quote: I can't imagine them changing that procedure.
Not changing it with the knowledge of corporate HQ, anyway.
quote:Unlike Dag, I simply can't see a reason to send the food to a crime lab unless the initial investigation by the board of health suggested the food had been intensional tampered with
This is not just a case of "food x made person y sick." There is direct evidence that the server knew that the food procedures were not followed and sent the meat out anyway. That's more than most food poisoning cases.
Further, chain of evidence is very important. Crime labs have elaborate procedures to preserve this. Although I'm sure health department labs have elaborate procedures for keeping samples safe, organized, and unmixed, those don't necessarily rise to the level necessary to preserve chain of evidence. Even if they do, I wouldn't expect police officers to think they would.
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Legalize aside....can anyone explain exactly how salt can make a person so sick that they need to report to a hospital? I know there are conditions that might cause a person to be on a low-sodium diet, but even in those cases I can't think of anything that would send a person to the hospital. It's not like sugar and diabetics.
Any medical people out there who can explain this to me?
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quote: I can't imagine them changing that procedure.
Not changing it with the knowledge of corporate HQ, anyway.
If you are at all familiar with how fast food franchises work, you would realize that it would be nearly impossible to make such a change without the knowledge of HQ. First off, It would require a significant remodeling of the kitchen to even provide space to make anything on site. It isn't like this is a decision a manager could make off hand. Second, when I worked at McDonalds there was a meticulous accounting of everything from meat patties to packages. Everything had to be accounted for. If the number of burgers sold plus the number of burgers in the trash plus the number of burgers still in inventory didn't add up, there was big trouble. Finally, to get a McDonalds franchise, you have to contract to follow the rules from HQ. Getting a franchise isn't cheap. Ten years ago, it cost over $1 million. Its very hard to imagine anyone risking that kind of investment by making their own patties rather than ordering them from headquarters. I doubt that there is even a financial advantage since the cost of labor involved could hardly compete with the machines pumping out burgers at HQ.
While its not impossible that it could have happened the way it was reported by FOX, it seems far more probable that FOX News didn't get the facts straight. Its hardly like FOX News screwing up the facts is an unusual occurance.
quote:
quote:Unlike Dag, I simply can't see a reason to send the food to a crime lab unless the initial investigation by the board of health suggested the food had been intensional tampered with
This is not just a case of "food x made person y sick." There is direct evidence that the server knew that the food procedures were not followed and sent the meat out anyway. That's more than most food poisoning cases.
Further, chain of evidence is very important. Crime labs have elaborate procedures to preserve this. Although I'm sure health department labs have elaborate procedures for keeping samples safe, organized, and unmixed, those don't necessarily rise to the level necessary to preserve chain of evidence. Even if they do, I wouldn't expect police officers to think they would.
I'm pretty sure that police officers work routinely with the Board of Health in handling complaints about contaminated food. I trust Maui Babe when she says that there would normally be a much more extensive investigation before anyone was arrested.
Correct me if I'm wrong Dag, but unless there is a threat of flight or a suspect poses an immediate danger, it is far more common for police to wait until an investigation is complete before issuing an arrest. At least that is the standard procedure in this area. There have been a number of high profile cases here where car drivers have killed or seriously injured bicyclist and pedestrians and police have taken 6 months or longer to make charges and arrests. This is even though the driver's in question were immediately identified.
In this case, the arrest was made before the victim had received medical help, the burger had been analyzed or the security tapes had been reviewed. What outstanding characteristics are there which would warrant an arrest before such an investigation?
I'm quite confident that if you or I had eaten that burger rather than a police officer no arrest would have been made at least until the alleged crime had been properly investigated.
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quote:Legalize aside....can anyone explain exactly how salt can make a person so sick that they need to report to a hospital? I know there are conditions that might cause a person to be on a low-sodium diet, but even in those cases I can't think of anything that would send a person to the hospital. It's not like sugar and diabetics.
In huge amounts, salt can kill any cells it comes into contact with by "sucking" all the water out of them through osmosis, but at that level I'd expect the burger to taste absolutely horrible.
Edit: I did a little Googling on salt toxicity. According to "The Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances" the toxic level for humans is listed as 12,357 mg/kg. Figure an average adult male at around 85 kg, that would mean 1,050 grams, or 2 1/3 lbs of salt would be necessary to reach "toxic" levels.
