of the honorable Senator's consideration and the people sitting in the House and the Senate in Washington. While I do not know the answers, I am not a lawyer, I am a cop, frankly; but let me be very honest in my opinion of what's happened since some of the things that's happened on Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1961, and then you can draw your own inferences as to why you are being assaulted and knocked down and robbed. But let me just cite you a few of them.

go

The Mapp v. Ohio, Escobedo v. Illinois, Miranda v. Arizona, Wade v. The United States, and Gault v. Arizona, all are cases which directly to the exclusionary rule of law which requires that any evidence obtained in the violation of constitutional rights of an individual must be excluded from the weight of evidence in the prosecution of the defendant. Now, let me just explain that perhaps in my own terms as a policeman.

MORE CONSIDERATION TO VICTIM'S RIGHTS

I am not against the Constitution of the United States, God bless us, I love this country and we need it and I am for every bit of it, and I am for everybody's rights. But I think it is about time consideration was given to your rights besides the criminal's, and just as much and even weighed more so your rights rather than the little, small, technical errors that are made in a warrant that causes it to become defective and the hardened criminal is released to walk the streets and to prey upon you again.

Recidivism is the cause of most of our crime and this can be proven over and over and over again because I can name to you over and over and over again the same people day in and day out walking into the training school, walking out, coming back into the street, going to the jail, suspended sentences, probation, no bail, low bail, personal recognizance, and if you don't think this has had an effect on your living, then there is something wrong with my thinking. [Applause.]

Let me just go a little bit further and then I will be very happy to cease my testimony. The Mapp case in Ohio began the special rule whereby all evidence secured in violation of constitutional rights of an individual is excluded is applicable to all lower courts. Now, I go along with that, that is a reasonable thing; I think the Supreme Court has done some good things. I am not against everything they have done. Escobedo case in Illinois was decided, accused persons have the right of assistance of counsel not only at trial, but also at the critical stages of investigation. That is the sixth amendment protection.

Now, the case of Mr. Escobedo, Danny Escobedo in Chicago, Ill., was that he was questioned by the police and that when a lawyer attempted to see him, the police did not allow him to be seen, and as a result the lawyer could see him through the doors and he felt this was a violation of his constitutional rights that the police withheld and would not let him be talked to by his attorney. I am not opposed to this. But was it necessary to apply this to every one of the other 49 States of America because one police department may have made a mistake? Now we have the rule whereby if we pick up a criminal and the crime has been committed and one of you ladies is laying in the street or you are in the hospital and you are unconscious and you are in no condi

tion to identify, then if we bring the man in and he says, "My name is Joe Jones and that's all I am going to say and I want my attorney," then that is what we have to do. And when the attorney arrives, you can be sure he tells him, "You don't open your mouth, you say nothing." This is one of the cases.

Now, I could go on citing many, many of these things, but this is probably beyond the scope of my testimony and I apologize if I have done that. But let me say this, there are economic problems in the cities and towns all over the United States of America. We need more police. We have the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration,. which has provided up to $4 million for the State of Rhode Island to try and sophisticate law enforcement. When I was its director I was in trouble in Washington because I was directing a good part of this: money toward the police system because who needed the police? Who needed the money the most? The police did because they needed education, they were at the low end of the totem pole as far as I was concerned.

POLICE NEED TRAINING

The courts had the judges, who were lawyers; probation and parole had professional people; correctional people needed training; yes, but the police needed training more than anybody else. And they needed that money. But the fact remains that particularly with regard to the lady's testimony of two men robbed them while they were delivering stamps and checks a week ago Friday, this morning I sent a policeman with two women. But the fact remains that I do not have the personnel to provide this type of protection 24 hours a day, and this is the bigproblem.

I suggest and I resuggest, if I might, because I made the suggestion. once before, to the President of the United States at a hearing where I had the pleasure of sitting, and it was last year in the month of August in Colorado Springs, that they make men available for police departments who will be the kind of policemen that we need with the background, with the education, with the sociological, physiological, and every other demand that we need to make a good policeman, that they make them available, that even the President might consider a deferment for a man who might be willing to go into law enforcement and help protect the people in the United States as well as being sent to Vietnam.

