Police in Tennessee are investigating after a nurse claims she was racially profiled by an officer while tending to a patient in Williamson County last week.
Stephanie Dash, who’s been working as a home care nurse for the past three years, is now demanding the officer be held accountable for her actions.
Stephanie Dash said the deputy refused to believe she was a home care nurse, despite showing her work ID badge. (Image courtesy of Facebook)
“I would really like her to be reprimanded,” Dash told Atlanta Black Star of the deputy in question. “I don’t feel like this is her first time doing this. Others have reached out to me saying she’s done things like this before and they just never reported it.”
Dash, 27, said she was providing in-home care to her patient and was in the middle of an assessment when she noticed someone peeking through the windows and knocking on the door of the suburban Nashville residence. She said she asked the patient if it was OK to answer the door, to which the patient agreed, FOX 17 reported.
At the door, Dash was met by a Williamson County sheriff’s deputy and a man whom she said likely came over out of concern for his neighbor after seeing the cops arrive. The nurse said the deputy proceeded to ask where the patient was, to which she responded she was in the living room.
As Dash continued tending to her patient, she said she was yet again interrupted by the officer who’d followed her into the living room and asked the patient who Dash was and why she was there.
“I understand that she had a job to do, but once she got that verification of who I was and that I was supposed to be there I don’t feel like there was any need for her to continue to question my patient,” she wrote on Facebook, noting she had on scrubs, a stethoscope and other nursing equipment with her at the time of the incident.
It turns out the deputy, identified as Rhonda Casillas, dropped by the home unannounced after a call about a “suspicious” person in the neighborhood who “wasn’t supposed to be there.”
Despite the patient’s repeated explanations that Dash was her home care nurse, the officer remained skeptical. Dash said the female deputy still wasn’t convinced even after she went to retrieve her work badge from her car. Fed up, that’s when she called her job, Amedisys Home Health and Hospice Care.
“Immediately I request my boss, with the phone on speaker my boss immediately asked, ‘Are y’all saying she looked suspicious because she’s Black?'” Dash recalled.
She said the deputy quickly denied the assertion and said she simply wanted to know what Dash was doing in the neighborhood.
“Well, she’s one of my best nurses and she’s out giving back to the community, providing care to people so that they can continue to live at home and avoid being put back in the hospital, and she has every right to do that,” Dash’s boss reportedly told the cop.
When the nurse asked the officer to return her ID, she said the deputy jerked her hand away and refused to give it back before eventually handing it over.
The tense ordeal prompted Dash’s employer to file a report against the officer, she said. The Williamson County Sheriff’s Office said it has since launched an investigation, and department spokeswoman Sharon Puckett told The Tennessean newspaper authorities are working to determine if there’s video or audio from the call.
Still, Dash says she’d like to see more done. She told ABS Casillas has been allowed to remain at work while the department investigates the incident.
“She is supposed to protect and serve,” she said of the officer. “I did not feel safe at all with her doing the things she did to me.”
Recalling the incident, Dash said she felt she was being harassed and packed up her things out of frustration. As she tried to leave, that’s when two more sheriff’s cruisers pulled up to the home. The nurse said she kindly asked one of the officers to move their car, as she had more patients to see. They refused to let her leave, however.
Dash said she was free to go after a few minutes, with the officer watching her as she left the neighborhood.
“Not only did you interrupt my patient care that she needed more than once, you also delayed me from getting to other patients in need, all for what?” she wrote on Facebook, arguing that the officer “doesn’t deserve a badge.” “You were never once satisfied with the confirmation of who I was. You continued to try and manipulate my patient into saying that I was not supposed to be in her house. You wanted me to be a criminal. You didn’t want me to be a nurse and you definitely did not want me in that neighborhood.”
Dash said neither she nor her company have heard from the sheriff’s department since the incident.
Watch more in the video below.