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Tuesday, September 28, 1993 |
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Spelling it was sometimes easier than figuring what he was up to. Steve Nawojczyk, whose lifelong involvement with law enforcement has been a fascination with the dead -- usually the suddenly, feloniously dead. And their secrets. Nawojczyk is the Pulaski County coroner. In 1992 his office telephone rang 1,400 times. The majority were occasioned by simple, natural mortality: heart attacks, strokes, bacterial pathology. But almost a hundred other calls summoned Nawojczyk or his assistants to a site where a life had ended by bullets. Or a knife or a club. Nawojczyk worked with police and sheriff's deputies and the Arkansas Crime Laboratory. But the victims of homicide -- men, women and, increasingly, children -- were his real clients. "Some of them are pretty bad people," he said the other day, "and some of them weren't: they were just good ordinary folks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Either way," he added, "they need an advocate. And I always figured that was as much a part of the job of coroner as simply certifying them as dead. "After all," he smiled, "the cops already know a victim's dead when call me." Increasingly in recent years, Nawojczyk has been as concerned with the living as with the dead. Long before anyone else could conceive of Crips and Bloods and the Oak Street Posse, he was cautioning anyone who would listen that youth gangs were taking shape in Arkansas. Not just in Little Rock, but in Dumas and El Dorado and other, smaller communities. Too few people listened; his warnings were ignored or dismissed, even ridiculed. No one is laughing now. And Nawojczyk, acknowledged by police as probably the state's leading authority on gang culture and psychology, is in demand in Arkansas and beyond as a lecturer on juvenile crime. For the vast majority of his appearances he declines a fee. A principal reason Nawojczyk will not seek another appointment as Pulaski County's coroner when his term expires at the end of next year is because the General Assembly, in its latest session, stripped the office of authority to conduct inquests. They were quite rare in Arkansas -- Nawojczyk conducted one of the few in recent memory -- but he believes inquests are a valuable check on the criminal justice system. Without such a license, he contends, a coroner is nearly superfluous. Actually, his concern for the coroner's function predates the last legislative session. While Nawojczyk's office walls are covered with training certificates from law enforcement and academies, many of his 74 fellow county coroners have little professional training. Some are physicians or funeral directors, but few have the forensic skills that can detect a murder cleverly disguised as a suicide: the difference is justice. So a few years ago, Nawojczyk publicly suggested that either education standards be established for Arkansas coroners or the office be abolished. Even now, he thinks it would be a good idea for the State Crime Laboratory to assume responsibility for death scene investigations in Pulaski County, where the subsequent autopsies are performed. Nawojczyk is only 41, but has seen more corpses during his two decades in homicide investigation ("I don't get called on out burglaries," he grins) than any three detectives will encounter from rookiedom to retirement. And he is tired of it. He has been mentioned as a possible candidate for sheriff but will probably consult with law enforcement agencies or perhaps pursue private investigations.
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