The NYPD is furious with Bellevue Hospital after a doctor told cops he found 14 bags of coke in a drug mule but then refused to provide details, citing patient-confidentiality laws.
The doctor told police on Tuesday that the cocaine-filled balloons were discovered during emergency surgery. But when pressed for more information, he “refused to give any” – as did the hospital’s administrators, an NYPD source said.
“This is not a question of us telling someone else that somebody has AIDS,” said a police official. “The laws don’t protect drug dealers.”
But a spokesman for Bellevue claimed it had “cooperated within the limits of the law.”
And NYPD officials privately acknowledge that hospitals are not legally obligated to report such patients, unlike, say, gunshot victims.
Cops, with no help from Bellevue officials, tracked down and arrested the suspected mule, Javier PeÑa, 30, at the hospital on Wednesday.