Blood Draw

[Guest guest]

I know some of us disagree on the Blood Draw bill that has been filed and some

have said that the concern of having EMS personnel away in court is a non-issue.

Well, here are a couple of quotes from the Austin Police Dept. Creating a DUI

Program web page, that seems to paint a different picture.

Is this the real reason the blood draw bill was filed? I think that EMS people

need their rest too, don't you?

Also, have you seen HB 707 that states that police officers can't draw blood

even if they are trained to do so. If drawing blood at the scene is such a good

idea, how come LE is running away from it trying to foist it off on us?

Dave

OBSTACLES

Too much time is consumed by court appearances.

The exclusive daytime scheduling of court appearances for DWI and Administrative

License Revocation (ALR) cases results in a considerable burden for officers who

work the night shifts required by DWI enforcement duty. The inconvenience and

the effects on officers’ sleep schedules are frequently mentioned as reasons for

avoiding assignments with the DWI Unit. Also, the durations of the court

appearances seem excessive to officers and contribute to their sleep deficits.

For example, it is reported that most ALR judges allow even simple hearings to

become mini-trials that take as long as 90 minutes. In response to this problem,

the managers and officers of the DWI Unit have requested establishment of a

night court for DWI and ALR cases.

Officers of the DWI unit have submitted legislation that would allow

paramedics to draw blood upon consent of the arrested person or at the direction

of a search warrant.

The comments contained in this correspondence are the sole responsibility of the

author. They do not necessarily reflect the thoughts, feelings, or opinions of

my employer, or any other group or organization that I may be, am perceived to

be, have been or will be involved with in the future. They are my own comments,

submitted freely and they are worth exactly what you paid for them.

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[Guest guest]

Glad you posted this. The cops don't want to appear in court because it

disrupts their sleep patterns, but they're glad to have the burden foisted off

on

paramedics who already work 3 times the hours they do.

How many cops do you know who work a 24 hour shift? None. But medics to.

Some work 48 hour shifts. So it's great for medics to have to sit around

the courthouse waiting to be called as a witness in a DWI, but the cops think

it's beneath them?

Gimme a BREAK.

This law to require medics to draw blood on DWIs is a bad, bad thing, and if

it passes, y'all are all going to lose lots of sleep, your services are going

to have to come up with money to pay you for overtime, and there won't be any

significant improvement in DWI convictions anyway. The current laws are

perfectly adequate. But if you want this, then be prepared to pay for it.

Now, for those who insist that it's their duty as good Americans to fight

drunk driving, I propose that the proposed law be amended to allow medics to

volunteer to draw blood for law enforcement, or even to contract with them to do

it. If the cops won't do it, and there's no reason under the sun that they

shouldn't--they are no less adroit at hand-eye coordination than the average

EMT-I, who can draw blood--then let's make it into a job for medics who want to

do it. I have no problem with that. But really it's the cops who should do

it.

If you truly want to be a part of the criminal justice system, then lobby for

a Law Enforcement Phlebotomist Certification, which will allow you to draw

blood to your heart's content and spend as much time as you want sitting around

courthouses waiting to testify. More power to you.

But don't impose your view on those of us who prefer to confine our medical

practice to helping people rather than getting them convicted of things that

are peripheral to patient care.

A bunch of y'all will blast me for saying this. So be it. I can't cure

the ills of society as a paramedic. I don't want to be a cop. I want to

render medical care to the best of my ability, and that does not include

becoming

a witness for the prosecution in DWI cases.

Sending people to jail for DWI doesn't have any noticeable effect on the

incidence of drunk driving anyway, just as the death penalty doesn't do anything

to deter murder.

We've been upping the penalties for DWI in Texas for the last 10 years, and

now it's very expensive and inconvenient to be caught DWI. But has that made

much of a difference? Of course not. Conventional notions of deterrence by

harsh penalties are flawed. It doesn't work.

