Under siege police boss Karen Webb has bizarrely claimed there’s ‘no right or wrong’ in her ‘bungled’ response to a 95-year-old great-grandmother being Tasered by one of her officers.
Fending off criticism of her handling of the tragedy, the NSW Police Commissioner said she was purely acting to protect the woman’s devastated family and the force’s reputation.
Clare Nowland died from injuries she suffered when she hit her head after being Tasered at a Cooma nursing home on May 17.
In a highly sympathetic interview with the Crim City podcast published on Friday, Commissioner Webb dismissed the public outcry over her response to the catastrophe, including her steadfast refusal to view the bodycam footage of 157cm dementia sufferer Mrs Nowland on a walking frame being jolted by one of her 188cm officers.
The top cop told the podcast she ignores ‘expectations from lounge chair critics’ who don’t understand police ‘process’.
She described her week under fire as Mrs Nowland remained on end-of-life care in Cooma Hospital after theTasering as ‘tricky’ – but said that ‘there was no right or wrong’.
‘There will always be someone to say “well you could have done that or you could have done this”,’ Webb said, ‘and I think there were certain reasons that we did things at the time and that was about protecting the family.’
As well as consistently refusing to watch the bodycam footage, Ms Webb has also stood by her decision to approve a media release that completely omitted the fact that 95-year-old was Tasered.
That release only said that Mrs Nowland ‘sustained injuries during an interaction with police at an aged care facility.’
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb has again doubled down on her handling of the massive controversy over the Tasering of 95-year-old Clare Nowland in her Cooma nursing home
Ms Webb sparked widespread backlash over her refusal to watch her officer Tasering Clare Nowland (above) to the ground and hitting her head. She described the criticism as ‘expectations from lounge chair critics’
The Commissioner described the ‘delicate’ investigation into one of her officers before he was charged with three offences including recklessly causing grievous bodily harm to Mrs Nowland.
The charges were laid within an hour of Mrs Nowland passing away one week after her Tasering.
Daily Mail Australia understands police requested Mrs Nowland’s family not speak publicly in the immediate aftermath of the incident.
Commissioner Webb told the News Corp podcast she stood by her decision to follow the right ‘process’ before Senior Constable Kristian White was charged over Mrs Nowland’s death.
‘There’s always ‘Could I have done X different or Y different’, but I think in those particular circumstances, and I hope I never see that repeated, (it was) tricky.
‘It was about ensuring I didn’t prejudice an investigation around the officer. It is delicate.’
The state’s top cop continues to refuse to watch footage of 188cm tall, 140kg Senior Constable Kristian White (above) firing his Taser into the chest of 157cm tall (five foot two), 43kg Mrs Nowland
Inside the lounge room of Yallambee nursing home at Cooma where Clare Nowland, 95, was living peacefully until her Tasering by a policeman a third of her age and, at 140kg, three times the 43kg great grandmother’s size
‘So, not everyone likes that, but ultimately I know that investigation will go through the process and that it shouldn’t be anything that I have said or done that would derail that.
‘I wouldn’t say it was the toughest week, it was a tough week, no doubt, because of the terrible incident and just the ramifications for the organisation and the expectations from what I call lounge chair critics sometimes not understanding that as much as we all want to know what happened, we still have to follow a process.’
Senior Constable Kristian White, 33, is facing three charges including recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault.
He has been suspended on full pay from the force and will appear in court on July 5 and intends to plead not guilty, his lawyer Warwick Anderson has said.
HOW POLICE COMMISSIONER WEBB FUMBLED 95-YEAR-OLD CLAIRE NOWLAND’S TASERING
NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb’s handling of the Tasering by one of her officers of 95-year-old Clare Nowland in a Cooma nursing home has been met with widespread backlash.
Webb has repeatedly refused to review footage of one of her officers Tasering a woman three times his age and a third of his size, describing calls to do so as ‘expectations from lounge chair critics’.
These are the main points about that received criticism about how police handled the case.
1. The media release
Commissioner Karen Webb stood by her decision to approve the initial police media release that omitted the fact that Clare Nowland was Tasered by an officer.
The initial media release stated that the 95-year-old ‘sustained injuries during an interaction with police at an aged care facility in the state’s south today in a nursing home’.
Webb said in her defence: ‘Mrs Nowland has a large family and we didn’t want that family to hear on radio or on TV what had happened to their mum, and so we had to be sensitive to that and when we were able to talk about it we did’.
She strongly denied police had wanted to obscure the nature of what had happened, and said police needed time to speak with family about the ‘unusual’ incident and that she ‘absolutely ‘ stood by its wording.
2. The bodycam
Webb repeatedly refused calls to watch police bodycam footage of the Tasering herself, claiming it would derail the investigation into police officers, even as they had yet to be charged.
This was despite her Assistant Commissioner Peter Cotter watching the footage, describing it as ‘confronting’ and detailing what it showed: Mrs Nowland in a small treatment room slowly approaching police on a walking frame, holding a serrated edged knife.
The footage is expected to show 188cm tall, 140kg Senior Constable Kristian White firing his Taser into the chest of 157cm tall (five foot two), 43kg Mrs Nowland causing her to fall to the ground and hit her head.
When asked why she hadn’t viewed footage of the incident which had ‘shocked the country, shocked the world’, Webb said: ‘Whether I watch the video or not is not going to make this investigation go any quicker’.
3. Speaking to the officer
Webb claimed she would not get closer to the case claiming she did not want to ‘taint’ the investigation, thus distancing herself from one of the NSW Police force’s greatest controversies.
‘It was about ensuring I didn’t prejudice an investigation around the officer,’ she said, although the officer was not charged until Clare Nowland passed away.
The officer is also said to be under mental health care supervision since the critical incident.
Asked on Seven’s Sunrise, just hours before Mrs Nowland died and Kristian White was charged, whether she had spoken with him, Webb admitted she still hadn’t.
‘No, he is currently not in the workplace. I will probably speak to him at some point,’ she said.
4. Wording of police statement
NSW Police took to social media within hours of Clare Nowland’s death, on the evening of May 24, to report her passing.
Again the wording of the notice was questionable, saying Mrs Nowland passed away ‘peacefully’ and that she was ‘surrounded by family and loved ones who have requested privacy’.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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