Report slams police officer who arrested Utah nurse

Officials in Salt Lake City have released the results of two investigations into the widely publicized arrest of a Utah nurse who refused to draw blood from an unconscious patient, and the conclusions are scathing.

Detective Jeff Payne was “inappropriate, unreasonable, unwarranted, disrespectful” when he manhandled University of Utah Hospital nurse Alex Wubbels and shoved her screaming into a squad car, a probe by the police department’s internal affairs division found.

Payne and his supervisor, Lt. James Tracy, violated a slew of ethics rules and other department policies, disgracing the police force, according to the report, which was published by the Salt Lake Tribune.

Payne’s conduct “has brought significant disrepute on both you as a Police Officer and on the Department as a whole,” investigators wrote of the detective.

Tracy’s actions were also reprehensible, the report found.