About a week ago, Clare Nowland was in a hospital bed, knitting needles nearby, chatting with one of her daughters and Cooma’s local parish priest, Mark Croker.
Croker recalls the great-grandmother was about as frail as one would expect of a 95-year-old. He also recalls her gentle nature and her deep appreciation for his visit.
“She was there with her daughter, one of her daughters, and we had a good little conversation between the three of us,” he says. “She still had her knitting there, she was poking along with that to keep herself busy.
“A very nice lady, a deeply appreciative lady for whenever I visited her, a very respectful lady, and one who the church community here held in very high regard.”
The peaceful scene, shared so recently, makes the events of Wednesday morning all the more incomprehensible.
In the early hours of the morning at the council-run Yallambee Lodge aged care facility, police used a Taser on Nowland, apparently due to the risk she posed to their safety.
Nowland, who suffers dementia and weighs 43kg, was advancing on them at a “slow pace” with a walking frame, but also holding a serrated steak knife, according to police.
The threat was so grave, police decided, that they needed to deploy the most serious use of force option available to them, bar drawing their firearm.
Nowland fell back, smashing her head, and leaving her with critical injuries. She has been in Cooma district hospital in the two days since, her family by her side, dipping in and out of consciousness.
She has not been moved to the main trauma centre for southern NSW, Canberra hospital, and police have deemed the incident to be in the most serious category available, used to denote the risk of imminent death.
Croker says he was left “gobsmacked” when he heard the news.
“It does leave you rather gobsmacked as to what has happened,” he said. “My role is to walk with my community now.”
As Nowland’s family and the community work through their shock and grief, questions have already turned to the police response.
‘She had a walking frame. But she had a knife’
Cooma doesn’t have a 24-hour police station.
So when the nursing home called police about 4.15am Wednesday, asking for help to deal with a resident with a knife, the force had to call in off-duty officers.
Paramedics were already on the scene by the time the officers, all with more than a decade of experience, arrived.
Nowland, at some point, had left her bedroom, walking into the kitchen, and picking up a steak knife. By the time police arrived, they say she was in a small medical treatment room, by herself.
Body-worn footage, which police will not release, captured the next moments in their entirety.
Police say they tried to de-escalate and get Nowland to drop the knife. They say she advanced on them.
She did so slowly and with a walking frame.
“At the time she was Tasered she was approaching police, it is fair to say at a slow pace,” Peter Cotter, the NSW assistant police commissioner, said on Friday. “She had a walking frame. But she had a knife.”
Cotter said he was unable to “transport myself to the mind of the actual officer or officers” involved.
“I can’t take it any further what was going through anyone’s mind with the use of a Taser,” he said. “That is for them.”
Police have also revealed that the senior constable responsible, an officer of 12 years’ experience, has been taken off duty. His duty status is under review.
Homicide squad investigators have been brought in as part of a critical incident response team. Their investigation will be reviewed by professional standards and monitored by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC).
NSW police were less than transparent in the 24 hours after the incident. They released a statement saying only that an elderly woman had been injured in an “interaction” with police at an aged care facility.
As more detail emerges about their conduct, outrage among advocates such as Nicole Lee, the president of People with Disability Australia, has only grown.
“It’s just becoming more and more alarming, the more we are told,” she said.
“It’s pretty clear that the response in this case is too heavy-handed and completely inappropriate and not warranted in relation to the situation that they were faced with.”
Lee said it was clear that police were not properly trained to deal with people in crisis, including those suffering dementia.
“It really does highlight the fact that police are coming into scenarios like this and clearly they don’t have enough training behind them or support behind them to de-escalate a situation for someone who is in a mental health crisis or is experiencing confuse or distress, including due to dementia,” she said.
The case has also revived a perennial concern in cases of potential police misconduct: how can the public be confident in police investigating police?
Cotter said that no one, not even police, was above the law, and sought to ease fears about the investigation’s independence by saying it would be monitored by the LECC, an independent watchdog.
But the Greens MP Sue Higginson warned the LECC lacked an adequate budget and resourcing to properly investigate the vast bulk of complaints it receives.
She said the incident in Cooma must prove a turning point.
“An internal investigation is simply not good enough,” she said. “We’re seeing a pattern of police response that is causing harm rather than de-escalating situations and providing the necessary care responses to some of our most vulnerable people.”
The NSW Council of Civil Liberties voiced similar concerns.
“Police should never investigate police,” the council’s president, Josh Pallas, said. “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.”
Bronnie Taylor, a resident of the Cooma region and deputy leader of the NSW Nationals party, said the mood in the tight-knit town was sombre.
She said in time the community will want answers, but for now their concerns are focused on Nowland’s health and the family.
“Everybody is talking about it, everyone is very upset,” she said. “There are concerns about the level of force used and we need to rely on the process to look into that.”
Croker only arrived at the parish in recent months. But he says it has become clear to him that Nowland, before her health deteriorated, was an active and much-loved member of the church.
She did much for the community in earlier years – volunteering at St Vincent de Paul’s and visiting local nursing homes.
Now, Croker is preparing to do the same, helping his parish through a difficult time.
“They’re strong people who will give every bit of sympathy and support to the family in the way that we do, with prayer and we hope that with more than anything that it brings us closer together as a church family,” he said.
