Teodora Erbes • Staff Photographer
All About the Art Show, pg. 5
April 20, 2009
www.theAccent.org
Volume 2, Issue 5
Austin police out for blood ACC phlebotomy certificates for cops a possibility Trevor Goodchild
Staff Writer
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo backs Senate Bill 261, sponsored by Senator Bob Deuell, which amends laws to allow drawing blood from DWI suspects who refuse a breath test. As of March 31 the bill is in the senate Criminal Justice Subcommittee and has not yet reached the House. If Acevedo’s plan to increase blood draws succeeds, ACC might be used to train Austin police officers to be phlebotomists. The City Counsel and the Austin Police Department are debating the issue right now. “The program would require us to go to Austin Community College; it is one of two phlebotomy training programs that are nationally accredited in the country,” Acevedo said. The phlebotomy program at ACC is a onesemester, stand-alone program. The program can be taken without having a higher degree plan. Eileen Klein, Dean of the Medical Technology and Phlebotomy department and Department chair Terry Kotrla, are aware of the police chief ’s plan to train officers at ACC. “We [department chair and Dean] have been in constant communication about this... this is not set in cement yet. Until they [APD and City Council] have their ducks in a row we’re not going to go for it,” Kotrla said. There are many ducks that need to be in many rows, as Austin’s City Council cannot rewrite Texas law. According to Texas Transportation Code 724.013, taking blood samples from DWI suspects who refuse to have it taken is illegal unless the criteria of death or serious bodily injury have been met. Some of these issues were discussed at a public forum hosted by Texans for Accountable Government (TAG). On March 30 at City Hall a forum was held with a panel comprised of Acevedo, Council Member Mike Martinez, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and the TAG Executive Director John Bush.
The moderator, David Kobierowski, presented the Supreme Court case Beeman v. Texas as a possible way around 724.103 to the panel and audience of Austinites. Knowel Beeman appealed the drawing of his blood because his arrest didn’t meet the Texas transportation code’s criteria, but lost. In an aside, Francis Montenegro, a criminal defense lawyer who attended the event called this “judicial activism,” and stated it does not rewrite the Texas Law that is already in place. Bush spoke in detail in the panel about the rights guaranteed by the Ninth Amendment and the right to privacy he felt would not be protected with blood draws. “I know if we continue this practice of forcible blood withdrawals, the city of Austin residents are not going to lay down without putting up a fight,” said Bush. The chief of police had another viewpoint about the drawing of blood authorized under the implied consent laws. “I don’t know how to break it to people, but when you break the law you lose some rights,” Acevedo said. He also justified wanting to train police officers at ACC because hospitals were refusing blood draws from DWI suspects due to liability concerns. Even the jail nurse at the Austin Police Department will not draw blood for the APD to prove if someone is over the legal limit. “When you look at the economic toll, the emotional toll and the toll on our communities...I think personally it’s kind of irresponsible [for nurses to refuse],” Acevedo said. Brackenridge, Seton, and St. David’s hospital were all mentioned at the forum, and identified for refusing to do blood draws when DWI suspects were brought in by APD. Dr. Steven Berkowitz, the Chief Medical Officer of St. David’s hospital’s five locations in Austin shared his perspective on Acevedo’s proposed policy. “A forensic lab has certain policies and procedures...they do a chain of custody.
Everyone signs off on legal documents. Let’s say you were accused of a DWI. How do you know that blood was actually yours? Because we don’t have forensic capabilities, we cannot say in a court of law that that was your blood,” Berkowitz said. The federal grant to train officers at ACC would come from National Highway and Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA). Despite this, hospitals aren’t alone in their scrutiny of this policy. Some of the City Counsel members criticize its price tag. “It is going to cost millions upon millions of dollars to collect and store the DNA and maintain it in a secure process. There are too many questions and until those questions get answered I don’t think the city of Austin should be engaged in taking blood samples and storing them,” Martinez said. Acevedo cited that Arizona has been doing blood testing since the 1990s and claimed
Jana Lelek • Layout Editor
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Interest in teaching drives ACC nursing Administration opposes six drop rule have to drop a class to free community colleges from student back to school after five years Officials ask Leg. to they take care of those responsibili- the burden of the six drop rule. exempt community college students
Jamie Carpenter Campus Editor
Lisa Heap dropped out of school her senior year as a biochemistry major. Five years passed before she returned to college. Since summer of 2007, Heap has worked on her associate degree in nursing at ACC. While attending ACC, she has decided to become a nursing teacher. She credits Professor of Nursing Helen Harkreader as helping to inspire her. “I would like to become a nursing professor and she [Harkreader] formed a lot of my ideas of what a good nursing professor looks like. Nurses can be very particular. There is a very fine line between being too strict and being too lenient. They have to be strict with us because we could hurt someone, but they have to be lenient because we are beginners and we are trying to learn.” ȩȩ nurse continued on page 5
Chris Smith Staff Writer
Kevin Forester • Staff Photographer
Nursing Student Lisa Heap is likely to be found in the learning lab early mornings at the South Austin Campus helping students in need of health science tutoring. Heap recently won the Common Knowledge Scholarship Foundation’s National Nursing Scholarship.
The ACC administration is asking state representatives to back legislation that would remove community colleges from the six drop rule. “We feel that our students at community college are not just students who pay their full tuition, take a full load and then all the other things they do in their life is study,” said Linda Young, special assistant to the president for External Affairs at ACC. “They are people who work, some of them work two jobs, some of them come part time, some of them take a full load and work full time.” “Students at ACC many times have responsibilities outside of the classroom, like family obligations and jobs, and there will be times when
ties,” said Young. The current policy states that students may only drop six courses throughout their entire undergraduate career. There are some exceptions to the policy. For example if there is a death in the family or there is a change in work schedule, a student can drop a course without it counting against them if they provide the proper documentation. “The key is for students to be successful in their courses, and that is what we really concentrate on,” said Kathleen Christensen, Vice President of Student Support and Success Systems. She feels the six drop rule is unnecessary because ACC already monitors the course completion rate of all credit students and has a policy in place for dealing with students who drop too many courses. Representative Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas, has submitted a Bill, HB 3518, that would
“I had an uncomfortable feeling,” said Alonzo of the six drop rule when it was first made part of Texas Education policy. So when ACC’s office of External Affairs asked if he could write a Bill dealing with the issue, Alonzo gladly complied. “For junior college folks it’s kind of a different situation,” says Alonzo. “I think we need to look at helping students out.” The Bill is in the House Higher Education committee, and Alonzo thinks it has a chance at being passed but encourages students who have a strong opinion on the six drop rule to e-mail him and let him know how they feel. “It is important if there are students who feel very strongly about it to let me know,” said Alonzo. “I think it’s right, and that’s why I introduced the legislation, but the more support that you have for it the better.”