The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

January 28, 2008

Spitting on cop may mean blood test

Lake Crystal officer to test law written by boss

By Mark Fischenich

LAKE CRYSTAL — Lake Crystal police officer Joe Swenson was concerned, not just because it was a little bit gross and disgusting, after he was spit on twice by a pugnacious woman he arrested for allegedly driving drunk.

There was also the worry about the possible transmission of disease.

But a relatively new state law allows police departments to force a suspect to undergo a blood test to check for infectious diseases if an officer has been subjected to the suspect’s bodily fluids.

Swenson’s boss, interim Police Chief Tony Cornish, happened to know all about the law — he was the state representative who wrote it.

“So many of the people we deal with have a sordid past,” said Cornish, R-Vernon Center. “Many of them have criminal histories, a lot of it involves drug use.”

People who use illegal drugs, particularly when needles are involved, tend to have higher rates of HIV and hepatitis.

“Those would probably be the two biggest ones we worry about with needles and drugs,” Cornish said.

He wasn’t suggesting that the woman who spit on Swenson has a sordid past or uses drugs, but police officers can never know a suspect’s complete history. The law now allows officers to get some peace of mind by forcing a suspect to undergo a blood test.

Swenson and the Lake Crystal Police Department are going that route.

The woman will first be asked to give a blood sample voluntarily. If she refuses, a court order will be sought, Cornish said.

“To do that, we have to prove it’s a significant exposure,” Cornish said.

The situation grew out of the arrest earlier this month of a Garden City woman who was stopped for suspicion of drunken driving. At the Immanuel St. Joseph’s Hospital emergency room, where a blood-alcohol test was being taken, the woman began yelling at Swenson while they waited for an elevator and then spit on him, according to the criminal complaint.

She later ran from him, kicking him and spitting on him a second time when he caught her, the complaint said. She is facing charges of gross misdemeanor DWI, felony assault and gross misdemeanor charges related to her flight and resistance.

Cornish pursued the change in state law two years ago after his son, a State Patrol trooper, told stories of officers potentially contaminated by bodily fluids being unable to press for a test of the suspect’s blood.

Emergency medical services workers already had that right under state law, but police officers weren’t specifically included until Cornish’s efforts to amend the law.

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