I read today about a 20 year old man who was charged with vehicular homicide

in the deaths of two of his best buddies. He was driving, and they had a

wreck and they were killed. He survived, and his BAC was over the limit. It

didn't say anything about theirs. Bet they had all been drinking together and

their BAC was no different from the unfortunate driver's.

Did the fact that DWI costs you a lot deter him and them? Not one iota.

Will his sentence to up to 20 years in the pen deter others like him from

driving drunk? Of course not. It will have no impact whatsoever on the next

ones who do it. Young men and women, and a lot of older ones, will use

alcohol

because it's legal, and they will drive drunk. Some of them will crash and

burn.

We're so stupid in the way we approach societal problems such as driving whil

e intoxicated. We either make it the end of one's driving career for life,

as they have done in some Scandinavian countries, or we educate people not to

do it. Since we don't have any sort of public transportation system for

people in to get to work in Abilene, we have to make exceptions to

Draconian measures that might work in Finland, where you can get anywhere on a

bus or

train.

Our society and our culture here in Texas encourages DWI. Most of us have

driven drunk, including most cops that I know. I know Troopers who have been

knee-walking drunk and got into fights with U. S. Marshalls at the annual

XXXXXXX County Law Enforcement Picnic and had to be restrained from driving home

in their black and whites. I have dragged the District Judge out of the ditch

when he missed the turn coming from the country club.

Justification for driving drunk? Of course not. Reality? Yes indeed.

We're not willing to dispose of our hypocrasy in the way we deal with social

issues like DWI. We can't bring ourselves to really address it in a

meaningful way because that cost's lots of money.

So we pretend to make things better by making it easier to get blood samples

using EMTs to draw the blood, when there has never been any showing that this

is actually needed or that it would improve the prevention of DWI in any way

whatsoever.

So I oppose the DWI blood drawing law for medics. It makes no sense. It's

a remedy without a reason, it won't make a whit's difference in the incidence

of DWI, and it will cause a lot of people a lot of lost sleep, and cost a lot

of money for the services that have to pay for it, which will NOT be the

state.

If drawing blood is such a good thing, then let the cops learn to do it. I

can teach any of them except the most maladroit to do it in about 10 minutes

maximum. What's their problem with it?

Gene G.

>

> I know some of us disagree on the Blood Draw bill that has been filed and

> some have said that the concern of having EMS personnel away in court is a

> non-issue. Well, here are a couple of quotes from the Austin Police Dept.

> Creating a DUI Program web page, that seems to paint a different picture.

>

> Is this the real reason the blood draw bill was filed? I think that EMS

> people need their rest too, don't you?

>

> Also, have you seen HB 707 that states that police officers can't draw blood

> even if they are trained to do so. If drawing blood at the scene is such a

> good idea, how come LE is running away from it trying to foist it off on us?

>

> Dave

>

> OBSTACLES

> Too much time is consumed by court appearances.

> The exclusive daytime scheduling of court appearances for DWI and

> Administrative License Revocation (ALR) cases results in a considerable burden

for

> officers who work the night shifts required by DWI enforcement duty. The

> inconvenience and the effects on officers’ sleep schedules are frequently

mentioned

> as reasons for avoiding assignments with the DWI Unit. Also, the durations of

> the court appearances seem excessive to officers and contribute to their

> sleep deficits. For example, it is reported that most ALR judges allow even

> simple hearings to become mini-trials that take as long as 90 minutes. In

response

> to this problem, the managers and officers of the DWI Unit have requested

> establishment of a night court for DWI and ALR cases.

>

>

>

> Officers of the DWI unit have submitted legislation that would allow

> paramedics to draw blood upon consent of the arrested person or at the

direction of

> a search warrant.

>

>

> The comments contained in this correspondence are the sole responsibility of

> the author. They do not necessarily reflect the thoughts, feelings, or

> opinions of my employer, or any other group or organization that I may be, am

> perceived to be, have been or will be involved with in the future. They are my

> own comments, submitted freely and they are worth exactly what you paid for

> them.

>

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>