What Does It Signify When Police Refuse To Do Well Checks?

In Tucson, AZ, police refuse to perform wellness checks, placing at risk the lives of older people. Is this the kind of society we want to live in?

A reclusive, older neighbor, whom I don’t know, stopped taking out her trash weeks ago.

Her house lights didn’t go on at night. Her car hadn’t moved in years. All the tires were flat.

When I looked out my window at night, I imagined her lying on a cold floor in the darkness, either incapacitated or worse. It was distressing.

I called police and asked them to perform a well check visit.

The police told me they were too busy and suggested I knock on my neighbor’s door to find out if she was okay. I did, twice, yelling out that I didn’t want to be a bother but was just checking to see if she is all right. There was no answer either time. I saw election materials from early November on the door.

To make a long story short, this is how learned that police stopped doing well check visits under a policy announced in 2021 by Tucson’s Democratic Mayor Regina Romero in response to a supposed “police staffing shortage.”

Welfare checks are standard police practice in most jurisdictions, considered to be a critical safety net for vulnerable community members, including older people.

Yet, in 2021, The Arizona Star reported that Tucson police will “no longer handle reports” of non-criminal homeless activity on public property, minor noise complaints, panhandling, suicidal individuals who pose no threat to others, and “requests for welfare checks.”

It should be obvious that well checks are qualitatively different from panhandling and minor noise complaints. The latter are irritants. Police responding to a well check request could potentially save the life of a person who is incapacitated due to neglect, illness, or crime.

It seems almost criminal for a city to simply forego police well checks without prior notice and public discussion about the implications of such a move.

Illegal Immigration

What’s this really about? I have no doubt that Tucson has a police shortage but … Arizona has suffered terribly from unfettered illegal immigration, which Mayor Romero and other Democratic leaders in Arizona welcomed with open arms.

Officials have quietly diverted precious resources from long-time residents who paid taxes and lived in Tucson all their lives to illegal immigrants. Tucson taxpayers now foot the bill for housing, schools and health care for illegal immigrants. Plus, Tucson police are kept busy with crime from violent drug gangs and sex traffickers from Mexico, which is one hour away.

In 2020, Arizona had the second-highest rate of violent crimes per capita when compared to the western states. The Tucson Metropolitan Statistical Area had a rate of 473.5 violent crimes per 100,000 residents that year, compared to a violent crime rate of 387.8 per 100,000 residents in the United States.

Folks from Martha’s Vineyard may not understand this but when Tucson residents call the police, there is no assurance the police will respond in a timely manner - or at all - unless they hear buzz words like “guns” and “weapons.”

Plus, well checks can get messy when the individual has mental health problems.

Only Life and Death

There is little research on the topic, but it is thought most requests for well checks involve older people. This demographic is historically devalued by society. Perhaps that’s why Mayor Romero and Tucson police summarily disposed of well checks by simply announcing a new policy. They didn’t expect blowback, and they got none.

Should it be a potential death sentence for an older person living alone to fall and be unable to reach their phone?

When I complained that my neighbor could be dead or dying, police told me to contact Adult Protective Services (APS) in Phoenix, which is two and a half hours away. The APS is a division of a state agency, Aging and Adult Services, which monitors “vulnerable” individuals age 18 and older who cannot protect themselves from “abuse, neglect or exploitation by others because of a physical or mental impairment.” (AZ Revised Statute 46-451) A major focus of the APS is financial exploitation, or theft of an older person’s assets by a family member or a person in a position of trust and confidence.

Ultimately, Tucson decided the lives of older people are not worth the bother.

The APS has no police power. It must apply to a court for a “special visitation warrant” to enter the home of an adult believed to be incapacitated or abused. Police, on the other hand, can forcibly enter the home if there are “exigent” circumstances or signs of an emergency.

An Update

I returned home the other night and was shocked to see a light on at the home in question.

I felt a sense of relief. Maybe she hadn’t paid the light bill? In any case, older people are entitled to live the way they want. If she chooses not to answer the door to reassure a pesky neighbor that she’s okay, so be it.

But I am troubled - even disgusted - that the city I call home has so little regard for the lives of its older residents.

Pew Research says that about 33% of older women in the U.S. live alone, and 22% of older men. These people should matter to our elected representatives. But they obviously don’t.