Farenga Brothers Inc

Since the Office of Chief Medical Examiner consolidated operations and closed the Bronx office at Jacobi Medical Center in June, problems have emerged in Queens and Manhattan, where the borough’s deceased are now taken, said Robert Ruggiero, executive director of the Metropolitan Funeral Directors Association. According to the association, a trade group representing independent funeral directors, some bodies have been misidentified and released to the wrong funeral directors, and the chapels are facing longer wait times since the consolidation. “We are trying to be supportive of the medical examiners...but consolidation is failing miserably,” said Ruggiero. “Management cannot control their people is what it boils down to.” The trade group thought the new OCME system was going to work and that improvements would soon be seen, but three weeks into the new arrangement, nothing’s changed, he said. According to MFDA, before OCME announced its closure of the Bronx and Staten Island morgues with little prior notification, OCME cancelled two meetings with MFDA, saying there were no pressing or imminent issues to discuss.In previous meetings with MFDA, OCME assured the group it planned to construct a new $24 million mortuary investigative facility on the existing Jacobi campus only to later announce they scrapped the plan over a year ago and eliminated it from their budget, the MFDA stated.The Bronx and Staten Island mortuary closures subject the public to extended wait times for OCME removal teams to arrive and take a loved one for examination, as well as extended wait times for funeral homes to pick up decedents from the OCME for funerals and burials, MFDA contends. MFDA claims this decision results in more traffic, wasted fuel, parking issues and other service bottlenecks at the three remaining morgues and causes more suffering from families anxiously waiting for the removal of their loved one for burial or cremation.Beginning earlier this month, OCME announced north Bronx decedents would be...