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Legalize aside....can anyone explain exactly how salt can make a person so sick that they need to report to a hospital? I know there are conditions that might cause a person to be on a low-sodium diet, but even in those cases I can't think of anything that would send a person to the hospital. It's not like sugar and diabetics.
Any medical people out there who can explain this to me?
An overdose of Sodium Chloride can cause high blood pressure, migraines, fluid retention, nausia, vomiting, mental confusing and even coma.
Of course, to get the more severe symptoms would require an extemely large amount of salt. Based on the Materials Safety Data Sheet for Sodium Chloride (common table salt), the LD50 for a 165 lb man would be about half a pound (~1 cup) of salt.
While some of the more minor symptoms like high blood pressure or migraines might be caused by an over salted hamburger, I find it hard to imagine that one could put enough salt on a burger to cause more serious problems.
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quote:Legalize aside....can anyone explain exactly how salt can make a person so sick that they need to report to a hospital? I know there are conditions that might cause a person to be on a low-sodium diet, but even in those cases I can't think of anything that would send a person to the hospital. It's not like sugar and diabetics.
In huge amounts, salt can kill any cells it comes into contact with by "sucking" all the water out of them through osmosis, but at that level I'd expect the burger to taste absolutely horrible.
Edit: I did a little Googling on salt toxicity. According to "The Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances" the toxic level for humans is listed as 12,357 mg/kg. Figure an average adult male at around 85 kg, that would mean 1,050 grams, or 2 1/3 lbs of salt would be necessary to reach "toxic" levels.
So, if he was eating a quarter pounder then in order to be toxic, there had to have been almost 10 times more salt than meat. That's about what I figured.
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quote:If you are at all familiar with how fast food franchises work, you would realize that it would be nearly impossible to make such a change without the knowledge of HQ. First off, It would require a significant remodeling of the kitchen to even provide space to make anything on site.
I've seen too many scams to think that someone might not try to scam either the parent corporation or the franchise owner by selling the burgers out the back while serving bad meat. Hence my comment.
I don't know that is what happened here, and my original commentary isn't based on the mixing article. I'm not postulating that this was done here. I'm merely not going to assume it wasn't because it's not policy.
In fact, I expressed surprise that anyone was mixing meat on-site at McDonald's and asked for confirmation of my surprise.
quote:I'm pretty sure that police officers work routinely with the Board of Health in handling complaints about contaminated food. I trust Maui Babe when she says that there would normally be a much more extensive investigation before anyone was arrested.
I'm pretty sure they do, to. But I also think that a case where someone has admitted adding the substance that is believed to have caused the problem is different than most food poisoning cases.
quote:Correct me if I'm wrong Dag, but unless there is a threat of flight or a suspect poses an immediate danger, it is far more common for police to wait until an investigation is complete before issuing an arrest. At least that is the standard procedure in this area. There have been a number of high profile cases here where car drivers have killed or seriously injured bicyclist and pedestrians and police have taken 6 months or longer to make charges and arrests. This is even though the driver's in question were immediately identified.
In this case, the arrest was made before the victim had received medical help, the burger had been analyzed or the security tapes had been reviewed. What outstanding characteristics are there which would warrant an arrest before such an investigation?
I've already said I haven't commented on the propriety of the arrest.
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It does seem weird that the officer who claimed the meat made him sick was (if I'm reading the article that started this right) the same one who made the arrest. If the discomfort suffered was so minor that he remained on duty, sending this off to a lab seems excessive.
But I'll admit I've never worked on that side of law enforcement. Or fast food, for that matter.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: edit to add: it isn't a particularly interesting story, Noemon. Civil disobedience effort to get people to realize that the invasion of Iraq was a bad idea. Sigh. Don't you wish they had paid attention?
Well, it's not a debauched tale of drugs and sex or an action-packed story of a brawl that put dozens in a hospital, but as reasons to get arrested go, I think that's pretty cool. Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Christine: Legalize aside....can anyone explain exactly how salt can make a person so sick that they need to report to a hospital? I know there are conditions that might cause a person to be on a low-sodium diet, but even in those cases I can't think of anything that would send a person to the hospital. It's not like sugar and diabetics.
To a person with heart failure, it is exactly like sugar and diabetics, or worse. My father is a Type I diabetic and also has a bad heart (congestive heart failure seven years ago followed by a quadruple bypass, and angioplasty three or four years ago) and the salt has a much more dramatic effect on him than the sugar does.
