The Property Room

The week of June 15, 2009

This week our main project was to go through the property vault, taking inventory of what was there and to dispose of those items that don’t need to be kept any longer. By law when an individual dies the coroner’s staff needs to collect all of their medications. This is to learn who their physician is, what type of medical problems the person may have experienced, and help determine cause of death (COD). Also by law the medications need to be taken so they aren’t sold or used by others. Later in the office all of these medications are gone through, in the same manner I described during my first week. The coroner’s staff also collects certain personal items of the deceased this can include wallets, backpacks, helmets, weapons, mail, journals, money, jewelry and other items. These are collected so they can be given to the closest of kin, in accordance with the law. Needless to say this can be a lot of property collected at each scene, especially if the person is older or has a lot of medical issues or keeps a lot of medications in the house, like we do.

With Ed these items are stored in the property room. This room is always locked and the key is never out of the sight of either himself or one of his deputy coroners. The items inside the property room are stored in big paper bags that are sealed shut. Each bags has an evidence tag attached to the outside which lists the item(s) inside, such as the medication inside. In addition to the contents of the bag, the evidence tag also indicates the case number, the name of the victim, and the date that person passed away. Then Ed's deputy coroner Erin, who is in charge of managing the property room, places these bags into boxes that again list all of the information on the outside of the box so the evidence can be found later. After 2 years the evidence in any case NOT determined to be a homicide can be removed from the room and disposed of. Although, before anything is disposed of, Ed personally double checks Erin’s notes to make sure nothing is accidentally disposed of that should not be. If the case was listed as a homicide, the items are kept in the room indefinitely.

Disposal is what Amy, Erin, and I are working on. To do this we first went through the bags looking for all of those that were older than 2008. Our next step was to go through these older bags and Erin’s list to see if they were homicides. If they were a homicide they were returned to a shelf in the property room. If the case was not listed as a homicide, we then removed all of the evidence bags with medications and, wearing gloves, we collected one pill from every package, even over-the-counter drugs like aspirin. A sample of each of these is then placed in a slotted sheet that holds the drug and has a line for the name of the drug. All of these sheets are then placed in a binder and will be kept indefinitely. It becomes really difficult when pills are loose or there are different pills in the same bottle because they can’t be identified unless we have a medication identification book. As you can see this can be a very long and tedious process and it took us most of the afternoon on Thursday to do just a quarter of the needed medication cataloguing. With the sample of each medication properly catalogued and labeled, the remainder of the pills or medication will then be disposed of by Erin, who has to make an appointment with the dump staff to watch them make a hole and bury the medications.

Now for all the other property that has been collected in each case. The evidence box is carefully gone through and each item considered. Personal letters are set aside for shredding, the driver’s license is placed in the case file, all money and jewelry that was not returned to the family immediately, is now given back to the family. If there is no family to give money back to, then it is put toward the indvidual's debts, or distributed to help with the deceased's funeral expenses. As a last resort, the money is given to the county general fund. I am told Ed has never given money back to the county, but has always been able to use on of the other alternatives.

Unfortunately, this is not always possible to give things back to the family and in these cases the items are treated according to law. Personal items such as jewelry are buried in the landfill, and property of lesser value that is in good condition can be donated to shelters or second hand stores. If it is worth over $50 then it is given to the sheriff’s office until their public auction where it is sold and the money is placed in the county general fund.