The New York City Police Department has distributed an order to all patrol officers designed to give them guidance on autopsy problems when they are called to the scene of a death which may be that of an observant Jew.
The order was issued by Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward, to help assure cooperation by the policeman on the beat with a recently-enacted state law singed last August by Governor Mario Cuomo, which limits the authority of medical examiners to perform autopsies on the bodies of observant Jews.
The measure was drafted by the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA) and introduced in the state Assembly by Assemblyman Sheldon Silver (D. Manh.), who helped get the measure approved by the State Senate.
LAW PROTECTS ORTHODOX
The law requires that, except in unusual circumstances, a medical examiner may not perform an autopsy after next-of kin or close relatives have asked him not to do so. Exceptional circumstances include the possibility of homicide and/ or a threat to public health. Even when the medical examiner determines there is such “a compelling public necessity,” he will afford the objecting party at least 48 hours to start a court action to determine the need for an autopsy.
The order was the result of a meeting in April between Police Chief of Operations Robert Johnson, Jr. and Rabbi Moshe Sherer, president of Agudath Israel of America.
Shmuel Prager, Agudath Israel counsel, said the order also provides that a police officer responding to the scene of a death should not volunteer information but if he is asked, the officer should advise the “interested parties” that they have the right to communicate with the medical examiner and tell the examiner about their objections to an autopsy contrary to their religious beliefs.
Prager said there have been occasions when an officer, unacquainted with the needs of observant Jews, will say to next-of-kin, on coming to the scene of a death that “there is definitely going to be an autopsy here.”
Prager said that when the family hears such a statement from a person of authority, they often in fact do not register a complaint. The police advisory explains the autopsy law to the policemen and policewoment and informs them that the best course in such circumstances is to say nothing.
Prager said that the order is the first of its kind in New York City and, accordingly, in New York State.
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