Riverside County Coroner's Office Structure In Question: Supervisors

LAKE ELSINORE, CA — The Board of Supervisors Tuesday will consider a proposal to conduct an analysis of the prospective pros and cons of separating the coroner's office from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

"In recent discussions and public comment, a recurring theme has been the potential conflict of interest -- or even the perception of a conflict of interest -- involved in having the coroner and the sheriff as one entity," board Chairman Kevin Jeffries and Supervisor Manuel Perez wrote in their joint proposal for an analysis.

During its policy agenda Tuesday, the board will consider whether to task the Executive Office with carrying out the study over an unspecified period.

"Confidence in our law enforcement institutions and the perception of fairness are important goals, but before taking further specific steps, a complete cost-benefit analysis of options should be performed," the supervisors said.

The board has faced a steady drum beat of complaints over the past year from residents and activists appearing during public comment sessions, asking for a change in the sheriff's administrative structure, with the intention of converting the coroner and public administrator's offices into independent agencies.

They have been under the sheriff's umbrella since Jan. 1, 1999, when an ordinance adopted by the board roughly three years earlier took effect, placing the coroner and public administrator functions -- and budgets -- under the sheriff's control. Before that time, the offices had been stand-alone operations.

The idea behind the consolidation was rooted in a county Commission on Reorganization report that suggested there were more advantages than disadvantages to integration.

California is one of only three states nationwide that doesn't require county coroner's offices to be separate from sheriff's departments, according to the Executive Office.

"While there is no evidence of any improprieties in Riverside County regarding the operations of the coroner's office under the sheriff, the optics of a potential conflict of interest can lead to a loss of confidence in our institutions," Jeffries and Perez wrote in their proposal.

The sheriff's department is the leading target of lawsuits of all agencies within the county and routinely has the highest annual payouts to litigants.

The department is currently being sued by families whose loved ones died while in the local correctional system over the last two to three years. The civil action acknowledged that most of the deaths stemmed from drug overdoses and suicides.

Some of the complaints to the board in recent months have related to the coroner's reporting standards, delays in providing autopsy determinations and findings and other potential liabilities.