Bigger Unit Will Boost Coroner’s Trainees

Orange County’s school for coroners--believed to be the only statewide training center for death-scene investigators in the country--is about to be rebuilt with a $12-million infusion of public money.

The Board of Supervisors this week granted the multimillion-dollar construction contract to Swinerton Builders of Newport Beach. The project will replace the 12,000-square-foot, single-story county coroner’s office, which coroners in training have also used for lab portions of their course work, on West Santa Ana Boulevard in Santa Ana. The new facility will serve as both coroner’s office and home for the entire training program.

The new facility, a two-story building with about four times the space, will include diagnostic and investigative equipment and increased freezer capacity. It will also put all of the center’s programs under one roof for the first time.

Orange County has hosted the state training programs since the late 1980s, when then-Sheriff Brad Gates led a drive to establish standardized training regimens for coroners. To be certified, coroners must pass the Peace Officer Standard Training class, which consists of courses totaling 144 hours on techniques for investigating death scenes.

But space constraints have forced local officials to conduct the courses in two places, using hotel meeting rooms for classes and then moving students to the morgue for more direct study, said Jaque Berndt, the county’s chief deputy coroner.

“We’re going to make the training more valuable by having a center that will allow us to have practical exercises and things like that,” Berndt said.

Called Coroner’s Basic Death Investigation, the classes cover such topics as medical terminology; how to differentiate between homicide, suicide and death by accident or natural causes; dealing with the news media; and report-writing.

The $359 classes are offered twice a year, and about 100 people take the classes each year, Berndt said.

Evidence gathered at death scenes is critical for pathologists, who do the autopsies, to determine causes of death.

“The investigators’ function is to go into the field and investigate the circumstances that surround the death, and bring them back to the pathologist, so when they do the autopsy they’re not doing it in a vacuum,” Berndt said.

Unlike pathologists, who are medical doctors with additional training in forensics, coroners need only a bachelor’s degree or equivalent training, Berndt said.

“It’s on-the-job training,” she said.

The coroner’s office has already moved to temporary facilities at 2700 S. Bristol St., Santa Ana, a building that was originally a mortuary but that has also housed a restaurant, Berndt said.

“It turns out that the exhaust system and drainage and things like that were better for our needs than a surgical suite in a hospital,” Berndt said.

Demolition could begin next week on the coroner’s old building. The new facility is expected to open in April 2003.