06/21/2026
Coroner vs. Cop: What’s the Difference?
While law enforcement officers and Medicolegal Death Professionals often work side-by-side at death scenes, our missions are fundamentally different.
One of the biggest misconceptions about medicolegal death investigators is that we’re simply there to “pick up the body.”
The reality is much different.
Police investigate crimes.
We investigate deaths.
That doesn’t make one investigation more important than the other.
Both matter.
A police investigation focuses on questions such as:
• Was a crime committed?
• Who committed it?
• What evidence supports that conclusion?
A medicolegal death investigation focuses on questions such as:
• Who is the decedent?
• What caused the death?
• What is the manner of death?
• When did the death occur?
• What medical, environmental, or toxicological factors played a role?
Before a decedent is ever transported from a scene, investigators may spend hours documenting conditions, gathering information, interviewing family members and witnesses, reviewing medical history, examining medications, assessing injuries, and coordinating additional testing.
Sometimes our investigations reveal a homicide.
Most of the time, they do not.
In fact, the majority of deaths investigated by coroner and medical examiner offices involve natural disease, followed by accidents, suicides, overdoses, and occasionally deaths that remain undetermined.
When a homicide does occur, law enforcement and Medicolegal Death Professionals work together, but each has a separate responsibility.
The removal of the decedent is only one small step in a much larger investigative process.
Yet many people still view coroners as little more than a body retrieval service.
What many don’t realize is that every report we write and every determination we make contributes to a larger picture. Our investigations provide grieving families with answers, help identify emerging public health threats, support the justice system, and shape healthcare policies, safety regulations, funding decisions, and prevention efforts nationwide.
An overdose death may reveal emerging drug trends impacting an entire community. A cluster of deaths may identify a public health concern. An investigation may uncover an undiagnosed medical condition that could affect surviving family members. Information gathered during death investigations can even help law enforcement focus efforts on sources of dangerous drugs rather than simply the people using them.
And every investigation serves one fundamental purpose:
To speak for those who no longer can.
So the next time you hear someone refer to a coroner or medical examiner investigator as a “body snatcher,” remember there is much more to the story.
Every death requires an investigation.
No crime required.
Perhaps if we can better educate the public, we can also help educate the policymakers and lawmakers who shape the future of our profession.
Barb Kirkmeyer for Governor
