BROWARD COUNTY, FLA. Alzheimer's victim is jailed after he won't stop driving

The man thinks he has a job as a traveling salesman.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) -- An Alzheimer's-stricken man who repeatedly violated a judge's instructions to stop driving was jailed for eight days before he was ordered transferred Friday to a secure nursing home.
Albert Brenner, 75, thinks he has a job as a traveling salesman peddling 1970s-era rotary telephones, his lawyer said.
Brenner was arrested and jailed June 3 after he was caught driving. He has previously been ordered to give up his license and car keys, and the man's family and lawyers have tried to keep him from getting behind the wheel.
Sent to hospital
On Wednesday, Judge Geoffrey D. Cohen ordered Brenner sent to a state mental hospital for criminals until his mental health can be "restored" and he can stand trial on battery charges involving a scuffle with his companion. Cohen said the elderly man posed a danger to the public and himself by insisting on driving.
Brenner remained in the Broward County Jail while waiting for space to open up at the mental hospital.
But Friday, Judge Michael Kaplan overruled the other judge and said Brenner should be placed in a secure state nursing home. Kaplan set another hearing for Tuesday to decide whether the elderly man is competent to stand trial on the battery charges.
Brenner's lawyer and a psychologist testified that his ability to reason can never be improved and that he did not belong in jail.
"It's not Albert Brenner's fault that he has Alzheimer's," his attorney Betsy Benson said Wednesday. "We have a person who is not going to become competent, who ... cannot follow the rules and regulations."
Can't understand
Brenner believes he has to get back to work, said public defender Howard Finkelstein. Friends, lawyers and family members have been unable to convince him that he no longer works.
No family member was in court Friday.
Judge Cohen initially ordered Brenner not to drive as a condition of being released from jail after he was arrested twice in 2002 on battery charges involving his companion, Irene Kaplan, then 86.
A caseworker later reported that Brenner was driving, and last month he was picked up again.
His traffic record includes a ticket for running a stop sign.
"He's not an imminent danger. He is not somebody who has it in his mind to harm someone else. Of course, he shouldn't be driving, but that's assuming he can remember he shouldn't be driving," said Dr. Trudy Block-Garfield, a psychologist who testified on his behalf.