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From: Jasper
Date: 3/19/03
Time: 6:32:37 PM
Remote Name: 68.73.56.19
Charlie,
I thought that you knew me well enough to know that I would not to ignore something like that. Nowhere in the manual or the Safety Code that Cochran read in court did it say that any police officer, fire fighter or private citizen had the obligation to call the coroner. That was Phillips’ interpretation of the documents when Cochran cornered him into admitting that HE had the obligation. Phillips was just spreading the responsibility around by changing the word “investigator” to “officer.”
The safety code dealt with deaths by a variety of causes including accidents, natural causes and homicide. In those situations the person in charge may or may not have been a police investigator. The way I read it, If Riske had been responding to a fatal car wreck it would have been his responsibility to call the coroner. If an Emergency Medical Technician was attending a heart attack victim, the obligation would have been his or hers.
The police manual also had provisions for coroner notification that took in the widest range of circumstances under which a ranking police officer OR an investigator might be responsible. The portion dealing with homicides (and I presume suicides and suspicious accidents) specified that it was the responsibility of the ranking homicide detective.
In civilized portions of the country, we expect that police detectives and the coroner will be on the scene of a bloody murder within minutes of when it is reported. That’s not how things were done in California in 1994. A bunch of people standing around waiting for “the detectives” to make the call is how things were done.
In some places a law against littering is strictly enforced. In other places littering laws are completely ignored. In California the coroner notification laws were “littering” laws that were completley ingorned by everyone except the coroner. –Jasper