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I know two people who have to calculate exactly how much salt they eat every day (my advisor and my grandma). My advisor has heart problems and I don't know exactly what is wrong with my grandma. But I know they are meticulous in how much salt they eat. If they used the nutritional information and it was substantionally different from reality, that could have a bad effect.
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Swallowing a spoonful of salt is an old-fashioned (although not currently recommended or safe) emetic -- it can make you vomit in relatively small quantities. An otherwise fairly healthy adult [i.e., no heart disease] had become comatose [and then died] after swallowing 3-4 tablespoonsful at once***, and the aforementioned use as an emetic has been fatal in some published cases in the literature.
I will find the articles if it would make an actual difference to someone's assessment of the case. Currently I can find citations but not online texts (and this routine usage of salt is so outdated that the published cases -- as far as I can tell -- predate electronically registered abstracts).
Of note, though, is that these people voluntarily had swallowed sufficient table salt to make themselves vomit and/or put themselves in a coma. It can't have been pleasant, but it was feasible. I have no problem believing that a police officer took a big gulping bite and automatically swallowed it, only registering afterward how salty it was -- and then, perhaps, threw up. I also have no problem believing that an officer might reasonably ask "hey, what's going on with the burger you gave me?;" be told it was if not intentional, at least known and permitted deliberately; and then wish to start a chain of evidence as Dagonnee suggested.
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Edited to add links (unfortunately, no full text):
quote:Emetics for acute poisoning -- treatment or hazard? [from the British Medical Journal, 1977]
Sodium chloride used to be recommended as an emetic by many authorities, perhaps because it was readily available. Opionions have changed, however, and the current view has been summarized succinctly in the statement (3): "Salt may be an occasionally successful emetic. It is a reliable poison."
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I haven't checked the rationale for the poisonous doses as cited by previous posters, but both seem far outside the clinical amount it would take to cause serious medical problems in many people.
There are clear records of coma after rapid ingestion of 3-4 heaping tablespoonsful. Please do not assume that one is safe from harmful effects unless someone consumes much more than this, and please -- please! -- do not use salt to induce vomiting (as in the case of trying to vomit after having ingested something poisonous, or for other reasons). As noted above, a good spoonfuls-worth of salt may well induce vomiting, but it reliably will be poisonous when ingested quickly in not terribly great amounts.
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Edited to add: Of further note, that old article linked above still recommends Syrup of Ipecac to induce vomiting if a known poison has been ingested. This is no longer routinely recommended, so please do not do that, either!
There are clear records of coma after rapid ingestion of 3-4 heaping tablespoonsful. Please do not assume that one is safe from harmful effects unless someone consumes much more than this, and please -- please! -- do not use salt to induce vomiting (as in the case of trying to vomit after having ingested something poisonous, or for other reasons). As noted above, a good spoonfuls-worth of salt may well induce vomiting, but it reliably will be poisonous when ingested quickly in not terribly great amounts.
Thanks for the info.
To be honest, I have trouble believing that even a heaping spoonful of salt was on that burger, but that is at least possible.
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We're stuck where we usually are when newspapers report on the latest outrage: with insufficient evidence to evaluate the situation fully. There's doubts about whether meat was being mixed or merely salted. There's doubts about how sick the officer was.
Does getting sick mean vomiting? I realized last night I was interpreting it that way, because that's the most common way I know of the usage "food x made me sick." But it certainly doesn't have to mean that. It could mean just nausea.
If "sick" = "vomited," then I stand by the officer submitting the hamburger to the crime lab as the right thing to do. If the crime lab is not equipped to test properly, it is perfectly equipped to get the lab expertise it needs to do so. If "sick" = "nauseated," then I'm not sure it was necessary to do that. But I don't think there's anything wrong with being over-inclusive in deciding what gets sent to the lab. So based on the story, I think it was proper - if not necessarily the best idea - to send it to the lab.
As to the arrest, there's not enough in the story to justify the arrest. If the story is complete, the arrest was improper. However, the story is almost never complete. Which is why I haven't given an opinion on the arrest. And note I'm not saying, "if there's more to the story, the arrest was proper."
BTW, the suspect's comment that the security camera would prove her story might be true, but her story being true doesn't necessarily exonerate her. What she was accused of does not require that she put the salt in the food on purpose.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: As to the arrest, there's not enough in the story to justify the arrest. If the story is complete, the arrest was improper. However, the story is almost never complete. Which is why I haven't given an opinion on the arrest. And note I'm not saying, "if there's more to the story, the arrest was proper."
