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Tucson cops investigate 8 at UMC for allegedly photographing patient

Tucson police are investigating staffers at University Medical Center alleged to taken “inappropriate photographs” of a patient or patients last week, a police spokesman said Thursday.

UMC suspended eight employees – four nurses and four patient-care technicians – for their alleged involvement in Friday’s incident, hospital spokeswoman Katie Riley said.

A TPD officer went to the hospital about 10 p.m. April 24, after receiving a call about “an allegation of misconduct,” police Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said.

As of Thursday morning, police and hospital officials had not revealed the nature of the photos, which UMC workers allegedly snapped with a cell phone camera.

Photographs taken without a patient’s consent would violate UMC policies and federal law, and – depending on what the images depict – criminal statutes as well, Pacheco said.

“We’re very, very strict here,” Riley said of UMC’s enforcement of patient privacy rules. “This is just an investigation at this point.”

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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