Two officers were called to the nursing home Wednesday morning and found Nowland holding a serrated-edge steak knife from the nursing home kitchen, NSW assistant police commissioner Peter Cotter said in a news conference Friday.
Police told Nowland, who was alone in a small treatment room, to drop the knife, but she did not, Cotter said. An officer activated his Taser and Nowland was struck with it, he said.
“She was approaching police,” he said. “It is fair to say, at a slow pace. She had a walking frame. But she had a knife.”
Andrew Thaler, a family friend, said Nowland is a great-grandmother who has dementia.
“The community is not just grieving, but shocked. How can this happen?” Thaler said. “That’s the most common question I’m hearing from people. How can this happen? It’s beyond belief.”
The officer who operated the Taser, a senior constable with about 12 years of experience, has been moved to “nonoperational” duties during an internal investigation, Cotter said. When asked by a reporter during the news conference if he could understand the public outrage, Cotter said police were “concerned about the matter” and “that’s why we have commenced the investigation.”
He said that there is body-camera footage of the incident but that it will not be released to the public.
An initial statement on Wednesday said that “an elderly woman suffered injuries during an interaction with police” and did not mention the use of a Taser. Cotter defended its brevity Friday when questioned by reporters. “We have to be very sure before we put out all the specific details,” he said.
Josh Pallas, president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, said the incident was an “example of why there needs to be a review into the way that police deploy and use force against people.”
He added that the council was calling for investigations into police behavior to be conducted at “arm’s length” from the force itself.
NSW police have previously faced accusations of excessive force. In September, a 14-year-old Indigenous boy was hospitalized in the state’s north with head injuries and said he was “slammed on his head” when approached by five officers who did not have their body cameras activated, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission is investigating.
In November, a 78-year-old man well known for being a quirky local character in Sydney, who was wearing a sandwich board with a misspelled profanity, sustained brain bleeding and said he was “lucky to be alive” after he was thrown to the ground and handcuffed by two police officers in a Sydney shopping center, 9 News reported. The incident is under police review with commission oversight.
At that time, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Alex Greenwich, an independent state lawmaker in Sydney, wrote a letter to NSW Police Minister Paul Toole with concerns including that reports of over-policing reflect poorly on the force “while damaging Sydney’s reputation as a welcoming and tolerant place to visit,” according to the Herald.
In June 2020, amid the country’s Black Lives Matter protests, which mostly focused on the treatment of Indigenous Australians, a police officer in Sydney was filmed kicking out a teenage Indigenous boy’s legs while his hands were held behind his back, causing him to fall face-first onto a brick surface, after the boy swore and made a verbal threat.
NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said at the time that he was “sure most of the community wouldn’t want to see someone who has made a mistake sacked,” the Guardian reported.
The force’s professional standards command investigated and the officer, Ryan Barlow, was charged with “assault occasioning actual bodily harm,” pleading not guilty in August, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.
