BALTIMORE -- Samantha Hart hardly recognized her father when she picked him up at the Baltimore County jail.
Henry Hart, who days earlier had been joking and dancing at a family gathering, was slumped over in a wheelchair. The 76-year-old had lost weight, his knees and elbows were bruised, and his right hand was purple and swollen. But what concerned Samantha most was that three days after her 911 call led to her father’s arrest, he didn’t recognize her or his wife of 57 years, Rosalind.
Like thousands of seniors in Maryland, Hart is experiencing cognitive decline — a condition that often causes people to behave in unusual and sometimes aggressive ways. As Maryland’s population ages, experts fear that police will encounter people with dementia more often and without recognizing the condition or knowing how to respond to it. Arrest or jail time can be especially harmful to people with dementia, given their mental and physical vulnerability, experts say.
