I am a street nurse. My first day on the job, I got called by a community member to the corner near where I work. A homeless Black woman had been sitting in a bus shelter, minding her business. She was approached by police, she was not aggressive; they escalated the situation and ended up pushing her so hard she smashed her head on the glass of the bus shelter and was bleeding profusely from her skull. She then proceeded to have a seizure on the sidewalk.
During her seizure, the police officers involved cuffed her wrists behind her back, left her face down on the ground, still seizing. They did not put her in recovery position, they did not protect her head and limbs from the thrashing of the seizure against the concrete, they did not allow the many community members standing by (largely people of colour, largely homeless) to do so.
Only when I, a housed white woman showed up and told them I am a nurse, did they let me intervene and keep her as safe as was possible at that moment. They still refused to remove the cuffs. I held her in recovery position and comforted her when she came to extremely frightened and in extreme pain. My white body was the only reason they allowed this.
This was my first day, so it sticks out in my memory. There have been countless similar instances since then that I have witnessed first hand, and usually it involved the police being egregiously violent until I, an employed and housed white woman, showed up and made it clear I was a witness to this.
They listen to me. They do not listen to my clients.
It is not “one bad apple,” and by the way, the rest of the saying is “one bad apple spoils the bunch.”
Elizabeth Tevlin, RN
