The largest population in the United States consists of people over the age of 65. Sadly, many seniors and "vulnerable adults" are targets of crimes ranging from telemarketing fraud to patient abuse in nursing home facilities. The United States Census Bureau projects that California's elderly population will nearly double within the next 20 years - from 3.7 million to more than 6.4 million.

We need to make sure that older Californians and their relatives are aware of their rights when it comes to nursing home care and know what to expect when dealing with a legitimate nursing facility. As our population ages, health care and nursing are two rapidly expanding industries, expanding drastically each year. Parallel to this we've seen a consistent increase in cases of elderly abuse and exploitation at nursing facilities. There has been a clear failure of our oversight mechanisms to keep pace with this growth to ensure that every new nursing facility and health care worker lives up the standards elderly citizens deserve.

As Attorney General, I will continue the work of Attorney General Brown and work very closely with the Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse to aggressively to investigate protect patients in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities from abuse or neglect by conducting on-site inspections of California's skilled nursing facilities and investigating and prosecuting physical elder abuse committed by employees against patients in elder care facilities.