Criminals who prey on senior citizens will have more targets in coming years as baby boomers age, but some people worry police and prosecutors will let the scams, abuse and neglect go unpunished.

Police officers often stereotype seniors as too fragile, forgetful or long-winded to be good witnesses in court, according to an expert at a recent Lawrence Police Department training seminar. On top of that, officers, dispatchers and front-desk clerks are not trained to spot signs of abuse, said San Diego Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Greenwood.

Both police and prosecutors, he said, sometimes shy from getting involved in older victims’ domestic situations. And if a crime happens in a nursing home, police often fear to cross its threshold, a Lawrence advocate for the elderly said.

“I have seen it be the case that you’re lucky if they even go in and investigate the crime,” said Margaret Farley, a board member for the group Kansas Advocates for Better Care.

A local problem?

About 50 people attended Greenwood’s seminar at the Lawrence Police Department’s Investigation and Training Center, 4820 W. 15th St.

Lawrence Police Chief Ron Olin said Greenwood’s visit was not in response to any specific problems here; rather, it was more a response to demographics.

Kansas’ population older than 65 is expected to nearly double by 2025, while other age groups grow by 5 percent to 10 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“This was an awareness issue, and it’s just a training seminar,” he said. “We deal with relatively few senior citizens.”

The issues Greenwood described are familiar to senior advocate Farley, an attorney who represents people injured in nursing homes.

Oversight of residential nursing homes falls to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and Farley said police sometimes fail to investigate crimes inside the homes because they feel it’s a state regulatory matter.

She recalled one Douglas County case in which a woman living in a nursing home had a handprint on her face. Police weren’t able to find a suspect, she said, even though it would have been easy to document who was with the woman around the time she was injured.

Farley said there’s no reason to believe that the response to elder abuse in Douglas County is any worse — or any better — than in other places.

“I have not seen any particular leadership in this area in Douglas County,” Farley said.

Douglas County Dist. Atty. Christine Kenney disagrees. She said her office was taking a leadership role by co-sponsoring Greenwood’s visit instead of standing by as the population ages.

“We want to be part of the solution up-front,” she said.

Seniors’ opinions

A group of senior citizens shooting pool at Douglas County Senior Services, 745 Vt., seemed mostly pleased to hear about the law-enforcement training.

“I’m really happy about it myself,” 74-year-old Ed Athey said.

Delbert Bradley, 74, said he’s been treated with respect during a few brief contacts with law-enforcement officials. Then again, he said, he’s never had a serious crime to report.

“I think they have swept some of it under the rug,” he said.

Greenwood said a lack of education about the common types of crimes might be one reason Olin’s officers aren’t seeing much of senior citizens.

¢ Kansas Elder Law Network¢ National Center on Elder Abuse

Reports of elder abuse in San Diego began to skyrocket after Greenwood’s office began a public-awareness campaign, he said.

“As I understand, we probably should be getting about 10 times the number of reports we really are getting,” said Mary Transue, the Lawrence social-work supervisor of the state’s Adult Protective Services division, which investigates abuse against seniors outside of nursing homes.

Often, seniors who become the victim of a crime are afraid to report it because they don’t want to lose independence, Greenwood told the crowd. Often, they don’t want to press charges because the person they accuse is a caregiver, he said. But prosecutors and police need to remember that’s no reason to let a case drop.

Kenney said that even with a cooperative victim, there were logistical problems that made it hard to prosecute crimes against the elderly.

“It’s very difficult just getting them here to testify,” she said of elderly crime victims.