This article was originally published by Hireup .

My heart stopped when I heard the news that a frail, 95-year-old woman had been Tasered by police. The headlines have shocked the country but for me they hit especially close to home. This tragedy is one of my biggest fears but not because I have a grandma with dementia. I don’t. I do, however, have children with disability.

Unable to communicate effectively and easily overwhelmed by the world around them, or the pain within them, my children – like Clare Nowland – sometimes exhibit fight or flight responses that others can deem ‘challenging’. And like Clare Nowland, those entrusted with their care have called the police when confronted with these ‘behaviours’.

It was only by luck that I arrived at my son’s school first. I’d received a call telling me he was “unsettled” and there had been an “incident”. I jumped in the car to collect him. I was talking with a friend on the phone as I walked into the school grounds. That’s when I heard the sirens.

A police van, packed with officers, raced into the school, lights flashing, sirens blaring.

“Something’s happening at the school,” I said to my friend. “A whole busload of police just arrived.”

I hung up and walked toward my son’s classroom. To my surprise, the police walked in the same direction.

“What are you here for?” I asked them. “We’ve been called because of a problem with a student,” they answered.

We kept walking toward the same classroom block, then it dawned on me. They were here for my son. A disabled child built like a toothpick. I looked around at the well-armed squad of well-built officers. Six of them followed me into the corridor where my son lay quietly and exhausted from the ordeal which had prompted the school to call me.

The police stood around as I spoke to school staff trying to figure out what had gone on. There seemed to be some confusion.

“Who here”, I asked the officers and teachers gathered, “has had any training in disability?” Only the teachers raised their hands.

Later, when I was home with my son, I called police headquarters to ask how we can stop history from repeating itself. “Tell the school not to call us”, was the officer’s response. He told me police hate being sent to situations like this. That they have no training in disability. That the only tools at their disposal in these cases are to subdue or restrain. And that they know how the headlines would look if they had Tasered, physically restrained or arrested, my young, disabled son.

This is why my anger wasn’t directed at the police that day, although it embedded a fear that still remains. My burning question then – and last week when I heard of Clare Nowland’s Tasering – was, why were the police called in the first place?

My children, like Ms Nowland, are entrusted to the care of people supposedly trained in how to support them. Why were they not able to do so? Why were the resources and skills not there?