Brickbat: Shocking Mistreatment

A former Australian police officer faces up to 25 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of manslaughter in the death of a 95-year-old woman with dementia. Clare Nowland lived in a New South Wales nursing home, where staff called police because she had a knife. Officer Kristian White and another officer tried for about three minutes to get her to drop the knife, before White said "bugger it" and used his Taser on her. Nowland fell and struck her head. She died about a week later from an inoperable brain bleed.

Comments

[AT]

So, hopefully any sane person would take into account the age and fall risk. However, there is a question of how long 5-0 should entertain anyone - lucid or demented - brandishing a weapon.

Obviously more than three minutes in these circumstances - let's just make that perfectly clear. But demented (age or insanity) suspects are a tough one for a cop. You really can't meaningfully approach them without risking an appreciable potential for harm. Yea, granny might have the physical strength of a newborn hamster, but it doesn't take much for a wildly swung blade to do some serious harm.

It's not reasonable to expect a cop take a slash or a stab just because they have to subdue a demented old lady. But "bugger it" with callous disregard sure isn't a reasonable alternative.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

TFA says it was a steak knife. Throw a blanket around her. She's unlikely to slice through a blanket with a steak knife, and a good heavy blanket is probably more weight than a 95-year old woman in a walker can support very long. Rush her in those several seconds while she's confused and waving that blanket around and her arm is drooping. If you get the blanket over her head too, she won't see your colleague coming up from behind, especially if she's already using a walker which generally takes two hands.

[mad.casual]

Because no one in the history of ever has ever died from a cloth being placed over their head? Brilliant!

When your colleague gets stabbed from beneath the blanket or because throwing a blanket over her causes her to predictably start lurching and slashing wildly and she still winds up falling, hitting her head, and/or otherwise dying with a blanket on her head it you can get criticized on the internet as the state agent with the brilliant idea to just throw a blanket over the issue. Great work, Stupid!

Or, as AT is trying to point out or hedge toward, this, once again, wasn't some roving band of badge-wearing thugs looking for a random citizen to harass and not every game ends with sugar cookies and rainbow unicorn farts.

"Stupid games, stupid prizes." Not my monkeys, not my circus and even if it were, of the authoritative circus that is Australia the one dementia-addled 95-yr.-old and the cop facing 25 yrs. for manlsaughter for it, is not at the top of my list of issues needing resolved.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

Quite a substantial non-reply. 95 years old, in a walker. Did you miss that part?

[Vernon Depner]

SHE WAS COMIN' RIGHT AT ME!

[mad.casual]

You mean this part?

White and another officer responded to a triple-0 call made by staff as the great-grandmother roamed the facility in her walker, initially holding two knives and entering other residents' rooms.

Weird how you were flummoxed by *one* knife and a walker. It's almost like you're trying to downplay the staff's responsibility in the matter, both for ensuring their resident's safety initially *and* for summoning the police, who can't exactly refuse the call, to do it for them.

You do realize that, for all the "non-reply" bravado, you're not convincing anyone that you're not any sort of honest/moral or intellectual superior to the officers involved, right?

Realize that it's obvious that you don't want to head the issue off at any of several points before it's a problem because, like ENB on abortion, Fiona on the border, or any of a dozen other "mostly peaceful" Reason contributors, that doesn't allow you to signal your "libertarian" virtues. Like them, you don't really want this person to live, you need this person to die in the presence of officers. Otherwise, people won't know how morally upright you are for opposing police officers even if someone else directly or equally neglectfully precipitated the issue and called them to deal with it.

[mad.casual]

Also, while I'm unclear on where exactly "culturally Australian steak knife" puts us, I'm pretty clear on where providing them to seemingly pretty advanced dementia sufferers puts us.

[mad.casual]

But "bugger it" with callous disregard sure isn't a reasonable alternative.

Says you. Nationalize your health services. Declare the brain bleed inoperable. Deign the action "Voluntary Assisted Dying". Deny, deny, deny whenever anyone says something like 'Death Squads'. Problem(s) solved, call it a day.

[Brandybuck]

Strong disagree. A knife is not a ranged weapon, especially in the hands of a geriatric woman. One could hold off such an "assailant" indefinitely. And I use the word "assailant" in the loosest possible sense. It's an old folks home, surely there's a set of blankets somewhere that could be used to safely subdue and neutralize her.

This modern culture of cops being afraid of nicking a fingernail has to stop. They made the career decision to put their life on the line for the safety of the public, and tasering a 95 year old granny because she was a bit loopy with a knife does not fall under that career umbrella. They're job description is to put themselves into harms way to protect the public.

There's far too much apologizing for skert cops in this forum. But regardless, "bugger it" is not the expected response of a skert cop, not even if he were afraid of a toy poodle yapping at him. Jeepers cripes, this guy needs to do the time and never work around weapons ever again. Hell, keep him away from butter knives, he might flip out and kill someone else.

[AT]

Strong disagree. A knife is not a ranged weapon, especially in the hands of a geriatric woman. One could hold off such an "assailant" indefinitely.

So, your answer to the question: "how long 5-0 should entertain anyone - lucid or demented - brandishing a weapon" is... indefinitely?

