HPD had a plan “to draw blood from suspected drunken drivers without having to rely on hospitals or nurses.” “The first seven officers started training, first using artificial limbs and then sticking needles into each other's arms. From there, they started sticking needles into the arms of convicts at the Jester IV Prison, a psychiatric ward off Highway 99 near Richmond.”
Civil rights attorney Randall Kallinen “said those inmates may not be able to understand or provide a meaningful consent to be used for training exercises.”
“Mayor Annise Parker has now scrapped the entire program, but not because inmates were used as test subjects.” Well, YIPPEE that the damned thing has been ended but no mention of the abuse of less than fully competent inmates as test dummies is still shocking, or it should be! The HPD attitude toward the mentally ill is truly disturbing. HPD is already stun gun and just plain gun crazy when it is called out for help with the mentally ill but using them like this is just horrific!
One officer said, "I just spent five days at TDC drawing blood for nothing." That officer said blood was drawn from at least 50 inmates at Jester IV and another lockup in Dayton before the program was halted in mid April. Gee, poor officers only got to abuse 50 people before being stopped. ARGH! Maybe you shouldn’t have volunteered to abuse people in the first place and then you wouldn’t have wasted your time! The attitude of these officers is just infuriating!!
“[HPD Asst Chief Tim] Oettmeier said the city lost $4,000 by scrapping the program. Those where the costs of giving hepatitis shots and other vaccinations required for the seven officers to begin phlebotomist training.” Oh, what a crock! These 7 officers spent time (weeks, as I recall) in classes and who knows what else that they were paid for and the officers were paid for whatever time they spent at the prison unit. I’d guess the real cost of this bumblefuck was upwards of $200,000.
Could we please pay for all law enforcement officers to go through law school? I realize most of them couldn't pass but at least make them sit through some shortened version of it or maybe just a civil rights and constitutional law course. It's tough to dumb it down to third grade reading level but it can be done!