Potential for Trouble

The Orange County Board of Supervisors is proposing to allow the district attorney’s office to assume the duties of the coroner when someone dies in police custody or in any incident involving a police officer. It has revived and expanded a longstanding dispute, but that’s all to the good.

It shows, for one thing, that the county board recognizes the potential for trouble when, as in Orange and 34 other counties, one person has the combined duties of sheriff and coroner.

It also shows that the board realizes that something more formal is needed than the policy it adopted last June. It works for now, but it is not binding on any future sheriff-coroner or district attorney of Orange County. The present sheriff and district attorney have agreed to follow the policy; future holders of the office may not. The board is right to be nervous about that possibility.

The consolidation of the sensitive posts creates too great a potential conflict of interest. And no matter how scrupulously honest an investigation may be, the sheriff still appears to be investigating himself in cases relating to the deaths of prisoners in his custody at the County Jail or other lockup facilities or involving sheriff’s deputies.

That has nothing to do with incumbent Sheriff-Coroner Brad Gates’ ability to conduct impartial investigations or his past performance in either post. The problem is the system that combines the functions and produces a built-in potential for conflict that can easily raise public suspicions and erode its confidence in its institutions.

The county board’s proposed legislation has not drawn enthusiastic response from some coroners and law enforcement officials who claim it is unnecessary and costly.

We’re not as enthusiastic about the proposal either, but for a different reason. While some may think it goes too far, we don’t think it goes far enough.

A better and more effective approach would be to separate the functions entirely and make them independent operations, as is the case in all other major counties in the state and nation. The Legislature earlier this year rejected an attempt by Assemblyman Gilbert Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) to make that separation in the state’s nine largest counties. It should give the issue a closer look when Ferguson submits the new county bill, as he has agreed to do.

The coroner’s job of determining the cause of death should be done by a medical professional with no law enforcement connections. But the very least the public has the right to expect is that deaths that in any way involve police officers or people in police custody will be handled by an impartial agency, such as the county district attorney or state attorney general’s office.