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SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake police detective who was fired after his arrest of a hospital nurse went viral is suing the department.
Former detective Jeff Payne filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Salt Lake City Police Department, claiming he was wrongfully terminated in 2017 after following orders from his commanding officer and complying with department policies.
The lawsuit describes Payne and nurse Alex Wubbels as two birds in a “cock fight staged and orchestrated by the persons in charge at the Salt Lake City Police Department and those in charge of the burn unit at the University of Utah Hospital,” each doing what they were instructed to do by their superiors.
But while “Ms. Wubbles was paid $500,000 for her involvement in the cock fight,” the suit says, “officer Payne’s life is ruined forever forced to live a life in seclusion with scant employment opportunities.”
The lawsuit comes two years after Payne was fired and nearly one year after he declared his intent to sue Salt Lake City, describing himself as a “fall guy” for the city and police department.
The veteran police detective’s name and face spread across the internet after an incident on July 26, 2017, when he was sent to the University of Utah Hospital to collect blood from a man who was injured in a crash that left another man dead.
When the charge nurse, Wubbels, refused to tell Payne where the unconscious patient was or let him draw blood — citing policy agreed upon by the police department and hospital that required he have a warrant or meet certain criteria — Payne arrested Wubbels for interfering with an investigation. Body camera footage showing the detective dragging the screaming nurse out of the emergency room and handcuffing her against a wall spread quickly online, drawing widespread public criticism.
Payne was fired from the department the following October in a 17-page letter from Salt Lake Police Chief Mike Brown, who wrote that the detective’s 27 years of service was “outweighed by the glaring absence of sound professional judgment and extremely discourteous, disrespectful, inappropriate, unreasonable and unwarranted behavior you displayed in this incident.”
Two years later, Payne, who has since been hired as a part-time civilian corrections assistant in Weber County, is suing his former employer for breach of contract, breach of implied duty of good faith and fair dealing, wrongful termination, defamation, and false light publicity.
Payne argues in the suit that he was following the department’s training and policy manual in his interaction with Wubbels that day. He claims he acted according to orders from his commanding officer to pursue an obstruction charge against Wubbels, and blames what he describes as a lack of clarity regarding department policies in the manual.
The embattled former detective also says the city prematurely authorized the public release of the body camera footage that later went viral.
“The video released was wholly misleading,” the lawsuit states. “Because of the backlash, defendants fabricated the events so that officer Payne would take the blame for this event, when he was only following orders of his supervisors.”
After the incident became public, Payne claims the city and department slandered and defamed him in the public eye rather than taking responsibility for the department’s role in the incident.
The former detective is seeking more than $300,000 in damages.
