Posted on 02/02/2007 5:47:37 AM PST by ActionNewsBill
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- Two police officers were suspended indefinitely with pay Thursday as an investigation continued into their arrest of a pregnant woman who had a miscarriage a day after she was thrown in jail.
The suspensions came two days after police released a videotape showing Sofia Salva telling officers during her arrest last year that she was three months pregnant, bleeding and needed to go to a hospital.
The tape shows officers ignoring her pleas. After the ninth request, the tape shows, a female officer asked: "How is that my problem?" (Watch police arrest Salva Video)
The officers' behavior is "inconsistent with the values and policies of this department and inconsistent with the training they received in the police academy," Chief James Corwin said at a news conference Thursday.
Salva, 32, has sued officers Melody Spencer and Kevin Schnell and the police department for wrongful death and personal injuries. Salva is seeking actual damages exceeding $25,000 and punitive damages. She was arrested February 5 and held overnight on traffic violations and outstanding city warrants.
After being released the next morning, she delivered a premature baby boy who died immediately after birth, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in Jackson County Circuit Court. Corwin said he felt the incident was serious enough to suspend the officers even though an internal investigation is not complete.
"I ask for patience from the community as we investigate this incident," Corwin said. "I regret that this incident has reflected negatively on the members of this department, the vast majority of whom do their job in an exemplary fashion every day." Corwin read from a written statement and declined further comment, citing the lawsuit.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
Then I defer to your knowledge. I did read that incompetent cervixes can start dilating in the 13th week, but it wasn't in a medical journal. I lost two babies to miscarriage myself, and in the online forums I've been on, there were a few women who had substantial bleeding that resolved, or found out that they had large clots under the placenta, but still went on to have healthy babies. What is the term for that kind of bleeding?
Mrs VS
So how did this fulfill the oath "To Protect & Serve" ?
That stunned me too. COLD.
Thats hard to say. Don't know if the baby could have been saved if she went to the hospital in a timely manner.
These "cops" should be in jail. They violated department policy as well as basic human decency.
Woman Jailed After Reporting Rape http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1776341/posts
Wonder when kinoxi will show up claiming she deserved it.
If this is true, the baby murderers should be held PERSONALLY liable.
Not so. The docs would most likely have put her on bedrest and given her IV fluids. It's certainly no guarantee, but sometimes early miscarriages are linked to dehydration and can be staved off with rest and fluids.
I think she gave birth the next morning and the baby died an hour later.
“I happen to be an ER doc with 20 years experience.”
I am no doctor and I’m not questioning your competency and I have great respect for the medical profession in most cases, but an “ER doc”, while trained to be the front line and treat and or triage any number of medical emergencies, is still not a GYN/OBY.
If I were a pregnant woman coming into your ER with significant spotting or bleeding, I’d sure like the on call OBY to be called in ASAP and not just left to sit around and wait to “miscarry or not”.
My niece, pregnant with her second child due in March, had bleeding, camps and lower back pain in her first trimester. Her GYN told her to go the nearest ER which she did (her OBY is in Baltimore and she was in PA at the time). Long story short there seemed to be much confusion as the ER folks seemed unable to remember who she was or understand why she was there, asking her the same questions over and over, losing her chart and a whole host of unnecessary foul ups. After a sonogram and an internal, the ER doc said something about the baby being way too low and implied she was probably having a miscarriage and he sent her home.
Very first thing the next morning she saw her OBY and she told him what the ER doc told her. The OBY just kept shaking his head because everything the ER doc told her was wrong.
I'm not saying that you are wrong in what you said re SAB but I'd like a second opinion if you don't mind :)
Oh you can ask for a second opinion. If I can drag the OB Gyne doctor in to see a woman with spotting or bleeding in the first trimester with a confirmed intrauterine pregnancy.
See, once an ectopic is ruled out, and we confirm the bleeding is not a threat to the mother there really is nothing more he can do besides offer a D/C, ( identical to an abortion).
