Because I know how to do a Google search. The search terms are los angeles coroners office employees. That led me to an L.A. Times article entitled L.A. County coroner’s office may face shortage of doctors, audit finds, which in turn linked to the audit. The info is in the second paragraph.Whole thing took about three minutes.
Links please.
Management Audit of the Department of the Coroner (pdf)
"The Coroner's budget is approximately $28 million and there are 209 budgeted posititions in Fiscal Year 2009-10."
Wow. That management audit document is VERY interesting. Still sorting it out, but from what’s on there - the flow charts and all - the special operations team includes the investigators, which are the people who go out when there is a field call. The people on the response team are the people who take down the initial information from police, witnesses, doctors, etc, photograph the scene, transport the body to the coroner’s office, take complete photos of the body, and fill out forms for the initial case file. Then the investigator gets the medical history from the decedent’s doctor and the case file and medical history are all given to the Deputy Coroner - Ed Winter, who was the guy who reported immediately that Andrew Breitbart had not seen a doctor in over a year. Ed Winter would not necessarily know who had done the photographs of the external body, just that the photos were in the case file.
Once the deputy coroner decides that a complete autopsy is to be done with lab tests, the case is assigned to a physician. If it is a high-profile case or a case where a crime is suspected that autopsy would be done by either the chief coroner, the chief physician, or the deputy coroner. A security hold would be put on the case and only a few people from that point on would be able to access the records. The deputy coroner would know who those people were.
At that point the body would be dissected and lab tests run. This is the point at which the forensic technicians photograph the inner parts of the body.
There are 3 supervisors and 6 technicians who are on the photography unit. Those technicians work closely with the doctors as they do the medical examinations. My understanding is that they would photograph the tissues/organs as the body was being dissected. The medical examiner would know who worked with him on that photography.
Michael Cormier was said to be a photographer for the special operations response team. And that seems to be correct because he is on video transporting a body from the scene of a death. That would mean that he did the initial photographing of the external body as it was being received from the hospital. Ed Winter would have no idea who did that photographing, which would explain him saying that Cormier was not involved with the Breitbart case AS FAR AS HE KNEW. If Cormier had been the forensic technician who aided in photographing the actual dissection Ed Winter would have known that.
The part that would be revealing for a heart attack dart assassination, though, would be the photographs of the external body. Which would be done by the photographer for the special operations response team. Which is the description given for Michael Cormier.