State, Local Police Nearly Had Showdown Over Terri Schiavo

State, Local Police Nearly Had Showdown Over Terri Schiavo

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 26, 2005

Pinellas Park, FL (LifeNews.com) -- State and local police nearly had a showdown on Thursday over Terri Schiavo. The incident almost occurred Thursday afternoon after a local judge issued a ruling preventing Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a state agency from taking Terri into protective custody.

According to a Miami Herald report, hours after Circuit Court Judge George Greer issued his custody ruling, a team of state agents were en route to Woodside Hospice to protect Terri and have her feeding tube reinserted.

However, they did not drive all the way to the hospice once calls to local police informed them that Greer's order would be upheld.

Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told Pinellas Park police that they were on their way to the hospice. Eventually they backed down when police told them not to come to the hospice unless they had a judge with them ordering Terri to be placed in their custody.

''We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,'' a local police source told the newspaper.

''The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,'' a police official told the Herald. "When the sheriff's department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.''

The standoff could have led to a governmental crisis had state officials not backed down.

DCF officials also decided they wanted to prevent a public confrontation with local police outside the hospice, according to the Miami newspaper report.

When officials at Morton Plant Hospital heard the state may take Terri in custody and drive her there to reconnect her feeding tube, they asked Judge Greer what to do. That phone call, and another from euthanasia advocate George Felos, Michael's lawyer, prompted Greer to issue an emergency order preventing state officials from taking Terri.

Greer's order called on county sheriffs to assist local police in keeping Terri at the hospice.

Bush said the decisions by Greer and a failed appeal to the Florida Supreme Court prevent him from removing Terri from the hospice.

"If we had that ability to do it, if there wasn't an injunction, we would do it right now," Bush said Thursday. "We would stabilize her by giving her hydration."

"It is frustrating for people to think that I have power that I don't," Governor Bush added in an AP interview. "I don't have embedded special powers. I wish I did in this particular case."