Stealing Independence: For one elderly man, involuntary commitment to a state run nursing home became part of his death panel

03/06/2014

[Watch] Elderly Man Locked Up For Crime of Being Old and Alone

Charlie Fink is an 85-year-old man who still gets around fairly well. He gets around so well that when he recently needed to go in for hernia surgery, he drove himself.

That independence doesn’t go over so well against a state bureaucracy that has limited opportunities to justify its existence. When they happen upon an elderly couple with no family, bells go off. That’s a jackpot.

The state can “intervene” and nobody will be any wiser, or will they?

“Social workers” are detaining Charlie against his will, placing him in a psychiatric ward and ultimately a nursing home for being crazy enough to not want to be a government prisoner during the little time he has left on this Earth.

The closest thing Fink has to family are his neighbors. Kenny McIntosh is one of those neighbors who is doing his best to get his friend released.

McIntosh recounts his conversation with Mr. Fink as, “He called me and said, ‘I haven’t left yet; Adult Protective Services lady came in here and told me I wasn’t never coming home.’”

“I tried to get out of Methodist and they locked the door.They wouldn’t even let me out.”

Attorney Geoff Henley is interviewed in the video and he expresses concern for the fact that Fink had a right to be present at a hearing which determines his future and was not given that right. The hearing took place without him.

The State of Texas will take the next step in imprisoning Mr. Fink next week by extending the incarceration of Fink for an additional thirty days.

Henley also said in the interview that the state is required by law to prove one of three things in order to place Fink under their “protective care.”

• That a person is likely to cause serious harm to himself,
• Likely to cause serious harm to another, or they must also show
• That a person will substantially deteriorate without state intervention

Not only is he being held by an oppressive state government against his will, incarcerated for the crime of being old, he’s also being denied his right of due process.

Charlie Fink is a fighter, and the State of Texas CPS as well as APS both have a reputation as bullies with an inclination for abuse of power. Acts such as this serve to reinforce that reputation.

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