Governor appoints coroner board 

Gov. Bruce Rauner last week appointed the first state Coroner’s Training Board that will be in charge of training coroners and others involved in death investigations.

Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington, who last year sponsored the bill that created the board, said that he believes the new board will both improve training and ensure that money that’s supposed to go for training will actually be spent for that purpose.

Prior to the board’s creation, the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board was in charge of training coroners, who must undergo 40 hours of training after taking office and 24 hours of training each year, with money for training coming from a surcharge on death certificates. No coroners or medical examiners were on the law enforcement training board. Brady said some money that should have gone for training coroners was being spent on other things, including overhead for the law enforcement training board.

“The training will be better crafted to specific death investigation,” Brady said. “The money will be directed with the intent of putting it where it’s supposed to go.”

By statute, the new five-member board must include two coroners, a forensic pathologist from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, a forensic pathologist from outside Cook County and a person who is neither a current nor former pathologist or coroner.

While the new board likely won’t be noticed by the public, it will make a difference behind the scenes, said Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup, who was named to the board by Rauner.

“We’re going to see it in the quality of our death investigations,” Northrup said.

Only coroners who have completed the required training can be assigned to death investigations. Northrup and Brady said that the board’s training courses will also be open to police officers, pathologists and death investigators who work in coroner’s offices.

“This was the best approach in continuing on with our training needs and requirements,” Northrup said. “We do actually pride ourselves in Illinois for having some of the best-trained coroners and pathologists in the U.S., and we want to keep it that way.”

Contact Bruce Rushton at [email protected].