A head emergency room nurse at Advocate Illinois Masonic Hospital has sued the city and a Chicago Police officer for handcuffing her and putting her in the back of a squad car during a dispute over drawing blood from a suspected drunken driver.
Lisa Hofstra said she was the “charge nurse” in the emergency room on Aug. 1 when the officer approached her at about 4 a.m. The officer requested she perform a blood work-up on a DUI suspect, the lawsuit said.
Hofstra told the officer the suspect needed to be admitted to the hospital before she could draw the person’s blood. Hofstra said she told a police lieutenant that it was the hospital’s protocol to wait until a suspect was admitted, and the lieutenant agreed, she said.
The lieutenant left the emergency room.
Then Hofstra called her supervisors, but before they could respond, the officer put her in handcuffs in front of her co-workers and escorted her to a squad car, according to the lawsuit.
“I in no way intended to block this police officer’s ability to do his job,” she said in a news conference today. “He went about it in the wrong way. ... I would like him to be reprimanded.”
Hofstra said she filed her lawsuit in federal court last month in an effort to have the officer punished for violating her rights.
She was in the car for about 45 minutes before the situation was resolved, Hofstra said. The cuffs were too tight, requiring treatment in the hospital after she was released from custody, she said.
A security video of the incident shows the officer smiling outside the squad car as Hofstra sat inside.
“He feels comfortable about smiling when he just illegally arrested someone,” said Hofstra’s attorney Blake Horwitz. “He is enjoying his power.”
The Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the incident. Hofstra said the authority’s investigators have been interviewing witnesses to the incident.
No police report was filed, and no charges were filed, Horwitz said. But he characterized his client as being wrongly arrested.
The lawsuit, filed Aug. 25, gives only a last name for the officer. Roderick Drew, a spokesman for the police department, said he was prohibited from identifying the officer under union rules.
Hofstra said she normally has a good relationship with police officers at the hospital, where she’s been an emergency room nurse since November 2008.
Hofstra said it was a major problem for her to be removed from the emergency room at a time when there were numerous patients suffering from “bad trauma.”
She was responsible for triage — the process of deciding which patients need the most urgent attention.
“If this officer is treating me the way he treated me, what is he going to do to people on the street?” Hofstra said, adding that she filed her lawsuit to “stand up for nurses.”
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That's pretty nuts. I hope he didn't end up endangering anyone's life by trying to make a point.
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Originally Posted by Steel Chicken...
Wall of text critically hits Steel Chicken for 283781273ty billion points of damage, Steel Chicken dies.
That's the worst thing a cop could do. If he gets shot and ends up in that hospital and she's the traige nurse for that shift... yeah, he's going to have to wait.
I really don't think he's going to get off that easy.
Most the time the cops want to wait a while so the alcohol has time to get absorbed into your blood stream so you will actually have a higher level of BAC than the time of the stop.
So you think the nurse was at fault? I think the officers acted stupidly rash. When an officer abuses their power or attempts to play these types of power games, I say a 1-strike rule needs to apply, mostly because if they were caught abusing their power once, there's a good chance that they've mis-used their power before. Kinda sad when an officer acts like this, but they say absolute power corrupts.
So you think the nurse was at fault? I think the officers acted stupidly rash. When an officer abuses their power or attempts to play these types of power games, I say a 1-strike rule needs to apply, mostly because if they were caught abusing their power once, there's a good chance that they've mis-used their power before. Kinda sad when an officer acts like this, but they say absolute power corrupts.
Everyone has a bad day.......so what if cops just have more bad days than anyone else........they have the great job and opportunity to spread crap around a little.
So you think the nurse was at fault? I think the officers acted stupidly rash. When an officer abuses their power or attempts to play these types of power games, I say a 1-strike rule needs to apply, mostly because if they were caught abusing their power once, there's a good chance that they've mis-used their power before. Kinda sad when an officer acts like this, but they say absolute power corrupts.
He's an ace and should get it shoved up his tail pipe for doing that.
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Everyone has a bad day.......so what if cops just have more bad days than anyone else........they have the great job and opportunity to spread crap around a little.
Just because they have more power doesn't mean they can use it to their advantage. That extra power should come with extra discretion and as I've stated before, extra pay.
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Originally Posted by Herp Salad...
You feel that little breeze pass over your head?
I figured with a name like "Herp-Salad", maybe you had some deep rooted loathing for the opposite sex....
Ok, so you have the situation with the EMT driver and the cop, now this. What other hundreds of incidents you never hear about. What the hell is going on with people anymore?
May be right, BUT... MORE BITCHES WEAR BADGES THAN DO SCRUBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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There are some great nurses but there are also complete bitch nurses. Just as with all occupations.
Yeah, its actually sad when a person becomes a nurse because they have a passion for tending to the sick only to realize all the heartache (patients dying, asshole patients that are taking out their sick frustrations on the nurses, Drs with god complexes that treat them as inferiors). I've met a few that have become calloused by all the stress. Of course as you said, it happens with every profession. Not sure why, but it seems like people get burned out faster now than they used to.
UPDATE - I am hearing more to the story. Apparently the officer had been waiting 3 hours for the blood test of a person charged with Aggravated DUI. The injuries of the other person were serious so I am sure the Officer did not want this guy to get any breaks whatsoever. On the bright side, they don't need to charge the guy with Agg DUI anymore. Oh wait, it isn't a positive thing because the victim died. Yet the story we hear is how the officer attempted to charge the nurse for obstruction, not that another low-life drunk driver has claimed another innocent life.
UPDATE - I am hearing more to the story. Apparently the officer had been waiting 3 hours for the blood test of a person charged with Aggravated DUI. The injuries of the other person were serious so I am sure the Officer did not want this guy to get any breaks whatsoever. On the bright side, they don't need to charge the guy with Agg DUI anymore. Oh wait, it isn't a positive thing because the victim died. Yet the story we hear is how the officer attempted to charge the nurse for obstruction, not that another low-life drunk driver has claimed another innocent life.
Hospitals are busy places. Getting evidence to charge someone is less important than many other possible circumstances going on in the hospital. Charging a busy nurse with obstruction is retarded unless the nurse was DELIBERATELY choosing not to cooperate for no good reason.
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Hospitals are busy places. Getting evidence to charge someone is less important than many other possible circumstances going on in the hospital. Charging a busy nurse with obstruction is retarded unless the nurse was DELIBERATELY choosing not to cooperate for no good reason.
Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn't. We don't know the exact circumstances. I'm at the hospital all the time. A blood test does not take long and normally we are in and out (and I thank the Hospital staffs that I have worked with for that). Although I've had a lazy smurf nurse turn away a battery victim because their ER was for "walk-ins" only. Just because we happened to see some guy stumbling through the lot and helped him in, she claims since we brought him in, they won't do anything. They're not all halo adorning beings.
Yep. We'll see how the civil trial pans out. BUT typical new age America. Instead of getting a Complaint Register number on the officer, she is going to sue him. She says she only wanted him reprimanded, but she may as well take money too.
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