The other thing I feel is that LEAA, with all of the money that it is dispensing for purposes of sophistication, could put up some money to provide for us some more men so that we might properly be able to hire more men, provide money so we can properly send more people onto the beat, bring back some of the foot patrolmen, put some of the people back in the area that you need for your protection.

And the day that we reach that goal, ladies and gentlemen, I will be ready to say then, and only then, will we be able to live in a free society. Thank you.

Senator PELL. Thank you, Colonel McQueeny, for very heartfelt, strong, and eloquent testimony. So good, we should let the panel stand really on what you have said. But there is one question I would like to get an answer to before this panel leaves, and I'd like to address this question to Mrs. Hill, if I could. And that is we have discussed the

problems of the elderly going to shopping centers and traveling, moving around the city. Do they have adequate health care? Could you touch that for a minute and is it available to them when needed?

Mrs. HILL. Absolutely not, Senator. I find that here in our city, no. It comes back to transportation again. We do have some very good clinics at Rhode Island Hospital, plus our health centers located in our various neighborhoods, but here again we come back to getting our seniors to and from these facilities to get the necessary care they need. I spoke briefly on the hearing aid problem. Hearing aids cost anywhere from $52 to $500. Either one of these amounts would be out of the question for a great many of our golden agers when there is barely enough funds for proper nutrition and diet. I have also found in my personal experiences that our senior citizens are treated as second class citizens. They are not really given the kind of care that a middle age or other person might get for the simple reason that it is not demanded by them. Many of our seniors really don't know their rights as individuals, and unless there is someone who speaks very firmly on the rights of a golden ager, they don't have it.

Second, many of our seniors are not aware of where these services can be gotten. We were very fortunate in having the Urban League transportation and many others, but many of our citizens are not aware of the services available to them. I would say within the St. Martin de Porres Center we serve about 160 golden agers. And I would daresay that one-half of my group, I would doubt, have been seen by a doctor in their lifetime, or if so, not more than once. This to me is where an outreach program is absolutely necessary because of our shut-ins, because of lack of telephones in some cases, because of lack of family.

PERSONAL TOUCH NEEDED FOR ELDERLY

Because of that our social welfare rehabilitative services have withdrawn social workers. Forms have to be filled out by senior citizens who cannot see and do not read well enough to understand them. All of these things have come together with progress, and all of these things are progressive, but with progress we always lose something, and this is that personal contact that is absolutely necessary for our elderly in the community.

I would be most happy to see some very up-to-date health facilities within our neighborhoods. Rhode Island Hospital, St. Joseph's Hospital, various hospitals, cannot anywhere near meet the growing needs because here is a conflict. In some cases because of medical care we have people living longer, therefore, our elderly are increasing in numbers. By the same token, they don't get the proper care because the facilities are not that close at hand.

Senator PELL. Thank you very much indeed. I'd like to keep asking questions of this panel, but we have others coming along, so I think we should leave it that we all join in being shocked by the stories of brutality that we have heard today perpetrated by, the only way to describe it, young barbarians on our older citizens.

The question is what can we do about the problem. I think we have heard as eloquent a statement from the chief of police as one could get anywhere showing that his portion of the work is but a portion; it is like the tip of an iceberg, was the phrase he used

Colonel MCQUEENY. Senator, may I interrupt at this point, it is important. I feel that you ladies and gentlemen should know, I can't express strong enough my desire to help to protect you and I know of your sometimes fearfulness. I hope that everybody would know the box No. 875 at the post office in Providence, that you can write to me personally, and I assure you I am the only one who opens that letter, and whatever action I take from that letter I dispense to various parts of my department without the name ever being known.

So if you have a problem in your area and in your neighborhood that you want to get to me and yet you are afraid to get to me, then I ask you and I beg you to write to me at box 875, tell me what your problem is. I may not be able to eliminate it overnight, but I will do my best. If you'd like to sign your name, it will give me the opportunity of personally being able to call you up and talk to you. But I promise you upon my honor your name will not be given to anybody else in that police department.

So you remember the number 875. If you'd like to sign your name, I assure you I will be the only one that will have it. And I will, if I have to get in touch with you and see if we can't eliminate such a problem that cause a lot of anguish. Thank you. [Applause.]

