A police officer in Australia who tasered a 95-year-old great-grandmother suffering from dementia has been suspended.
Officers responded to complaints that Clare Nowland was rummaging around with a knife at a care facility last week and found her with a cracked skull and brain bleeding.
Since the incident on May 17, she has continued to receive ‘end-of-life care’ at Cooma District Hospital in New South Wales.
Senior constable with roughly 12 years of service, who used the Taser, has been stood down with pay, according to NSW Police.
The force said: ‘A 33-year-old senior constable attached to Monaro Police District was suspended from duty with pay.
‘As investigations continue into the critical incident, further updates will be provided.’
The incident led to public outcry, with Clare’s loved ones and campaigners calling the police response disproportional and unreasonable.
Family friend Andrew Thaler told the BBC that the family are ‘shocked’ at what happened to Clare.
The mother-of-eight celebrated her 80th birthday by skydiving in Canberra and had lived at the nursing home for around five years.
‘The family are shocked, they’re confused… and the community is outraged,’ Andrew told the broadcaster today.
‘How can this happen? How do you explain this level of force? It’s absurd.’
While the worldwide support is welcome, Rowland’s family said in a statement on Monday, they have asked for privacy amid a ‘worrying and distressing time’.
‘Well respected, much loved and a giving member of her local community, Clare is the loving and gentle-natured matriarch of the Nowland family,’ they said.
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties said the NSW Police, long beleaguered by accusations of excessive force, needs better training when it comes to responding to ‘vulnerable people experiencing dementia or a mental health crisis’.
‘In 2008, great-grandmother Clare Nowland was filmed for a feel-good segment by the ABC when she decided to go skydiving for her 80th birthday,’ the group said on Monday.
‘This week, the now 95-year-old has made headlines for a different and incredibly disturbing reason, after she was allegedly Tasered by police in an incident at her nursing home.’
Yesterday, New South Wales Police Minister Yasmin Catley told Parliament that she is ‘shocked’ by the incident.
‘I believe that it is the case that none of us in this place, would want that to happen to anybody,’ she added.
Two officers arrived at the Yallambee aged care home in Cooma, about 250 miles southwest of Sydney, at about 4am.
Clare, 5’2″ and 95 lbs, was holding a serrated-edge steak knife from the nursing home kitchen, assistant police commissioner Peter Cotter said in a news conference last Friday.
She refused to drop the knife when police found her alone in a small treatment room, Cotter said, and an officer then struck Nowland with the Taser.
‘She was approaching police. It is fair to say, at a slow pace. She had a walking frame. But she had a knife,’ he added.
In an initial statement on the day of the incident, police said that an ‘an elderly woman suffered injuries during an interaction with police’ but did not mention the Taser.
The incident was captured on body cameras but as it is an ongoing investigation, Cotter said it is not in the ‘public interest’ to release the footage.
The officer was taken off duty pending a ‘level one critical incident investigation’, a category police reserve for exceptional cases of police actions leading to ‘death or imminent death’.
Such cases are reviewed by homicide officers and the state crime command, Cotter said, adding: ‘If a threshold is met where it changes from being a departmental issue to being a criminal issue, we are certainly mature and transparent enough as an organisation to do what has to be done.’
The officer has not been charged and is being supported by members of the local area command.
Asked by a reporter if Cotter understands why people are outraged by the incident, he said he is ‘concerned about the matter’.
‘That’s why we have commenced the investigation,’ Cotter added.