You know she could harm herself too, right? And inaction, in such a case, would be as harshly judged.

Now, again, I'm not saying that "bugger it, zap the old bat" is or should have been the proper response. But if your answer the question I asked is "indefinitely," then - sorry - you're wrong.

What's the correct answer then? I don't know. Changes with every scenario. Sometimes it's justified, other times it's not. This seems like the latter. Doesn't mean it always is.

They're job description is to put themselves into harms way to protect the public.

No, their job description is to protect and serve. And when a member of "the public" is the one who's a threat - they have every right, and legal authority even, by virtue of their absolute monopoly on use of force, to employ said force to defend themselves or others. (At least in America. I don't know about NSW.)

Yes, I would agree with you fully that a cop's duty is to put himself between a criminal suspect intent on harm to an innocent (protect, serve). I would disagree however - and call you an idiot - if you think that means they should be obligated to accept harm in order to prevent injury to a suspect. Even a demented one.

And if you disagree with me, let's consider the scenario of a barricaded gunman. Should however many cops as necessary march into certain death hoping to run him out of ammunition so whoever's left can then take him, or (absent any other solution) should a sniper just blow his head off first chance he gets?

This isn't an issue of scared cops afraid of injury. It's an issue of how one de-escalates a situation when one side is no longer rational. Zapping an old woman to death out of impatience likely isn't the correct answer. But if you think you know what is, I'd posit that you're Monday Morning Quarterbacking (with an observable amount of prejudice to it, at that).

[Fist of Etiquette]

The taser is a compliance device. Coppers expect compliance and will not wait long for it because they don't get paid for the time you're not complying.

[Vernon Depner]

Never call the police.

[mad.casual]

Never provide knives to advanced dementia patients in your care and then call the police for help with your problem.

[Brandybuck]

It was a steak knife but such things are not uncommon in old folks homes. Not given to dementia patients, but still available. Doesn't mean it was one of those strong high end steakhouse knives sturdy enough to chop wood, but enough that a patient not on a masticated or pureed diet could cut their slice of ham or salisbury steak.

Also, the idea that she was provided such a knife is merely an excuse to defend a cop who tasered a 95 year old woman because there was no yapping lap dog nearby to shoot instead.

[mad.casual]

TL, DR: If it was such a knife then doubly fuck them for calling the police, and doubly fuck you for making excuses for them. Fuck off, you dishonest, self-righteous slaver cunts.

So you're saying it was on the 'butter knife' end of the steak knife spectrum, that no one else on staff could disarm a 95 yr. old woman with a butter-knife-cum-steak-knife, and that the 95 yr. old woman with a butter-knife-cum-steak-knife still posed such a threat as to necessitate calling the police? Police who can't refuse the call and could just as easily wind up knocking her down or causing a fall without a taser as with... just like any member of the staff? And *I'm* the once making excuses? And again, excuses for what? I said I think he should stand trial for manslaughter but that 25 yrs. for causing an old person to fall and brain bleed to death a week later is grossly cruel and unusual for anyone civilian or police.

Again, these kinds of stories are great because it really draws out the "mostly peaceful" libertarians who don't actually want problems solved, issues addressed, or personal responsibility (without a badge) acknowledged, but just want to signal their virtue opportunistically when a 95 yr. old woman dies and someone gets tried for her accidental death.

Do you think you're creating a environment of less crime and more honest policing by giving everyone without a badge a pass for any action no matter how bad and foreseeable the consequences? Because that would seem like a way to set up a self-perpetuating cycle that posits yourself as the supreme moral and intellectual authority akin to what Progressives have done with The Science and education and the Deep State/DOJ. If only we, sorry we and Australia, had you and Stupid Government Tricks to tell us exactly who the right Top Men are to subdue a 95 yr. old woman with a knife without precipitating her demise Libertopia would ensue!

Fuck off, you dishonest, self-righteous slaver cunts.

[mad.casual]

Shocking Mistreatment

I get the pun but it obfuscates the facts and biases the narrative a little bit.

If this were some private person in an alley tasing or choking a crazy knife-wielding mental patient to death it wouldn't be that shocking (in the figurative, non-pun, sense). Which brings us to/begs the question: What exactly is the appropriate treatment for a knife-wielding individual who is apparently not in control of their own faculties? My personal answer: you have formally left clearly demarcated libertarian territory and are, at best, stumbling in the moral and epistemological woods with nothing but your education and cultural/religious background to lead you to wherever it is, again definitively outside libertarian-controlled territory, that you are headed.

Criminal punishment seems perfectly warranted but, even for an officer of the law, 25 yrs. in exchange for someone who clearly didn't have 25 yrs. left themselves, given all the other circumstances precipitations of the threat that other parties could've similarly foreseeably and authoritatively prevented, seems 'cruel and unusual'.

[Stupid Government Tricks]

"I don't know the answer, but here's the answer."

[See.More]

Reads more like, "I don't know the answer, but here is an answer." Seems kinda warranted by the "My personal answer:" phrase.

[mad.casual]

You'd think, even without 'my personal' the references to wandering in the woods and whereever it (your destination) is, would make it clear, but I guess he doesn't identify as Stupid for nothing.