In South Africa tasks normally performed by coroner units are the job of policemen assigned to mortuaries
Khadija Magardie
Policemen assigned to the medico-legal services wing of the South African Police Service perform tasks that make them more suited to medical scrubs than blue uniforms.
Among other things, they prepare bodies for the pathologist – dissecting and viscerating, or removing, the internal organs of countless victims of assault and other unnatural deaths who end up in state mortuaries every day. And despite the stressful and grim nature of their work, many say they wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.
It is midday, and Sergeant Jacques Koekemoer (29) of the Roodepoort mortuary has just arrived back with his second body of the morning – a suicide in nearby Randfontein. His task is to collect the body, to collect the paperwork from the detectives on the scene and to “book in” the body.
Unlike other policemen, who are constantly rushing from one crime scene to another, Koekemoer’s main task is to sit by the phone and wait for calls, from hospitals, from squad cars or from distressed relatives.
A highly experienced policeman who has been in the force for 12 years, he describes his posting as far more interesting than his previous one – in the riot squad. He says he seldom misses the action that comes with working on the beat, because he is now able to become involved in detective and forensic work.
“But this is a job where you actually wish you were not kept busy,” he says wryly.
Koekemoer’s older brother, Deon, also an experienced policemen, is in charge of the Roodepoort mortuary – one of the finest and most well-resourced in the province. It serves a vast area, ranging from Orange Farm in Westonaria to the Magaliesburg.
Like all state mortuaries, Roodepoort mortuary does not have a separate budget, but merely falls within the overall running costs of the adjacent police station.
While his brother begins a 12-hour shift, Deon Koekemoer is issuing instructions to the rest of the mortuary staff.
With the exception of two women employed as administration workers, all the staff are policemen. Like their colleagues at nearby Diepkloof mortuary, they do all the tasks that most other policemen and civilians alike would prefer not to do.
During the day they wash, weigh, tag and refrigerate the incoming bodies that are offloaded from Jacques Koekemoer’s van.
And in the mornings their first task of the day is to perform blood tests and to dissect and viscerate the new bodies in preparation for the pathologist.
In most parts of the world, the task is performed by specialised “coroner” units, but at most government mortuaries here it is done by the policemen assigned there. The highly specialised task, which requires substantial training, is learned “on the job” by the policemen, who often learn by observing their more experienced colleagues, like Deon Koekemoer.
State mortuaries deal only with suspicious or assault-related deaths that ultimately involve a criminal case, so their running involves not only the police but the departments of health and justice as well.
Koekemoer explains that assigning police to the mortuary is entirely voluntary, and used to involve an additional salary incentive as well. This was removed in 1994 and incorporated in the general salary.
Most police are reluctant to work at the mortuary, but all those who do are there out of choice. After an application is approved, a policeman typically has to spend up to three months “shadowing” colleagues. The policeman will then start off working as an assistant to a more experienced policeman who prepares the bodies for the post-mortem. Up to six are performed daily.
Because of their experience in dealing with various types of assault-related injuries, ranging from gunshot wounds to strangulations, staff are experienced enough to point out or prove cause of death, sometimes even more accurately than doctors.
The bodies stored at Roodepoort mortuary – at 49, it’s a “quiet season”, according to Koekemoer – bear witness to the increasingly violent ways in which South Africans are dying. Some are killed in road accidents, but the majority fall victim to gunshots, knives, burnings and fatal blows to the head.
In one fridge lies the advanced decomposed remains of an infant who perished after being abandoned in the veld soon after birth.
Jacques Koekemoer says the worst part of his job is dealing with severely decomposed bodies, some of which are languishing in Roodepoort mortuary, because of the health risk posed by collecting remains that have been exposed to the elements, and also because it makes it harder to face bereaved relatives who come to identify bodies.
“It’s a hard thing to do, but you cannot lose it. You must keep your composure, for the sake of the relatives,” he says.
Earlier this year police staff from Diepkloof mortuary staged a go-slow to protest against the removal of the extra salary incentive, as well as against what they called work they were not trained for. A shortage of experienced forensic pathologists was a significant contributory factor.
They also called for authorities to look into possibilities of handing over the running of mortuaries to the Department of Health. But the staff at Roodepoort mortuary say they are learning and becoming more experienced doing different types of work.
“In any case, somebody’s got to do it,” says Koekemoer.