South Carolina Nursing Home Blog : South Carolina Nursing Home Lawyer & Attorney : Poliakoff & Associates Law Firm : Elderly Care, Senior Care

Chicago Tribune had a scary article about Federal, state and county officials finding dozens of resdients with outstanding arrest warrants and wanted on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to burglary to assault.  The raids involved about 20 federal marshals and Cook County sheriff's police.  Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan initiated the sweep in response to Tribune investigative reports about Illinois nursing facilities that house high numbers of felons and sex offenders.

Five people were arrested, including a sex offender wanted in another state for failing to register. In three cases, the residents were too sick to be taken into custody, and the other warrants were not immediately enforceable because they were issued in other jurisdictions.  The team found nine people with outstanding warrants when it swept Columbus Park Nursing & Rehabilitation Center on Chicago's West Side and another nine at Heather Health Center in Harvey.

Authorities also examined records for Somerset Place on the North Side and discovered three residents with outstanding warrants, but jurisdictional limits prevented immediate arrests.

The number of felons known to be living in Illinois nursing homes has grown as the state increasingly relied on the facilities to house younger psychiatric patients, thousands of whom have criminal records.  The Tribune reported that Illinois State Police once ran similar sweeps of nursing homes for felons with outstanding warrants and unregistered sex offenders. From January 2005 through June 2006, when 20 northern Illinois nursing homes were swept and roughly 80 fugitives and sex offenders removed, state police in that region recorded a nearly 67 percent decrease in nursing home abuse and neglect complaints, according to a department citation issued to the sweeps unit.   But the program was halted after five years in 2006 because federal regulators questioned whether the sweeps were an appropriate use of Medicaid anti-fraud funds. State police were not part of Tuesday's sweeps.

The Tribune has reported that the criminal background checks and risk assessments carried out for new residents of the state's nursing homes were riddled with errors and omissions.

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The PressRepublican.com had a story about a nursing home employee who took and shared private inappropriate photos of residents in his care.  Shane Spooner has been ordered to jail and probation for taking sexually explicit photos of a traumatic-brain-injury patient in his care.  He was working at Clinton County Nursing Home when he took the inappropriate cell-phone picture of the 49-year-old and sent it via text message to a female co-worker.  Spooner had three prior misdemeanor convictions.  After investigating, authorities charged Spooner with second-degree unlawful surveillance and first-degree dissemination of an unlawful surveillance image.  Within two weeks of his August arrest, Spooner pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge of attempted first-degree dissemination of an unlawful surveillance image.  He was sentenced to 45 days in County Jail for taking the picture. He was also ordered to complete three years probation and pay a $500 fine, along with a $200 surcharge.

Shane Spooner has said that he took a picture of the man's genitals for his own amusement, an act that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has called "a disgusting example of abuse within the walls of a New York nursing home."

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A night shift nurse accused of sexually abusing patients at an Ohio nursing home entered a plea arrangement for 12 1/2 years in prison. John Riems entered an Alford plea to four counts of sexual battery and one count of gross sexual imposition. In an Alford plea, a defendant acknowledges there is enough evidence for a conviction but does not admit guilt.

Riems, 50, was videotaped last January telling authorities that he abused about 100 patients at various nursing homes since the 1980s.  Defense attorney Troy Wisehart tried to keep the videotape out of the trial arguing that Riems was coerced into the confession by aggressive detectives.

I hope he has to serve every minute of that time.  You can find the entire story here.

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Colleen Jenkins of the St. Petersburg Times had an article on the conditions of abused residents and the failure to prosecute the health care providers to the fullest extent of the law.  The article explains the living conditions in Daphne Jones' boarding home in West Tampa.   After finding elderly and disabled people crammed into windowless bedrooms without air conditioning or enough drinking water in August 2007, authorities arrested Jones on 18 felony counts of adult abuse.  Jones pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count, for which she will serve six months of probation and 25 hours of community service. Her attorney said the whole ordeal had been overblown.

Prosecutors offered little explanation for the lack of a jail sentence.

Jones had pulled a bait-and-switch scheme. Some residents' family members said they thought their loved ones were living in Jones' 6,000-square-foot gated mansion in Temple Terrace. The property was licensed by the state as an adult family care home.  The families were upset to learn their loved ones had been moved to the boarding house, sharing one bathroom and sleeping on bunk beds.

Tampa police officers arrived on Aug. 9, 2007, after receiving a tip about neglect.  The air conditioning had been broken and the residents were dehydrated.   Goudie said she took the deposition of one former resident who had bad things to say about the boarding house. The woman substantiated the information about the air conditioning.

Elrod Curry, 64, of Plant City, said his family had suspected that "something strange" was going on at the boarding house where his sister, Rosa Wilson, lived, but she couldn't tell them much because her mind came and went. He said Thursday that Jones' sentence seemed too light.

In 2003, a federal judge sentenced Jones to 24 months of probation and ordered her to pay $41,000 in restitution to the Social Security Administration after she misrepresented her financial situation when applying for benefits for her son, who has cerebral palsy.

After her most recent arrest, the state Agency for Health Care Administration fined Jones $20,000 and revoked her license for not cooperating with the agency.

On Thursday, she pleaded guilty to culpable negligence. That charge resulted from one elderly female resident who had to be hospitalized for severe dehydration after police arrived.

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