Senator PELL. Thank you, Colonel McQueeny. I am very glad you have this policy, which is an excellent one, and I'd like to join with you in it and say that my policy has always been any letter that comes to my office marked personal, this I have done for the past 10 years, is opened by nobody else but me. So on the Federal level if you have a problem and you are concerned about your name being known, just put a personal on the outside of the envelope.

Now, what we have seen here is a demand for action on every level of government and by every concerned citizen, and we have seen the efforts that are being made; we have seen the dimensions of crime. But we see also the necessity for an appeal to the parents of the youth of Providence to make a greater effort to look after their youngsters. Perhaps in some cases more discipline at home would be the necessity. There is no excuse for anybody brutalizing older people as they are.

POVERTY BREEDS CRIMINALS

I would also make an appeal to sons and daughters of our older citizens of Providence who abandon the city for the luxury or security of suburbia to make an effort to locate safe and secure housing for their elderly parents in Providence. As we all know, there are few crime waves in suburbia. As Colonel McQueeny has said, crime and poverty go hand in hand, and we always blame it on the group in the ghetto, but the reason for it is the poverty and not the color of the skin or the degree of education; it is the poverty that produces the crime.

And I defy you to find crime waves in Barrington or the richer section of Warwick. And this is the essence of the problem and this is the root cause of what we must go after. Those of us in the Congress who are concerned with this problem are looking into introducing legislation to make the theft of Social Security checks and food stamps, and robbery and assault in Federal subsidized housing a Federal offense punishable by severe penalties unless an adequate rehabilitation program for the offenders can be provided.

This is a proposal in which I am interested. I am now considering the advisability of introducing such legislation. [Applause.] I also plan to introduce legislation to provide 100-percent Federal grants for the hiring of additional local police for the sole purpose of protecting senior citizens in federally assisted housing, protecting senior citizens from theft of their Social Security checks and food stamps. I also plan to ask the administration to supply additional funds for the construction of safe elderly housing not mixed up with other housing units. I must say, too, I like the idea Colonel McQueeny advanced for a draft deferment for those men willing to go into police service, which really is the first line of defense in our country. What good is it to have a wall of steel, and bombs, and missiles surrounding our Nation if the internal heart and core of the country are weak, divisive, or falling apart? And the first line of defense are the police and the inner core, I think, should receive its share of manpower.

So I believe if we all make concerted efforts together, that we can help resolve some of the problems we have heard today. [Applause.] Now, I would like to thank this panel very much for coming here. I'd like to be with them the rest of the morning, but we have more panels coming and we thank them again and we ask the next panel if it would come forward.

The second panel, Panel on Senior Citizens' View of Medicare and Medicaid, consists of Mrs. Mildred A. Dean, president, Rhode Island Association of Senior Citizens and Senior Citizens Clubs, Inc.; Anthony Vittorio, Providence, R.I.; Mrs. Betty Curley, senior vice president of the Rhode Island State Council of Senior Citizens: Mrs. Alice McGrath, member of the Senior Citizens of Rhode Island Action Group, and the senior action group wants another person, Mrs. Eleanor LaPlante; Mrs. Ruth M. Person, field aide for Project SECAP, and Dr. Mary Mulvey, vice president, National Council of Senior Citizens.

At this time I'd like to acknowledge the staff here: Ken Dameron, representating the Democratic majority, and John Guy Miller, the minority staff director, representing the Republican side of the aisle, is also here with us today.

We will now move directly into this panel. I thank Dr. Mulvey for being here, because I know her husband has been quite sick. We will now move on to hear from representatives of the senior citizens groups who are concerned about inadequacies in the Medicare and Medicaid program. And the first witness from whom we will hear is Mrs. Mildred Dean, who is president of the Rhode Island Association of Senior Citizens and Senior Citizens Clubs. Mrs. Dean, would you proceed as you will.

STATEMENT OF MILDRED A. DEAN,* PRESIDENT, RHODE ISLAND ASSOCIATION OF SENIOR CITIZENS AND SENIOR CITIZENS CLUBS

Mrs. DEAN. Thank you, Senator. I would like to say that for those on Medicare, I find that we do not have adequate care. On Medicare we wish to have optical work, dental work, care of feet, and prescriptions, and at least one thorough examination each year. On Medicaid,

*See appendix 3, p. 364.