Thanks for the second opinion Kozak, but you really hit a sore spot with me and while you may be an excellent and compassionate physician, I’m sure glad you weren’t my niece’s doctor, prescribing a D/C (abortion) and that she had the common sense to follow up with her OBY immediately the next morning.
BTW - you should never have to “drag” any specialist into a serious, potentially life threatening situation – and if that is really the case, just what does that say about the state of your profession?
Thankfully my niece’s OBY prescribed complete bed rest for a week and that saved the pregnancy – otherwise I would not be expecting to be in the delivery room with her and her husband next month, be a great aunt for the 5th time and I really think the world would be a lesser place without our soon-to-be-born little Melanie Elizabeth.
Kozak, would you like to hear another ER near horror story among just a few I’ve personally experienced or been a first hand witness to?
A few years ago a good friend and recovering alcoholic went through a very painful divorce and some other personal tragedies, relapsed and sunk into a major debilitating depression.
After a bout of binge drinking, she experienced heart palpitations and trouble breathing and went to her ER.
She was very frank and honest about her recent drinking and severe depression to both the ER triage nurse and the attending ER doctor, asking for and really hoping to get some help and expressing her fear that what she was experiencing was withdrawal – a very serious and potentially fatal condition.
After an EKG ruled out a heart attack and a sedative reduced her elevated blood pressure and heart rate, she was released and sent home with a prescription for a powerful dose of Librium and only advised to follow up with her primary physician.
There was no psychiatric consult; no questions ever asked about her state of mind or whether she had intentions of harming herself and no referral for treatment of her alcoholism.
Two days later, she had the prescription filled and swallowed the entire bottle in a, thankfully failed, suicide attempt. She doesn’t blame the ER doctor in any way BTW, but I think it was a case of gross negligence.
If I correctly understand your philosophy as an ER doc – “well she’s either going to kill herself (or miscarry) or she’s not and it’s not really my problem either way because I treated the immediate symptoms?”
Part of the problem with healthcare today as I see it, is the whole “herd them in and get them out as quickly and economically as possible” mentality; this with many thanks to HMO’s, Managed Care and the patient as “piece of meat” philosophy passed on during medical training - expediency and the bottom line trumps good medicine and the human factor is sorely lacking IMHO.
As a physician you might want to read this thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1776193/posts
But returning to the original post, these cops were not medical professionals and in no position to judge this woman’s medical condition one way or another and while perhaps not the brightest bulb, she was not a wanton or dangerous criminal, but only had a few outstanding traffic violations. Even if she was deemed dangerous, her plea for help should have not been ignored as callously as it was.
After watching the video and reading all the reports, this is one of the very few cases where I think a lawsuit is really justified.
I don’t think anyone even you as a doctor, is qualified to say with absolute certainty that her pregnancy might not have been saved if she’d had the chance to get prompt proper medical treatment and that a wrongful death suit is not relevant here. Thank goodness this poor woman even lived, given that she might have easily bled to death.
Reread my posts.
I said she should have been seen.
My only problem was the immediate reach for a "wrongful death" lawsuit.
I stand by my statement that there is no treatment for a threatened first trimester spontaneous abortion. It either happens or it doesn't. Thats sad but true.
Maybe so, Doc, but that's not what this is about. Unless you treated her (when she did finally get medical attention), you don't know - what is accounted in this story is filtered by lawyers, so you can only speculate.
I have been around long enough to have seen more than a few friends and family experience bleeding in early pregnancy, and I have accompanied some of them to the emergency room myself. In all of those cases with which I am personally familiar, only one of them resulted in a so-called spontaneous abortion. My oldest girl has my second grandbaby on board right now, and I expect, if that baby is to become threatened at any time during her pregnancy, that she will receive appropriate treatment, even in the unlikely event it occurs while in police custody.
-join a take a civil service job and your union will protect you. It would take a very long process in NY state to fire them.
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