The Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved on Nov. 27 a mutual aid agreement with DeKalb County, Fulton County and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to provide autopsy and medical examiner’s services during emergencies.
The Georgia Mutual Aid Act does not include medical examiners or coroners within its scope, according to Cobb Chief Medical Examiner Christopher Gulledge in a Nov. 27 memo.
As a result, the Metro Atlanta Medical Examiner’s Offices and the GBI Medical Examiner’s Office have developed this agreement to encompass the scope of services provided by death investigators, he said.
“During a multiple fatality incident, surge capacity would need to be divided among multiple agencies for an effective response,” Gulledge said.
While each Metro Atlanta agency works independently, using their own county- or state-funded resources, “all the offices have good working relationships with each other,” he added.
Forensic Pathology has a small number of practitioners with an estimated 500 full-time Forensic Pathologists in the U.S., Gulledge noted, resulting in each Medical Examiner’s office working at capacity.
“Therefore, it is beneficial to have efficient and effective investigations even when incidents exceed normal work capacity,” Gulledge said.
This mutual aid agreement will renew automatically each year unless cancelled.
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