Copyright © 2008 James Charnesky

Understanding the Phleboto-Cop Challenge

1.    What is the legal challenge?

• This litigation asserts law officer conducted blood draws are unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment (applicable to the State of Arizona through the Fourteenth Amendment) to the United States Constitution, as well as Article 2 or the Arizona Constitution.  Our legal pleadings are available to download on this web.

2.    Why are these blood draws unreasonable?

• The litigation has focused on two main arguments.

1. The means and procedures specifically employed by the officer, as well as his phlebotomy training and oversight, fail to meet the community standard of care for individuals drawing blood.

2. By virtue of his or her position as a law officer, and the inherent conflict of interest that arises out the position, law officers should not draw blood for evidentiary purposes. 

3.    What are law officers doing that is unreasonable?

• Each case is different, but I have yet to read one case where the officer did not, in some way, needlessly increase the risk of harm associated with drawing blood.  

• The normal routine for officers drawing blood is to draw blood in the field, an environment that by its very nature is not as safe as a medical environment.  In Pima County, officers routinely draw blood with subjects standing by the trunk of car despite clear instructions in their training materials to never draw blood with the subject standing. 

• Our investigations have turned up a long list of questionable practices by law officers when performing blood draws. 

  • For example, law officers have drawn blood in their own break rooms where no precautions were taken, either before the draw, or after the draw to assure that the environment is sanitary.  The area where blood was drawn was the same area where officers and their guests routinely sit down to eat their lunches.  The blood was then transferred to the same refrigerator in which food was kept.  

  • We seen cases where officers forcibly pinned individuals in the dirt, or on asphalt. 

  • Sworn court testimony has established that a Sheriff's Deputy stopped an ambulance that was minutes away from its destination hospital to perform a blood draw on the patient within the ambulance.

  • I have seen reports where blood was drawn in sewer water facilities. The list of outrageous circumstances is seeming endless.  

  • What is clear from all of these reports is that the purported phlebotomists always places law enforcement needs and convince over the safety of the blood draw subject when drawing blood.