The Boulder County coroner is being opposed in his bid for re-election by unions representing law enforcement officers who claim he is lax in carrying out his duties, which causes lags in criminal investigations.
Coroner Thomas J. Faure, a Democrat elected in 2002, is responsible for reviewing all sudden or unattended deaths in the county and producing formal reports of death. He’s opposed by an unaffiliated Boulder emergency-room doctor who has the support of the Boulder and Longmont police unions critical of Faure’s delays.
A 9News investigation of Faure turned up these examples of questionable performance:
Faure failed to issue a report of death in the 1997 fatality of a 19-year-old Longmont man until September 2006; the family insists it was a murder, not a suicide, as Faure believed.
In 14 more recent cases his office looked into, there is no evidence the coroner’s office issued a report of death, which is a summary by the medical investigator for next-of-kin and law officials that includes the cause and manner of death.
During the past six months, his office has had a backlog of a dozen unfinished cases. By comparison, coroners in Denver and Arapahoe county had only two apiece in the same period.
Further, 9News videotaped Faure spending what appeared to be hours away from the office on a daily basis. Faure, who refused to speak on camera at a scheduled interview in his office, denied the allegations in an Oct. 9 letter to 9News.
“What I can tell you is that, with the exception of three days in September, when I visited my 87-year-old mother out of state, I have worked in excess of 40 hours a week, responding 24 hours a day, seven days a week to calls,” he said.
In the 14 cases with no evidence of a report of death, Faure said records do exist, but they are by law not public records, and therefore, he could not discuss them.
Despite his assertions that his office runs well, both the Boulder and Longmont police unions have publicly said they will support his opponent, Dr. Lisa Jo Floyd.
In a letter to Floyd, the 163-member Boulder Police Officers Association wrote that it thinks she “will bring welcome changes to the position” by getting quicker returns on lab results to speed criminal probes.
In one case that 9News discovered, Faure’s office took nearly three months to issue a death certificate for Rhonda Mae Carlson, who died of an accidental overdose in May. Faure’s office produced a death certificate five weeks after toxicology tests were completed.
“It did not occur to me it would take three months to get a death certificate,” said Sharlene Carlson, Rhonda Carlson’s sister, who faulted Faure’s office for its slow pace.
These accusations are not new. Prior to taking the $75,500-a-year coroner’s job, Faure served 15 years as a medical investigator under former Boulder Coroner John E. Meyer, who now is Faure’s deputy coroner.
As an investigator, Faure was assigned to probe the 1997 death of Michael Maestas, a Longmont man found shot to death. Faure said he filled out an investigation of death but didn’t complete a report of death for nine years because the family insisted the case was not a suicide.
Faure told 9News he never went to look at the shooting scene but instead went to the hospital where Maestas’ body was taken. Other evidence was sketchy, according to the family, because a bullet was never found and it’s unclear who held the gun, they said.
Steve Ainsworth, a veteran Boulder County sheriff’s investigator speaking on his own behalf about Faure’s procedures, said that in many cases, “you have an investigation that was done but no way to prove what was done.”
Faure has said his office does work efficiently.
“With an increasing caseload, we concentrate our limited personnel resources on the front-end issues of responding to death scenes, attending autopsies, gathering medical information, gathering police reports, meeting with families and witnesses,” he wrote.
However, according to the most recent statistics posted on the official coroner’s website, the average number of deaths investigated per month dropped from a high of 96 in 2003 to 85 in 2005.
The office reports that of the 1,675 deaths in Boulder during 2005, 1,023 were coroner’s cases. Of those, 152 were given autopsies, which are contracted out to Meyer and his associates.
