IN an early toast to the four-month-old Government forensic pathology autopsy suite, Commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations (Indecom) Hugh Faulkner says the agency is no longer bombarded with complaints from relatives who are unable to bury their relatives because of the pile-up of bodies awaiting post-mortems.

“I couldn’t tell when last I get a call at my desk regarding post-mortems,” Faulkner, who was first appointed to head the entity in 2020, told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

The suite, for which plans were in train since 2007, is located at 149 Orange Street in downtown Kingston, a stone’s throw from Kingston Public Hospital. It was officially opened in mid-June, the first of its kind in the Caribbean, marking the end of years of reliance on private funeral homes and the outsourcing of medico-legal post-mortems to unregulated funeral homes. The $680-million facility was hailed by the police and other law enforcement agencies for its potential to strengthen investigative and judicial systems by ensuring faster, more accurate forensic outcomes; reducing public expenditure for contracted funeral homes; clearing the existing backlog of autopsies by operating seven days a week; and providing training opportunities for local doctors pursuing forensic pathology, reducing the dependence on overseas experts.

According to Faulkner, all this is already apparent.

“If I tell you that we have a complaint with post-mortems the truth would not reside in me; we have seen tremendous improvements. Even though the forensic lab is saying they had a soft opening, we have seen improvements in terms of post-mortems. When I just came in this seat, family members [would complain] and say ‘we can’t bury the person’. I have not had that complaint in recent times, there is improvement. I couldn’t tell when last I get a call at my desk regarding post-mortems,” he told the Observer.

In the meantime, however, he said there have been hiccups on the ballistics side of the lab which has an expanded DNA storage facility and is also equipped with a ballistic centre to store data for all firearms in the country, both legal and illegal.

“Ballistics is a different kettle of fish because of the volume that they have to attend to with regard to the respective law enforcement bodies so that can cause some delay and we have also been advocating on behalf of the forensic lab that the lab needs transformational changes in terms of ballistics,” the Indecom commissioner said.

He said this transformation translates to more personnel especially in the face of the increase in fatal police shootings.

“Because some incidents, especially if it’s a joint military-police incident, you can have numerous exhibits so it’s very time consuming. So we are hoping that the authorities will properly resource the forensic lab in that aspect because we have some challenges but we commend them in regard to post mortems,” Faulkner said.

He said the sheer volume of exhibits has resulted in delays in the procurement of ballistic reports for Indecom.

“And as I tell you even our mission statement we just have to say ‘within a reasonable time’, because you have no control over when you are getting ballistic reports even though they try and meet what the courts are asking for, sometimes what we are asking for, but we know they are overwhelmed. I think [an] increase in human resource would be helpful to them, they could better advocate that, but I believe so,” he said.

Emphasising that the increase in incidents of shootings during police operations is helping to pile on the pressure, Faulkner said “any discharge of firearm can end up at the lab, any discharge of firearm, so it’s quite a wide portfolio they have. I think they will always have a backlog but what we have tried to do is to establish with the Forensic Lab a priority list, so if we classify the matter as suspicious, we ask them to try and advance it for us”.

Faulkner, who was unable at the time to give the numbers on that list, said the lab has given “a good response within their capabilities” to those requests.

“So if it’s a court matter and there is suspicious conduct, we try and ask them notwithstanding their multiple obligations to try and speed up these for us. We track on a monthly basis for our management meetings,” he told the Observer.

For the police oversight body, delays in completing critical reports like post-mortems can significantly slow down investigations, hindering the timely resolution of cases and potentially affecting the commission’s ability to provide clear findings and ensure accountability.

Indecom, in a quarterly report prior to 2020, had lamented delays in resolving cases “due to diverse difficulties experienced in obtaining scientific reports” such as ballistics, chemistry and biology reports, which it said could take between one to three years to be completed; while post-mortem reports could take up to one year. It said these delays significantly impacted case resolution time.

Key features of the Forensic Pathology Autopsy Suite include four dissecting bays with surgical lighting, enabling multiple post-mortems to be conducted simultaneously; a refrigeration system with capacity to store up to 150 bodies in varying stages of decomposition; a fully equipped X-ray room, multiple forensic laboratories, and a teaching and isolation room; as well as administrative offices, a solar-powered water heating system, and a stand-by generator for energy resilience.