What is it with coppers and granny-zapping lately? In news that went around the world, police in Australia last week tasered a 95-year-old. The woman died following the incident. “Hold our non-lethal weapon,” say British rozzers.
Dementia-suffering woman, 91, ‘handcuffed, hooded and strapped down by Met police’ after cops aim taser at her.
The incident took place in Peckham on May 9, after police were called out to a disturbance between a woman and her carer.
It is certainly an issue that dementia sufferers can grow violent. Which is apparently the case, here. The woman also allegedly spat on police.
So, some form of restraint, including the spit hood, may — may — have some justification (hey, would you stand there and let someone spit on you?).
But this is a nonogenarian granny we’re talking about, not some hulking teenage lout.
Handcuffs alone seem a bit excessive. And a taser…?
Officers also aimed a taser at the woman, but did not use it.
A former senior Met police officer said he didn’t understand why such force had to be used on a clearly vulnerable, elderly woman – adding that the restraint could have been fatal.
The Met has referred itself to police watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). One officer has been suspended and five are on restricted duties while the IOPC investigation is carried out.
Describing the scene, one neighbour told the Sun: “I could hear her crying and screaming. I looked out my window and could see they had her strapped down on a stretcher – it was awful.
“There were two police cars and a van – you would think with all those people they would be able to manage it without tying her down.”
LBC
Have coppers been watching too many old Monty Python re-runs? You may recall a classic Python sketch about gangs of vicious grannies beating up fit young men.
But that’s to make light of an horrific pair of occurrences that led, in one case, to the death of an old woman.
A 95-year-old woman who was tasered by police in her Australian nursing home last week has died, police in New South Wales said Wednesday.
Clare Nowland, a great-grandmother, had been in critical condition in hospital with serious head injuries sustained when she fell to the floor after being tasered.
Interestingly, when police first made the incident public, they omitted the tasering part. But their fuller explanation doesn’t get any better.
Last week, NSW Police Force Assistant Commissioner Peter Cotter told reporters that police were called to Nowland’s care home in the town of Cooma, New South Wales, around 4:15 a.m. to reports of a resident with a knife.
“At the time she was tasered, she was approaching police. It is fair to say at a slow pace. She had a walking frame. But she had a knife,” Cotter told reporters on Friday […]
Family friend Andrew Thaler said before the incident Nowland was frail and unable to stand unaided. She weighed just 43 kilograms (95 pounds) and was 5-foot-2 (1.58 meters) tall and was suffering dementia.
CNN
Some things just beggar belief, really.