There's a BIG difference between police themselves taking blood from someone and them ordering a third party to perform a medical procedure without consent of the patient or court order. Since when are police allowed to act as judges and issue search warrants to be executed by a third party?

Anyway, if what you say is true, then that's just one more erosion of our 4th Amendment rights. Unless it's specifically upheld by a state law that passes constitutional muster, i have to say that your police who do that are acting unconstitutionally under the U.S. Constitution. It wouldn't be the first time. Police do unconstitutional searches all the time and the trial court judges look the other way. It's an expensive proposition to go to the appeals courts and so the police usually pick on poor people when they decide to violate their rights.

re "This is the U.S. where we must weigh the rights' of the thousands of innocent people that are injured/killed by DUI every year against the rights' of someone who is stupid enough ..."

Police have no authority or training to make them capable of doing such "weighing" of rights. That's why we have judges to do it. The U.S. is turning into a police state where the police make up the law as they go along. And they usually do it to people who look like they can't afford counsel ... which often amounts to racial and economic discrimination, which is also illegal.

Look at the NJ State Troopers; they still pull people over for Driving While Black despite the Consent Decree. I'll bet that news story you posted is about a poor Black or Hispanic they dragged to the hospital and didn't think it was worth the trouble to wake up a judge (they always have one on call) and have a search warrant faxed to the hospital from their house.

If it was a white middle-class person, i guarantee you they'd get that court order. I'll bet any amount that the explanation for your cases is simple racism.

Oh. I just read the story you posted a link to. It confirms my claim that the constitutionality of forced blood draws by police without a court order is still debatable and it also says that some states have banned it outright as an unreasonable search and seizure.

Maybe you live in one of the police states where they allow it. Thank God, i don't. A person here has the right to refuse blood and breath tests. Period. They also can refuse to take the field sobriety test, and practically every lawyer in the state will tell people to ALWAYS refuse the field sobriety test even if they've had nothing to drink (or drug) because refusing the field sobriety test *can't* be used against a person in court ... it's their right to refuse it. A person here can also refuse medical treatment after an accident and if they are conscious, it takes a court order to force a blood draw. It's all from our state Constitution and Supreme Court, which gives us more civil rights here than from the U.S. Supreme Court.