Badges - Cutbacks At Medical Examiner's Office Hurting Families, Police
- From: CarlGlas@xxxxxxxxxxx
- To: badges@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 08:12:36 -0500
Cutbacks At Medical Examiner's Office Hurting Families, Police
By Robert Arnold
May 26, 2011
HOUSTON -- Whether it is a murder or your loved dies peacefully of
natural causes, the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office is called
to investigate almost every death. Last year, the office received
9,000 so-called "death calls." However, economic cutbacks have
stretched staff at the office so thin that many worry crucial
information will be missed and families will suffer additional
burdens at a time when they are already grief-stricken.
Video: Medical Examiner's Office Cutbacks Hurt Families, Police
"The job is emotionally and mentally challenging," Harris County
Forensic Investigator Roxanne Mena said.
Forensic investigators are called to look for clues, catalog evidence
and help determine how a person died. It's a job made more
challenging by cutbacks.
"We've had to change our service level, and we don't want to have to
do that," said Mena.
When a person dies, by law, the medical examiner's office has to
issue an official death certificate. Without this certificate,
families cannot collect insurance money or death benefits -- money
many families need to pay bills and, more urgently, pay for funeral expenses.
"A lot of times the family is dependent on that deceased person's
income," said Mena.
Mena said the financial cutbacks in staff have created a backlog.
Mena said sometimes it can take the office up to three months to
issue a death certificate.
"So many phone calls, you know, 'I'm going to lose my house. I need
the death certificate. The insurance company won't accept a pending
death certificate,'" Mena described as calls she and her colleagues
frequently receive from family members.
Last year, the office completed 5,114 death certificates.
This problem can be especially troubling for a family whose loved
one's last wishes or religious beliefs require cremation. State law
allows a person to be buried with a "pending" death certificate but
prohibits a person from being cremated until a final death
certificate is issued.
"The burden is completely on the family," said Noe Santana, owner of
Santana Funeral Directors. "You can't pick up the phone when a bill
collector calls and say, 'Look, we do have the money; it's just going
to take a little time,'" said Santana.
According to information maintained by the office, since 2009, the
number of forensic investigators working in the office has dropped
from 26 to 16. The number of morgue staff has dropped from 34 to 22 employees.
Mena said that before the cutbacks, investigators responded to 100
percent of death scenes. In 2010, forensic investigators were only
able to make it 62 percent of the more than 2,000 scenes requiring
investigation. For the first three months of this year, investigators
made it to roughly 40 percent of death scenes. According office
records, there are some months forensic investigators only made
between 29 and 35 percent of the scenes they were called to investigate.
"We're even having to skip some homicides because we just don't have
the staff to go," said Mena.
That means investigators have to work cases by phone, taking longer
to gather information and determine a cause of death.
"Is there a concern that something might get missed?" Local 2
investigator Robert Arnold asked.
"Absolutely," Mena answered. "We're not going to be able to make our
scenes. We're going to lose that information. We're going to have
families that go longer without knowing why their loved died."
The office staff is stretched so thin that police officers sometimes
sit for hours, not answering other calls for help, but waiting for
either a forensic investigator to arrive, or for the office to
transport a body to the morgue. Currently, the office has four vans
to transport bodies, but not enough staff to run all four vans 24 hours a day.
"They don't want to wait for the medical examiner to arrive," said Mena.
Mena said that if a forensic investigator can't make it to a scene,
then detectives do not have that extra set of critical eyes to help
solve a case. All of this adds up to a financial crisis burdening
families, police officers and straining a staff of 16 investigators
asked to investigate thousands of deaths a year.
"You get, you know, burned out. You get really tired," said Mena.
The office's overall budget has been cut from just over to $24
million in fiscal year 2010, to just above $18 million for fiscal year 2012.
These cutbacks are can also affect how long it takes for the office
to release a person's body for burial. The law requires a law
enforcement officer to be present when a body is released from the
morgue to a funeral home. The office used to have four deputy
constables helping perform this task around the clock and on
weekends. However, the cutbacks forced the office to work with only
two deputy constables, forcing a cutback in the hours the morgue can
legally release a body.
Mena said sometimes a family can wait up to two days before
retrieving their loved one for burial.
"We don't want to delay that process," said Mena.
When contacted by Local 2 Investigates, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett
issued this statement: "This just isn't the way the county does
business or should do business. If Dr. Sanchez has complaints about
his budget (as does almost every department head in Harris County),
he could have called Judge Emmett months ago and made his case to try
to resolve some of these problems. He did not do so, and instead
apparently chose to air his grievances after the fact and through the
media. To say that the public is poorly served by this sort of
back-channel navigation is an understatement, and the judge will not
be a part of it."
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