need to, such as getting help from another officer to pin down a suspect and potentially strap them down, Watson said.
Of course, once Americans are trained to accept authority figures jabbing them with needles against their will on a whim, programs for mandatory mass vaccination will be all the more easier to implement.
Cops across America are already armed with Tasers for the purpose of inflicting “pain compliance,” otherwise known as torture, now they will also be wielding needles while eyeing up your “plump, bouncy vein”.
Welcome to Amerika 2009 – land of the vampires, home of the slave.
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posted
Good info Relentless. We have been in a Police state for several years now. And it is snowballing. But, this has been around since 1995, that's 14 years, why is it just hitting mainstream media now?!? So what's next? A DNA swab for a seatbelt violation?
-------------------- It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. Posts: 3311 | From: St. Louis | Registered: Feb 2005
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Yeah good question. I think this is the first I've heard of it actually happening on the road. I knew they would do it at the station.. But having Government tax collectors hold someone down in the field and stabbing them with a needle is new to me.
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posted
Blood sample leads to reversal in murder case The Kentucky Supreme Court has struck down the 24-year sentence of a Jessamine County woman who pleaded guilty to four counts of wanton murder after a drunken-driving crash in 2006. Posted: 12:45 PM Aug 27, 2009
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - The Kentucky Supreme Court has struck down the 24-year sentence of a Jessamine County woman who pleaded guilty to four counts of wanton murder after a drunken-driving crash in 2006.
Chief Justice John D. Minton Jr. said in a ruling Thursday that sheriff deputies improperly took a blood sample from Melissa Helton without her consent and without a warrant while she was unconscious in a Lexington hospital.
Minton, writing for a divided Supreme Court, said records in the case reflect no evidence to show investigators had probable cause to believe that Helton was driving drunk. Minton said that led to the finding that Helton's constitutional rights had been violated.
The Supreme Court ordered the trial judge to conduct a hearing to determine whether evidence exists showing investigators had reasonable grounds to take the sample.
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Rochin v. California Suspect swallowed drugs to get rid of evidence, whereupon police hit him and jumped on his stomach to make him throw up the drugs; at the hospital a physician forced an emetic through a tube into his stomach. Held, this conduct violated defendant's 14th Amendment right to Due Process. "Due Process" is a vague term, but it prohibited "conduct that shocks the conscience." Note: This is an important case in the drunk driving arena, as it is not uncommon practice for police to use violent means to obtain a blood sample from a resisting DUI arrestee.
Schmerber v. California At officer's request and over objection, blood was withdrawn from a DUI arrestee while he was being treated at a hospital for injuries from an accident. Issue: Did evidence of the blood test results violate the defendant's 5th Amendment privielege against self-incrimination? Held, no: the privilege applies only to oral and written communication or testimony, not to physical evidence, and blood tests are not due process violations if taken under humane and medically accepted circumstances.
South Dakota v. Neville If a DUI suspect refuses to submit to breath or blood alcohol testing, is it a violation of the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to use that refusal as evidence against him in trial? After the South Dakota Supreme Court held that it was a violation and thus inadmissible, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed, saying that a refusal was a matter of free choice, not compulsive. Note: The South Dakota Supreme Court later held that if not a violation of the U.S. Constitution, then evidence of refusals was a violation of the South Dakota Constitution — and again reversed the conviction.
Bell v Burson For many years,
government considered a driver's license "a privilege — not a right",
and thus there were few effective remedies available to a driver who wished to contest a suspension. The U.S. Supreme Court changed that, recognizing that a license's "continued possession may become essential in the pursuit of a livelihood".
Because of their value, then, they "are not to be taken away without that procedural due process required by the Fourteenth Amendment". Note: Were it not for Bell, it is doubtful that the California DMV today would provide hearings to contest DUI license suspensions. See also, Mackey v. Montrym (1979) 443 U.S. 1, involving a license suspension for refusing to submit to a DUI breath test.
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Well I am not for drawing blood in the field I think it should be done at the station by somebody trained to do that type of work
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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hmmmmm..... this seems to disagree with the above articles:
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 Arizona Court Of Appeals Ruling: Clear Consent Needed For DUI Blood Tests A new Arizona Court ruling says authorities must obtain a search warrant to conduct a blood test of a DUI suspect unless the suspect clearly consents. The state Court of Appeals ruled on September 1, 2009, that it wasn't enough under state law that a man apparently didn't object when officers moved to take a blood sample while in a police DUI van. The ruling comes out of a case in which a man was pulled over and arrested for DUI. He was vomiting and could not participate in a blood test, so as he was sitting on the steps of the DUI van, officers drew blood. But the driver did not speak English and the officers did not speak Spanish. In Court, he claimed that the officers grabbed his arm and that he did not resist because he was afraid. But neither did he give consent. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge ruled that the police officers acted within the law. The driver appealed. The Court notes that the law in question is called "implied consent" because in Arizona, drivers are subject to a civil driver's license suspension if they refuse to have blood drawn. But the ruling says motorists clearly still have the right to withhold consent for a warrantless search. The Court of Appeals sent the case back to a lower Court for a finding on whether the man involved consented.
quote:Originally posted by raybond: Well I am not for drawing blood in the field I think it should be done at the station by somebody trained to do that type of work
my first job out of highschool was blood drawer at very large county hospital..
i worked evenings and took many DUI samples, the police then packed them into sealed boxes and took them with them.
most of the time? the people i tested were not very drunk and were hoping tyhat by stalling, their BAL would be low enough to pass by the time i got the blood... they usually had already been DUIed before and had been educated by their lwayer.
in those days? DUI was alot higher level than it is now too...
i beleive a person should have the right to refuse any test like this that doesn't involve the injury of another. i don't care how much property damage they might have caused.
of course refusing the tests should lead to loss of driving privileges.
1 time one year. second time 5 years- third time permanently. and it should transfer across state lines...
i do not see any difference between testifying against oneself and giving biological specimens for analyisis, warrnt or not, and i don't know how anybody else can either.
-------------------- Don't envy the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise. Posts: 36378 | From: USA | Registered: Sep 2003
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Its already that way that you discribe Glass you can refuse a test and if you do you are consider guilty driving under the influence of a substance.
-------------------- Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise. Posts: 3827 | From: beautiful California | Registered: Sep 2008
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