This Will Not End Well: Police Now Being Authorized to Draw Blood from DUI Suspects

Atlanta, GA — Multiple states now have policies in action where drinking and driving can get your blood drawn by force — for a misdemeanor. While many states require a medically trained professional to conduct the blood draw, Georgia has upped the ante by training cops to draw your blood.

The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety received an impaired driving grant this month and is using it to train police officers to be vampires. While police won’t actually suck out your blood with their teeth, they will use a syringe to remove your blood from your body — even if you do not consent.

“A blood test is often the key piece of evidence needed to convict a DUI driver in court, but the barriers law enforcement officers are facing in getting blood drawn during a DUI investigation are resulting in too many of these cases going to trial without any toxicology evidence,” Allen Poole, director of the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, said.

The agency claims that not only will the blood evidence help prosecute cases, this could also be a deterrent if a driver knows a cop is also a phlebotomist.

“Knowing law enforcement will be able to gather forensic evidence and better prosecute the case, we’re hoping to get voluntary compliance with people not getting behind the wheel and driving,” said Roger Hayes, GOHS Law Enforcement Services Director.

But forced blood draws and increased DUI stops have done nothing to deter drunk drivers. In spite of their increased presence over the last decade, DUI checkpoints and Soviet-style roadblocks have not proven to significantly decrease DUIs.

However, low-cost, free-enterprise solutions are showing real results. Rideshare services such as Uber and Lyft are always a better option for folks who live in areas with ‘vampire cops’ and who want to leave home for some boozing. This drain in revenue from DUIs may be reason as to why cops have begun to go after people who have been drinking — even if they are in an Uber!

According to the blood draw program, the training for officers is set to include 10 hours of online training and 32 hours of classroom training. After completing the program, the officers will have the same qualifications as phlebotomists in hospitals, doctors’ offices and other licensed medical facilities.

In comparison, an actual phlebotomist attends training from 4 months up to a year. Apparently, cops need only 1% of that training to master it.

“The point of this is to get drunk drivers off the road, impaired drivers off the road,” said Hayes, and while he likely thinks this will be the effect, the idea of turning armed agents of the state into armed agents who can forcibly take your blood, is insanity. And we’ve seen what happens when people refuse.

As we reported at the time, the University of Utah Hospital was thrust into the spotlight in September of 2017 after Body Cam footage was released that showed Detective Jeff Payne arrest Nurse Alex Wubbels on July 26. One of the most astonishing aspects of the encounter was that Wubbels did nothing wrong. She was defending the rights of an unconscious patient when police demanded a blood sample from him, and the fact that she told Payne “No” became probable cause for her arrest.

Police officers already have far too much authority over the sanctity of our bodies. In case after case, we’ve seen individuals quite literally be sodomized in public as police officers look for non-existent drugs.

Countless women have had the insides of their bodies violated by police in their search for contraband. If we give them even more power — this time to stick a needle in your body — the potential for abuse is massive.

What’s more, according to the new policy, the location for the blood draw is not stipulated. It only states that it needs to take place in a sanitized environment — which is determined by the police themselves.

Given the propensity of police officers to abuse the authority they already have, it is highly unlikely that this will turn out well. Watch the video below and ask yourself, ‘is this the country I want to live in?’