OGDEN — The Salt Lake police detective who was fired after his arrest of a hospital nurse went viral has a new job with the Weber County Sheriff’s Office, the department confirmed Wednesday.
Jeff Payne will serve as a part-time civilian corrections assistant in Weber County, according to the sheriff’s office. He was hired Aug. 9 and has been assigned to the medical unit in the jail, the agency said.
“Mr. Payne is a certified paramedic and has an extensive background in the medical field,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement. “We believe that his experience will be beneficial to our agency in the capacity of civilian corrections assistant and meet our goals of bridging the gap.”
Payne faced widespread public criticism and was fired from the Salt Lake City Police Department 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 fatal crash. But the charge nurse, Alex 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.
After several hours of unsuccessfully trying to collect the patient’s blood, Payne arrested the nurse for interfering with an investigation. Body camera footage from the arrest, which showed the detective dragging a screaming Wubbels out of the emergency room and handcuffing her against a wall, quickly spread online.
Payne was fired from the department that October in a 17-page letter from Salt Lake Police Chief Mike Brown, who said 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.” Brown and Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski also issued a personal apology to Wubbels.
The former detective has claimed he was instructed to arrest Wubbels that day by his supervisor, Lt. James Tracy, and was just following what he was told was department policy. Payne described himself as a “fall guy” for the city and police department in a November 2018 notice of intent to sue Salt Lake City for wrongful termination, defamation of character, breach of contract, and a lack of proper training.
Tracy was also disciplined after the incident, receiving a two-rank demotion from lieutenant to patrol officer.
In a statement Wednesday, the Weber County Sheriff’s Office emphasized that it had not hired Payne as a law enforcement or corrections officer, and noted the former detective’s “28 years of credible public safety service to the community.”
“We are aware of his background including the incident that occurred at the University of Utah Hospital in 2017,” the sheriff’s office said. “In reviewing this information, we did not see anything that would preclude us from hiring him as a part-time civilian employee.”
The sheriff’s office acknowledged “the concerns raised from the incident at the University of Utah.” However, the agency said, “We stand behind our decision to hire Mr. Payne as a civilian employee and wish him success here at the sheriff’s office.”
Payne is the second controversial high-profile hire for the Weber County Sheriff’s Office in recent months. The agency confirmed last week that it had hired Kayla Dallof, the former University of Utah police detective who was assigned to help student Lauren McCluskey before her murder, as a sheriff’s deputy.
Dallof was fired from the university police department in March, months after McCluskey’s death, for showing a “complete dereliction of duty” in a separate domestic violence case on campus, according to recently released U. documents.
She had been assigned to investigate a death threat from a student who allegedly held a 17-year-old girl in his dorm room against her will; the detective was fired for going home rather than making an arrest after she learned about a threatening voice message, according to the documents.
Dallof’s attorney, Jonathan Thorn, has described Dallof as a “scapegoat” for the university, and said she “did everything she was supposed to do” in that case.
The Weber County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement last week that Dallof was hired after a “thorough and complete background investigation.”
“The Weber County Sheriff’s Office stands behind our decision in hiring Kayla and supports her in continuing her career as a law enforcement officer,” the sheriff’s office said. “Since hiring Kayla, she has excelled here at the sheriff’s office in her duties and we look forward to seeing her to continue her success in her career here.”