Crimes against senior citizens come in all varieties.
Last week an elderly woman was confronted in her home by a man who identified himself as an employee of a power company and refused to leave the premises until the woman began screaming, said Cmdr. Michael Perry of the Evanston Police Department.
Although crimes against senior citizens in Evanston rarely result in violence, an increasing number of cases have been reported recently in which seniors have been victims of less violent crimes, including financial abuse, theft and home repair fraud, said Amanda Jones, senior crime prevention specialist for EPD.These crimes can cost seniors millions of dollars in property loss and a lifetime of embarrassment and heartbreak.
“The word predatory doesn’t begin to describe the traumatic effect on someone,” Jones said.
In another recent Evanston incident, an elderly woman was escorted to a nearby bank by strangers who had talked her into withdrawing money to help their fake charitable cause, Jones said.
In another case, a senior citizen received an e-mail request for money from someone exiled abroad, appealing to the senior’s religious convictions, according to Jones.
The Senior Crime Prevention program was founded by a grant from the Levy Family Foundation to help educate seniors about the resources available to them within the police department. Jones serves as the liaison between EPD and the senior citizens of Evanston, who make up nearly 14 percent of the city’s population, according to Census 2000.
Senior citizens are frequently targets of scams because of their availability during the day and their willingness to trust strangers, she said.
Fraudulent mail sweepstakes and telemarketing schemers prey on senior citizens, who “weren’t raised to hang up on people,” Jones said.
“Sweepstakes are an equal opportunity offender because everyone has a mailbox,” Jones said. “I can’t put a cop by everyone’s phone in their living room and I can’t put a cop by everyone’s mailbox.”
Jones said the crime against seniors that she most abhors is ruse entry, or entering someone’s home through manipulation or other false pretenses. Victims of ruse entry, which many police officers refer to as “gypsy crimes,” are often distracted by one person while accomplices search the victim’s house for valuables, Jones said.
“The people who do this have made an industry out of it,” she said. “These people want to feel secure in their own homes. Because (the criminals) are invasive, I think they are extremely insidious.”
There have been 15 cases of ruse entry in Evanston since April 2001, according to Jones.
She said in one case, a senior citizen was victimized four times by four different groups of people over a period of several years.
“Over time they pretty much took everything there was to take,” she said.
Lately, ruse entry attempts have not resulted in significant theft, which Jones attributed to large-scale prevention and outreach efforts with the city’s seniors.
Nancy Flowers, the Long Term Care Ombudsman for the Evanston Commission on Aging, said the public needs to be educated about how to spot crimes against senior citizens.
“We need to educate the public to be more protective,” she said. “Part of the problem is that some of the victims are easy targets. It takes the police and the ombudsmen to intervene on their behalf.”
Jones said she works directly with a variety of citizen groups and local businesses to promote understanding of crimes against senior citizens and awareness techniques.
