You’re never too old to be killed by an interaction with a police officer in the United States: though the Guardian’s analysis of every police killing in 2015 to date found that the average age of people killed by police is 37, some 20 people killed this year have been in their 60s, seven in their 70s, and two in their 80s – about six elderly people a month.
The circumstances behind the killing of elder citizens by police mirror the many reasons why Americans of all ages (some 473 in total this year as of the time this was published) are killed by police.
But police encounters with the elderly which turn deadly are largely triggered by three things: vehicular slaughter; episodes of extreme violence – sometimes with the victim possibly intending to die as a result of the encounter; and “welfare checks”, when police are called to check up on an elderly person, which often happens to people with dementia.
A lot of these deaths involve cars. The oldest person slain in 2015 was 87-year-old Louis Becker: a former police chief himself, Becker was killed when his truck collided with a New York State police trooper’s vehicle. Hue Dang, a 64-year-old woman in New Jersey, was struck and killed by a Hackensack police detective’s car; there were no witnesses. Bernard Moore, a 62-year-old black man crossing the street to get to where he worked, was struck by a police car which a witness said was speeding; its lights and sirens were off and the driver was not responding to a call according to footage from a gas station security video. Jeffrey Surnow, a 63-year-old white Michigan man on vacation in Hawaii, was struck by a cop car while biking. Dean Bucheit, a 64-year-old white man in Los Angeles, and Howard Robbins, a 69-year-old white man in Kentucky, were both struck on roads by cops at night.
Elderly people aren’t strictly killed in accidents. Robert Francis Mesch, a white 61-year-old Austin man whose wife called cops saying he was suicidal, allegedly assaulted his wife, fled, led police on a car chase, pointed a gun at them and was shot. Richard Weaver, an 83-year-old white man whom neighbors described as schizophrenic, was shot by police in Oklahoma who said he was wielding a machete. Donald Hicks, a 61-year-old white man, was tasered and then shot after cops said he failed to drop his gun; Richard White, a 63-year-old black man, was shot after cops said he was going through Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans with six molotov cocktails. Jimmy Foreman, 71, was shot after after killing his stepson.
But several elderly killings happened after concerned people people called the police to perform wellness checks on the elderly and unwell. Relatives of James Allen, a 74-year-old black man in North Carolina, asked cops to check on him after heart surgery; he was hard of hearing, police entered his house through the back door and, finding him with a gun, shot him. Douglas Harris, a 77-year-old black Alabama man, was approached in his home by a Birmingham Firefighter and Police officer after hearing reports he had dementia. The officer found him pointing a gun and shot him.
Meanwhile, there are some people in American society – old and young – who seemingly never have to worry about the police turning violent on them, no matter how much they threaten the use of violence by brandishing weapons. Last week, this dude was allowed to terrorize Muslims at their mosque while decked out in full combat camouflage and wielding what looked to some like a machine gun. This week, Jim Cooley walked around Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport brandishing an AR-15 rifle with a 100 rounds of ammunition without anything happening to him. And for years 67-year-old Cliven Bundy has had an ongoing armed standoff with the federal government, yet still “feels no pressure to pay a cent of the $1.2m” in unpaid taxes he owes.
These Americans, inexplicably, can walk around free of worry they’ll ever face mortal police danger, like the young college students at Texas colleges who will soon be able to carry around guns on campus legally (and like Texans who will probably be able to carry around holstered guns anywhere in the Lone Star State soon).
But it’s unlikely that neither the armed elderly (whether in public, or just trying to stand their ground when someone storms their house) nor the mentally ill elderly will be afforded any such similar leeway.
That welfare checks for the elderly with dementia could turn harmful is a cause for concern, given how mental illness in general often provokes violent encounters with police. What is a person to do who is trying to take care of an elderly person with dementia who turned violent, as states cut mental health budgets? Call 911? Does that seem safe when 27% of people killed by police in 2015 – 122 so far – had mental health issues? When a 2012 investigation in Maine found that about half of all police killings involved people with mental health issues? When Sierra Reyes called 911 for an ambulance to help with her bipolar son, only to have him wind up dying after encountering police instead?
You’re never too old to be harmed by the police. Indeed, the injustice of calling the cops for a wellness check might not end even after the death of the person you’re calling for. After a 65-year-old failed to show up for work, prosecutors in Manhattan this week charged that that the NYPD officer sent to check up on him found him dead and “helped herself to a corpse’s credit card to buy herself ... a diamond ring online from Zales for $3,282.58.”
The officer was not shot upon her arrest.
- This article was corrected on 5 June 2015 to clarify several details about the killings described.