Austin police begin new program of officers drawing blood in some DWI cases

Jail nurses won’t do it, and Austin-Travis County EMS medics are looking to get out of it.

So now, people arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated could have their blood drawn at the jail by a specially trained Austin Police Department officer as part of a new pilot program.

“We're (not) drawing blood on the side of the highway willy-nilly,” said Ryan Huling, sergeant over the Police Department's impaired driving investigations unit. “(Officers) are equally as trained … as the medics were before them. It's done in a sanitary, clean place under consent or warrant.”

The Police Department says it is necessary for someone to remain available at the jail to take timely blood draws of people arrested on suspicion of DWI and that officers have been trained to do so. While police say the program is off to a good start, there are concerns from County Attorney Delia Garza the new process could lead to a “potential eroding of public trust.”

Since 2014, Austin-Travis County EMS medics and, until recently, nurses with the Travis County sheriff’s office have performed blood draws for DWI arrests in a designated phlebotomy room in the Travis County Jail. Officers typically take arrestees to the hospital if no one is available at the jail.

A blood draw is collected when an arrestee will not conduct a Breathalyzer test or if an officer believes someone is more intoxicated than a Breathalyzer reading indicates. If an arrestee does not consent to a draw, officers can obtain a warrant and collect blood by force.

However, due to its staffing crisis, EMS said it needed to stop performing these duties in spring 2023, as the department was at times taking ambulances out of service to perform DWI blood draws. The jail nurses, on the other hand, had ethical concerns that collecting blood evidence was in opposition to their medical responsibilities.

First of its kind for a large Texas city

For more than a year, the Austin Police Department has been gearing up to train officers to collect blood evidence for arrests for intoxicated driving. Huling said officers began taking over shifts in February. The Police Department’s blood draw program is the first of its kind among major metropolitan police departments in Texas.

As of now, only four officers within Huling’s unit have been trained to take the blood of DWI suspects. So far, officers have only done blood draws on Fridays.

The trained officers were already qualified as “drug recognition experts” and, Huling said, are frequently already at the jail to assist in DWI cases involving substances other than alcohol. If the pilot program goes well, Huling said, the other 16 drug recognition experts might also be trained to do blood draws.

The officers performing these duties do so in a lab coat and the proper personal protective equipment, Huling said. The department, he said, is not calling officers off the street to conduct blood draws at this time, and each blood draw is done while an officer’s body-worn camera is turned on.

On most days, the Police Department still relies on EMS to conduct blood draws. However, Huling said these shifts are often not filled by medics, who sign up to do so as part of an overtime shift, not part of their regular duties. If no one from EMS is there, officers will then take the arrestee to the hospital.

While it might seem counterintuitive, Huling said, having officers at the jail to conduct blood draws puts less strain on the department at a time when there are high vacancies. This is because arresting officers do not have to spend more time potentially driving to a hospital and spending time away from patrol.

“Given our low staffing numbers as it is, they're trying to find a way to get the officers back out on the streets quicker,” Huling said. “With us being able to do it ourselves, we've learned during this pilot program that it is a much more efficient manner of doing" blood draws.

As far as Huling knows, the only city in Texas where police officers conduct blood draws is Dalworthington Gardens, a suburb of Arlington with a population of nearly 2,300.

Austin police officers went to that suburb in October to receive training from doctors. The training included taking 50 practice blood draws on real people at a hospital in Fort Worth. In February, Huling said the four officers were evaluated by Austin’s Office of the Chief Medical Officer to ensure the training was up to par.

Evidence, public perception concerns

Despite positive reports from the Police Department, County Attorney Delia Garza, whose office oversees most DWI cases since that they are typically misdemeanors, said she is concerned the program will lead to the “eroding of public trust.”

Garza said in a written statement that she believes blood draws should continue to be performed by an outside agency, as the separation of duties ensures that “community trust and integrity” remains in the criminal justice system.

However, Garza said, she appreciates the Police Department’s efforts to “maintain integrity and transparency” during this process. She said her office also has concerns that having officers draw blood could lead to juries finding the evidence not as credible since officers were trained in such a small jurisdiction.

“I understand that APD believed that they needed to fill a gap with EMS phasing out the blood draw responsibilities, but I am hopeful that this is a temporary measure while plans are made to find another solution,” Garza said.

No other solutions?

Officials with the Police Department first met with interim Assistant City Manager Bruce Mills and the city’s chief medical officer, Mark Escott, last year to propose officer-conducted blood draws.

Mills said Escott had concerns about officers receiving the proper training to draw people's blood. During the meeting, Mills was told that nurses with the Travis County sheriff’s office would not be made available to draw blood.

Kristen Dark, public information officer for the sheriff’s office, said in a written statement that drawing blood made the nurses “very uncomfortable” as they felt “pitted against the people they are employed to care for.”

Starting in 2020, Dark said the sheriff’s office stopped making jail nurses available to draw blood.

After going through multiple other options, Mills said officials came back to having officers do the blood draws. He said that “the police do not want to do it,” but it was the department’s “last resort” to ensure this evidence was being collected.

In a written statement, Escott said the program had his “full support” and his office would provide oversight of the program.

Austin-Travis County EMS medics first started drawing blood for the DWI tests back in 2014. Prior to this, the department hired a third-party company, Protouch, to provide phlebotomists. However, as previously reported by the American-Statesman, issues arose, with reports of “careless” work by the phlebotomists.

Since then, medics have worked overtime shifts at the jail to do blood draws on DWI cases. But, since the pandemic, EMS has struggled with high vacancies.

EMS union President Selena Xie said medics stopped signing up for the blood draw shifts at the jail, and that resulted in either ambulances from across the county being temporarily shut down or community health paramedics being brought in to take blood for police.

In Dallas and San Antonio, officers take suspected intoxicated drivers to the hospital for a blood draw. In Houston, that department’s general orders note that trained DWI evidence technicians who work for the Houston Police Department will perform the blood draws.

On top of taking more time to go to a hospital for such a blood draw, Huling said taking someone to a hospital also allows more time to pass and someone's blood alcohol content or the level of drugs in their system to decrease.

Hospital staff will also sometimes refuse to draw blood, as they have concerns that someone could not properly give consent if they are intoxicated, Huling said.

Huling expects more officers could start training by the summer, ideally in a location closer to Austin than the Arlington area.

“We recognize and appreciate that this is something new for Texas,” Huling said. “We'd be the first major department to do something like this, and we sort of respect and are up to the challenge, so to speak, of trailblazing this new opportunity.”

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Austin police officers trained to begin drawing blood in DWI cases