Dagonee, I was thinking more about the officer*** trying to make decisions in the moment. Poisoning or attempted posioning falls under "assault," right? (I don't know if it does legally, but it does in the medical coding of diagnosis under ICD-9-CM, the International Coding of Diagnosis, 9th edition, Clinical Modification.)
Is an assault on a police officer on duty necessarily a felony?
And how much leeway do officers have with regards to detaining or arresting someone suspected of a felony? I mean, I know it may seem to be silly afterwards in some individual cases, but I was wondering if a law enforcement officer has requirements of duty in such a case, at least until whether the situation is made clear, or whether there is a greater element of discretion.
Isn't there something about "misprison"? (My knowledge of the law is very skimpy, and my memory even skimpier! )*** ***
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***When I see police officers getting food at a restaurant or coffee shop, I don't think I've ever seen them alone. Sometimes as a pair, but often as three or four. Now that I think about it, I assumed officer usually were paired with a partner on beats, and I assume that getting together on break was something one might do with others on service (kind of how the local streetcleaners get together at a certain Tim Horton's every morning). But I don't know much about this [police, that is] culture.
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Christine, it does seem unlikely, doesn't it? I am only working with guesswork about what might be. However, the old remedy (as explained to me by my mother, a nurse, some 30 years ago -- so a recollection not to be relied on without a, er, grain of salt ) was a spoonful of salt in a small glass of warm water, since I suppose it's hard to swallow straight salt. I don't know if most people had to swallow the entire glass (and so the equivalent of the entire spoonful, but somewhat diluted), or if only a few swallows might do it.
I'm not going to experiment. *grin
But that reminds me offhand of a girl in my high school health class who tasted a drop of ipecac on her finger and promptly had the expected effect. It had been passed 'round by our teacher so we could see what the bottle looked like. I suppose that teacher would be in a fine pickle these days.
[and of course, it would surely take more than a "taste" of salt -- how much, I'm not sure, and I wasn't trying to draw an analogy on that (just to clarify in case of confusion)] -----
*** *** Edited to add: Wikipedia on misprison of a felony (surely a citable source in court!) has it as still a serious offense in the US, but that it seems (from my read) to apply to civilians required to report "to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States." I take it that a LEO would be a civil authority. I wonder if there is a similar requirement for the next step up, though?
quote:Dagonee, I was thinking more about the officer*** trying to make decisions in the moment. Poisoning or attempted posioning falls under "assault," right? (I don't know if it does legally, but it does in the medical coding of diagnosis under ICD-9-CM, the International Coding of Diagnosis, 9th edition, Clinical Modification.)
Is an assault on a police officer on duty necessarily a felony?
Assault would require intent. Assaulting a police officer will upgrade assault to a felony automatically in most (all?) states, however, in most states, knowledge of the officer's status would be required for that upgrade to happen.
Here, there's no evidence that she knew he was an officer (based on the story), so the automatic upgrade to felony wouldn't happen. As to assault, there's likely not the requisite intent (based on the story, again) to cause harm. Rather, the allegation is that she ignored a known danger. In some states, if this causes harm, it can amount to assault. In other states, it can't. In those states, reckless endangerment is charged instead.
The reason I think the arrest is improper is that the element of risk isn't really established without the testing.
Although, if the harm happens, I guess there's probable cause that the risk was present. Since she admitted knowing the circumstances that gave rise to the risk, there's probable cause that knowledge of the risk existed. So maybe "improper" was too strong a word.
quote:And how much leeway do officers have with regards to detaining or arresting someone suspected of a felony? I mean, I know it may seem to be silly afterwards in some individual cases, but I was wondering if a law enforcement officer has requirements of duty in such a case, at least until whether the situation is made clear, or whether there is a greater element of discretion.
I'm not sure what the law is on officers ignoring felonies. And I know that some police departments allow issuing of summons even for felonies. Also, officers can obtain an arrest warrant before arresting, even though they are not required to for felonies (when arresting outside the home). So I'm pretty sure that, even were this a felony, there were ways of proceeding without arresting right away.
In Virginia, an officer with knowledge giving rise to probable cause that a felony has been committed may issue a summons, present the evidence to a magistrate to obtain a summons or arrest warrant, or arrest the suspect (outside the home).
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