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Boardman police to start senior check-in program
BOARDMAN
Police Chief Jack Nichols remembers an incident a few years ago when a woman in her 80s nearly died after collapsing in a bathtub.
“She was in there for a few days,” he recalled. Fortunately, she was alive when police found her.
The case is not unique — Boardman police get those types of calls two or three times a week.
“Most of our guys have had that experience,” Nichols said.
Those incidents should soon decrease, however, as Nichols plans to add a senior check-in program to the department within the next year or so, an idea that other communities in the area have implemented in recent years.
“We have a growing senior population, and we get an awful lot of calls. Usually it’ll come from the mailman, or the paperboy, or a neighbor,” Nichols said. “They’ll say, ‘We haven’t seen Mr. Jones for a while.’ Then we’ll have to force our way into the home,” and the person often will be injured or, in some cases, dead, he said.
The township isn’t the only community with an aging population; 2013 U.S. Census Bureau data indicate that nearly 19 percent of Mahoning and Trumbull counties’ population is 65 years or older. That’s higher than the state figure of 15.1 percent and the national figure of 14.1 percent.
This program, which Nichols first proposed to Boardman Township trustees a few years ago, would allow residents to sign up for automated calls to verify their welfare.
“They would get a computer-generated phone call every day,” Nichols explained.
After answering the call, the individual would then have to select an option that indicates they are OK. If they don’t answer, a call would then go to a relative. The next step would be to send a police officer to the person’s home to check on them.
Other communities in the area recently started similar programs.
Liberty Township, for example, has a program for seniors in which they can choose among options ranging from a designated time they check in with the police department to an option in which an officer or volunteer visits the resident once a week or more.
Poland Township recently started a similar program.
The goal is to cut down on those instances that frequently are heard about — an elderly person living on his or her own falls down, can’t get up and no one finds the person for days, for example.
Boardman’s system will be slightly different because the township is more heavily populated, with more than 40,000 residents.
“It would have to be automated in order to get the sheer volume of calls every day accomplished,” Nichols said.
Depending on the response to the program, Nichols said it might require the department to hire additional help. The software and hardware itself will cost about $20,000, a price Nichols says is well worth it.
“It’s one of the things we can do for not a very huge cost that would be a benefit to a pretty good size segment of our population,” he said.
Township trustees support the idea.
“A lot of seniors in the area don’t have a lot of family in the area anymore, and they need more support from the community,” Trustee Larry Moliterno said. “We just want to make sure we’re looking out for these folks.”
“It’s definitely something we should have,” said Trustee Brad Calhoun.
Additional services for seniors was one promise made during the 2011 police levy campaign, he said.
“This is really the last piece of that levy,” he said. “I know it’s going to save someone.”