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.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk