The squalid end of an elderly, mentally retarded man has forced the Fenty administration into another round of promised reforms of city services. But the administration has refused to bow to public calls for an outside investigation of the man’s awful last days.
The 65-year-old, identified only as “Mr. Johnson” in a watchdog agency’s report, slipped into a diabetic coma in a cockroach-and-feces infested apartment in D.C. on Feb. 23.
He died, congressionally mandated monitor University Legal Services claimed in its report released last week, because city officials used bureaucratic rules to refuse to admit him into a group home for people with his condition.
Reacting to the services’ report, Mayor Adrian Fenty met with reporters Tuesday and promised to change the way the city treats its mentally retarded and disabled. He also said he had “separated” three workers from the city agency that is supposed to take care of the retarded.
Report author Mary Nell Clark told The Examiner she was “pleased that they are taking this seriously.” But she added that the Fenty administration had refused her group’s call for an independent investigation of Mr. Johnson’s death.
In his Tuesday news conference, Fenty said the city “mishandled” Mr. Johnson’s calls for help and said there had “been real negligence on the part of the government.” But he portrayed the death as a hiccup in an otherwise smooth-running operation.
“We spend a lot of time working with these agencies making sure that T’s are crossed, making sure that I’s are dotted, making sure that they’re doing everything possible to not only provide excellent care but making sure that nothing wrong happens,” Fenty said.
The mayor’s claims run contrary to a federal court monitor’s report filed in late summer, which blasted Fenty’s administration for the District’s failing to meet the minimum requirements for care of its most vulnerable residents.
“Despite a new leadership team,” special masters Clarence Sundram and Margaret Farrell wrote in their Aug. 15 report to the federal court, “… the end result is substantially the same as it has been in the past — significant noncompliance with these limited and focused court orders.”
Before serving as mayor, Fenty for two years was chairman of the D.C. Council’s Human Services committee, which has oversight responsibility for the agencies he now says are failing.
