An interview with L.A. County's new coroner

The Times' Patt Morrison recently spoke with Mark Fajardo, the new coroner of Los Angeles County. The coroner's office is a major source in the reporting you see here, so this interview will be of interest to Homicide Report readers.

Fajardo comes to the L.A. County post from Riverside County, where he handled the autopsy of Christopher Dorner:

It was [handled] with great caution, from the autopsy itself, maintaining all the evidence, trying to keep control over what information was coming out. All those things together, that level of caution and trying to serve the people of the county, and that included the [Dorner] family, that's what guides us. Serve the people of the county and everything else will fall into place.

Asked about the emotional difficulty of the job, Fajardo talked about his ability to compartmentalize:

It takes a certain type of individual to work in the profession, it truly does. You have to be able to divorce the horrors that we see here from what we do when we go home. However we deal with those emotions, we have to be very, very good at it. For me, it's the ability to put things in boxes. When I leave the office, I can maintain that box and keep it there.

The whole interview is worth your time: L.A.'s new coroner to the people.

— Matt Ballinger

(Photo: L.A. County Coroner Mark Fajardo. Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)