A frail, 95-year-old woman was approaching officers at a “slow pace” using a walking frame when they deemed it necessary to deploy a Taser, leaving her fighting for her life in hospital.
New South Wales police confirmed on Friday that the homicide squad was investigating the incident and that the senior constable involved, who had 12 years experience, is under review and no longer working.
Grandmother Clare Nowland remains in a critical condition in Cooma district hospital, with her family remaining by her bedside for the past two days, after the use of the Taser early Wednesday morning, which caused her to fall, hit her head and sustain life-threatening injuries.
Nowland is in and out of consciousness and police are treating the matter as a level one critical incident, meaning it involves “an injury that leads to death or imminent death”.
Police initially released scant detail on the incident to the public, saying only that an elderly woman in an aged care facility had “sustained injuries during an interaction” with officers, without any mention of the use of a Taser.
On Friday, they said the use of the Taser was due to Nowland being armed with a steak knife.
Nowland, who suffers dementia, had left her room in the early hours of the morning and gone to the kitchen of the aged care facility, named Yallambee Lodge, where she found the knife, police say.
She was by herself in a small medical treatment room when police arrived. Off-duty officers had to be called in to respond (Cooma does not have a 24-hour police station) and they arrived some time after paramedics had been on the scene.
Police say officers tried to negotiate with Nowland.
They allege she advanced at them at a “slow pace”, using a walking frame. Nowland is 5’2” and weighs 43kg and is frail.
Police have footage of the entire incident, sourced from body-worn cameras, but will not release it publicly.
Peter Cotter, the NSW assistant police commissioner, described the footage as “confronting”.
He said Tasers were intended for self-defence but said he could not “transport myself to the mind of the actual officer or officers” involved.
“At the time she was Tasered she was approaching police, it is fair to say at a slow pace,” he said on Friday. “She had a walking frame. But she had a knife. I can’t take it any further what was going through anyone’s mind with the use of a Taser. That is for them.”
The internal investigation will be reviewed by NSW police professional standards and monitored by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.
“No officer, not one of us, is above the law and all our actions will be scrutinised robustly and from a criminal perspective as well as a departmental perspective,” Cotter said.
The use of force on Nowland has prompted widespread condemnation and calls for an independent probe.
Civil liberties groups on Friday demanded an external watchdog, such as the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, manage the investigation, rather than the NSW police critical incident team.
“Police should never investigate police,” Josh Pallas, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties president, said.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission said it was “independently monitoring” the internal police investigation.
In a short statement, the LECC said: “The NSWPF are investigating the circumstances of the incident and the investigation will be reviewed by the Professional Standards Command. The LECC is independently monitoring the investigation under Part 8 of the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission Act 2016 to ensure public confidence in the investigation.”
Disability advocates and civil libertarians questioned the need to use a Taser on an elderly woman with dementia.
“The NSW ombudsman and the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission should initiate an inquiry into this because it transcends issues of police powers with mental health and ageing,” Pallas said.
“‘We need to ensure that no matter what the circumstances of this case that our elderly nursing home residents are protected. That includes protection from excessive police force.”
Nicole Lee, the president of People with Disability Australia, described the incident as shocking and said it highlighted the deficiency in training for police on de-escalating situations involving those with dementia.
“She’s either one hell of an agile, fit, fast and intimidating 95-year-old woman, or there’s a very poor lack of judgment on those police officers and there really needs to be some accountability on their side of this,” Lee told the ABC.
“This woman, an older woman of 95, she needed somebody to de-escalate the situation with her and to talk to her, and to handle her with compassion and time and not Tasers.”
Yallambee Lodge, a 40-bed facility run by the Snowy Monaro Council, was reported to be under pressure due to high levels of occupancy, according to the council’s most recent report.
It was audited against the commonwealth’s aged care quality standards in February and found fully compliant.
The facility was put under further pressure by the closure of private residential aged care services in nearby Bombala last year, due to the “inability to hire the required numbers of full-time staff members, including registered nurses”.
