In the area of police specialized training, older adults have been largely ignored. Today, it remains unclear whether older people should be designated a special population with respect to crime vulnerability. To understand the frequency and nature of police contact with older adults, a large cohort of older adults were followed for over a decade to assess the prevalence of police department contact in this observational cohort of community dwelling older people and to determine the role of the older person in such contact. It examined the distribution of crime types experienced by cohort members and identified factors at cohort inception that were associated with police contact. Subjects of the study were members of the New Haven EPESE cohort (Established Population for Epidemiologic Studies in the Elderly). Approximately one in seven New Haven, CT residents over the age of 65 was enrolled in the study. In 1982, 2,812 community-dwelling older adults living in New Haven were enrolled in the study. The study found that older adults have substantial interaction with community police in a variety of contexts, but primarily as victims of crime. Cohort members’ interaction, if any, with police over the follow-up period 1985 to 1995 was assessed. Results found that 29 percent of the subjects had a police interaction over the follow-up period after adjusting for the sampling strategy of the cohort. Tables, references