Where the public health and safety for Colorado citizens is concerned, two players have chosen to put profits over people by becoming an obstacle in providing the same protections that every state in the U.S. and province in Canada provides but Colorado.
Embarrassingly and shamefully, Colorado is the only state without funeral home regulation and licensure in the United States and not surprisingly, gross misconduct and foul desecration of human remains perpetrated by unscrupulous funeral home directors and employees is the ongoing result. Consumer complaints are piling up and victimized Colorado families suffer unimaginable pain and lasting emotional scarring. They are complaints without recourse.
The Colorado State Department of Regulatory agencies (DORA) should be in the businesses of oversight and protection for Colorado citizens, instead, its’ in bed with big business. This agency has not conducted an onsite inspection of any funeral business under it’s auspices since the 1970’s.
Tambor Williams, the agency’s executive director, inordinately attempts to block the family protecting legislation every time it comes up in the legislature. In 2006, she successfully convinced her long time friend, Governor Owens, to veto the bill after it had passed both houses. Her actions and words demonstrate a pattern of loyalty to ultra conservative partisan politics over the health and safety of the very people she is entrusted to protect. She is like a fox guarding the henhouse. Big business clearly has a representative at DORA.
As a former mortician working in the Denver metro area, I was witness to some of the most horrific and egregious actions imaginable perpetrated by the funeral home where I was employed.
Propelled by my conscious and with the encouragement of friends and family, I came forward to the district attorney with a lengthy laundry list of complaints. The District attorney, Mitch Morrissey, sent me a letter saying that nothing could be done. He added there were no laws on the books to protect Colorado consumers from the funeral industry.
By this time, having hit this brick wall, most grieving family’s victimized of the funeral industry would give up. Myself having hit the dead end, I had to do a lot of exhausting research to determine what regulatory agencies might be able to help. OSHA stepped up but took six months to act, and that agency only dealt with the complaint in its aspect of how the funeral home employees were affected.
Meanwhile, employees were still breathing highly carcinogenic formaldehyde without protection, handling infectious waste without protection and disposing of biohazards into the common public garbage rather than utilizing a certified medical waste disposal pickup.
Could these employees have developed life threatening illnesses in the time it took for OSHA to respond? Yes. Although OSHA found the funeral home to be in violation of multiple laws it considered serious, the fines were so comparatively paltry that they would offer little to permanently discourage egregious behavior. A state sanctioned Board of Funeral Homes would act immediately but since Colorado is the only state without such an entity, its people are in constant danger.
Tambor Williams from DORA sent me a letter in response to my ten page complaint exposing the funeral home where I worked for among other things, not tracking it’s its costumers ashes and giving the wrong cremains back to loved ones, and disposing of human biohazards near Amtrak stating “As you know, the funeral service industry is not regulated by the state of Colorado” and “there is no help this office can provide.”
She then goes into why regulations were done away with giving the excuse that small pox had been eradicated in 1977 and therefore there’s no need. Here we have someone entrusted with the health and public safety that is completely ignorant of Crutchfield-Jacobs disease and the hundreds of other deadly pathenogens one can get from the improper handling of corpses.
I wish the entirety of the letter could be printed here as it demonstrates a lack of concern and knowledge on her part regarding what dangers exist to the public. So she tells me that she’s sorry there’s nothing her office can do, but then turns around and vehemently fights all legislation to bring the funeral industry into the auspices of her office. The good old boy network is alive and well in Denver.
Now, with a disregard to pragmatism and logic, there are those in the Colorado State Legislature who fight funeral home legislation with the fallacious notion that it will cost consumers more. How is it that the civil states’ funeral homes, those with regulation and consumer protection, can offer CHEAPER or comparable funeral costs than those funeral homes operating without the blanket of regulation in Colorado?
Further, why do these opponents offer up un-researched hypothetical arguments on the floors of the legislature? Really, cost is a stupid, divisive argument anyways when one considers what is at stake. What’s next on the deregulation hit list Colorado, brain surgery?
I think a short reprise into a ten year history of deregulated funeral home practices in Colorado is in order: In the 90’s a funeral home worker stole pages from the Morgue log containing information on JonBenét Ramsey’s body and therefore contaminated the evidence. This man later went on to photograph bodies as shock art with signs on them that said “Happy Halloween” and other “cute” sayings without the knowledge or consent of the families.
A grieving Denver man was given an urn with what was supposed to the cremains of his mother and instead, received an urn with a mans watch and Levi 501 buttons inside. His mother was cremated in a nightgown. He had received a strangers’ ashes and his mothers? Her ashes were lost. He was told there is nothing the law can do for him in Colorado. He and his family suffer with no closure.
Dead bodies being transported in trunks of cars, pools of human bodily fluid accumulating near businesses and public transportation, infectious wastes and toxins being disposed of in open air common waste receptacles, widespread preneeds fraud, teenagers picking up and transporting dead bodies, employees without masks and respirators or gloves, dumping of cremains, improper record keeping, insurance and tax fraud, and those that have absolutely no experience working as embalmers, cremators, and funeral directors: all of this has gone on since and tomorrow will bring more.
I went from being a Walgreens manager to a full fledge manager and mortician of a Colorado funeral home and was embalming, cremating and arranging funeral plans in three days with absolutely no prior experience.
I can attest that much of the shocking, unconscionable acts perpetrated by bad players in the funeral industry upon Colorado families go unreported. Unscrupulous funeral directors know that the death of a loved one leaves grieving families vulnerable and that is when they pounce.
Uneducated and unlicensed funeral directors operating MacFuneral Homes, a phrase coined by those within the funeral industry, are attracted to Colorado because of its lack of oversight. I am aware of this fact because I was employed by an out of state entity while working as a mortician.
Deregulation might be a good idea for some industry, but clearly not for anything to do with the medical field or the public’s health and safety. Colorado has more oversight for a haircut than embalming, cremation and handling of dead bodies witch can become a deadly avenue for the spread of infectious disease.
It is well past due that the Colorado lawmakers wake up and realize that funeral home regulation is a mater of health and public safety and just plain common decency. It’s time to pass the funeral bill and put an end to this uncivilized, embarrassing lack of oversight and disregard for Colorado citizens. Call your legislative representative and state senator today before tragedy befalls your family twice.
Darin Barry is a former funeral director who worked in the Denver metro area in 2006.
