Peter Lawrence, 71 and Wheelchair-Bound, Robs Bank to Get Prison Health Care

• @Jenny- FUnny. Might want to look out your window, though, and see that it's not 1982 anymore. I thought we'd evolved beyond AIDS jokes?

• I used to live in California and I'm surprised that this hasn't happened more often. I don't know about everywhere else, but in California the prisoners are given better care then the tax payers.

• @ Mark. Well said. Everyone needs to sit down and read and think about what you said. And to be 71 and having to rob a bank to get health care is very sad. I don't care if he did it in the past. This man has his life in mind when he committs these crimes. I feel for this man because i'm young. 24 and I have heart problems and the doctors don't know what's wrong but that doesn't stop them from sending bills and all they tell is that they don't know whats wrong. Stuff like that but alot of stress on a person and than they will end up doing what they think they have to to survive.

• Hey Happy-thanks for proving my point.

• from www.sfgate.com Records indicate that Lawrence pleaded guilty to a $3,000 bank robbery in 1997, and again in 1999 after he tried to rob another bank just days after getting out of prison. If convicted again, he could face life in prison under California's "three strikes" law.

• Tough Guys - 1986 ....

• My Father worked as a classifications officer at a prison. This is far more commonplace than you would think and i am talking 10 20 years ago, and it is sad. But there government running healthcare is defiantly not the answer.

• Wow thats sad that it comes to that.

• @Mark, no trouble reading your entire comment. I thought all police departments were trained to recognize, or at least suspect, insulin shock. I'm dismayed to hear that apparently not. You bring up a very important subject that isn't getting nearly the attention it deserves: elder care. In America, the elderly are treated as disposable and troublesome instead of being valued for their wisdom and humor. I will be researching federal prisons and what size bank robbery it will take to get into it.

• He's fucking 71. At some point you just have to roll up into a ball and die already.

• Good take, Mark. I didn't know that that many robbers were retirement age, but it does make sense. We're especially seeing a lot of them lately.

• Alexa Kim: It's the federal system that has decent health care. The state systems are a lot more various and generally have much lower standards of care. There multiple reasons for this, among them the fact that prisoners tend to come from low-income and therefore low-medical-intervention backgrounds. So if you're planning on researching, you can limit yourself to finding out which crimes warrant federal-only prosecution.

• Hey Mark-thanks for the enlightening comment. I had no problem reading through that wall because it made sense. I helped with taking care of my Dad and enjoyed every minute of it. He would have done the same for me and I agree with you, some are too quick to kick their elderly to the curb. I did however know a few that simply would not learn to take care of themselves on the outside and chose to go back behind the wall out of convenience.

• I'll have to see if I can dig up the specific FBI Report from the 1990s, but the gist of the report was that over 2/3rds of Bank Robberies (both attempted or actually successful) in the United States were by those over the age of retirement (it also stated that 50% of Bank Robbers are actually caught at the scene of the crime, or within 1-2 blocks). We like to think that it's just young hooligans like Bonnie and Clyde that rob banks, and that they get away to live a career of violent crime, but the truth of the matter is that this is only the kind of fodder you find in Hollywood movies. The vast majority of bank robbers are far less glamorous. They are people who are retired, on a fixed-income from Social Security checks that may or may not even come, and relying on Medicare to cover even some of the cost of skyrocketing health-care, where the risk of a federally imposed minimum of 25 years in the slammer doesn't really hold much weight as a deterrent to someone with nothing left to lose. When you have to go to the doctor for Diabetes Screening daily, and are on a cocktail of 15 different prescription for high blood pressure, heart problems, and arthritis, and live in an area without Medicare Hospice Care, and are burdened with annual medical expenses of $20,166-$31,702 above and beyond what Medicare will cover, and find a way to somehow pay that on their $12,000 a year that you get from Social Security after slaving away 40+ hours a week during the best 55 years of your life, what other options do you have? No one wants to be a financial burden on their families. Unless you live in the State of Oregon, Assisted Suicide is not an option (and even if you live in Oregon, if you are a Catholic, then that's not an option either). Pop quiz, hotshot! What do you do? What do you do? This is precisely what happens when we try to live with the Nuclear Family model and forsake our elders and condemn them to banishment at the Retirement Home after working their fingers to the bone to help build our economy, our nation, and our families. When you get to the end of that rainbow only to discover you were tricked into believing there was going to be a pot of gold waiting for you there, and your Quality of Life is better off in prison than on the outside, then of course they are going to pick the same route Dennis Hopper's character took. Maybe we should learn to take better care of our elderly, and provide them with a decent Quality of Life, along with the Health Care they need. They certainly deserve better than our Criminals get, and by treating them better than our Criminals we may find that we take a 2/3rds chunk out of Violent Crime in the process for a Win/Win situation. (And for those who won't read the above Wall O' Text, if I was on the Jury overhearing this guy's case, he would be getting a vote for an acquittal from me.)

• If he catches HIV in prison would it be called Roll-AIDS?

• And they call America the land of opportunity. Truly a sad story.

• through my life time I have know several people that would commit crimes serious enough to get put back into prison because it's easier on the inside-sad but this was their truth.

• I have to say, I knew I wouldn't be surprised if this were to happen. And, I can't blame the guy. I anticipate that more of this will be happening in due course. It's the perfect copy cat crime. Time to research which states provide the best care and have the best prisons.

• WTH?! Why didn't they taser him?!?! Isn't that what cops do these days?!

• That's just sad.

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