‘People could literally die’: Wake GOP asks sheriff to restore senior wellness checks

Wake County Republicans are calling on Sheriff Gerald Baker to reinstate a daily wellness check for senior citizens, calling its cancellation a dangerous move that could lead to deaths.

Last month Baker announced the Citizens Well-Check Program, started by former Sheriff Donnie Harrison, would end starting July 1.

Under the program, residents could get daily “robo-calls” if they were at least 65 and had an available relative, according to Wake County’s website. If the senior did not answer the first call or a second attempt, the Sheriff’s Office would call the emergency contact number. Without an answer, it would dispatch a deputy.

Now, instead of getting the automated calls, Baker said, seniors would be asked to call 911 or to call 919-856-6911 to check in.

“When the senior well-check program was created by the former administration, it was never designed to meet the needs of the majority of seniors in Wake County,” Baker’s spokesman Eric Curry said Monday. “After a thorough review of the program, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office can best serve all seniors through the “Calls for Service” program ... If a senior citizen needs help, the closest deputy will respond.”

The program only served 75 people without a waiting list. “Thus the reason for the change,” Curry said.

Weak and vulnerable

On Monday, Wake Republican leaders held a news conference to show their concern for seniors unable to make their own calls.

“People could literally die,” said Nzinga Johnson of the party’s executive committee. “These are elderly people who live alone. Because it’s getting so hot, there could be deaths.”

Steve Hale, a retired Wake deputy who said he once supervised Baker as a patrol officer, said the program costs no more than the electricity to run a computer.

“These citizens are some of the weakest and most vulnerable among us,” Hale said. “They raised and cared for us as children.”

Elected to a four-year term in 2018, Baker has faced both praise and criticism over his department ending cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal immigration agency. Critics have also targeted him for ending Taser use among deputies — a decision Republican opponent David Blackwelder, who has already said he plans to run for sheriff in the future, tweeted in June “will only lead to more deadly force.”

‘Vital service’

During the news conference, Roy Taylor, who is chief of the Capitol Special Police and a former Wake deputy, called the wellness checks a “vital service” to seniors. He stressed that he is a Democrat.

He recalled his officers finding an elderly woman who had rolled off her bed and gotten stuck between the mattress and the wall, where she lay for three to four days before anyone found and helped her.

“She was in agony,” Taylor said. “Had she had the benefit of this type of program, she would have been found in a day.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2019 at 12:59 PM.