ODDS AND ENDS - 10/22/09

WEST CHESTER - The Chester County Commissioners are expected to hear a presenation with respect to the proposed Central Booking process that could take effect next year.


The proposal, which was drafted by a variety of stakeholders, including the Chester County District Attorney's Office, the Chester County Police Chiefs Association, the county's Magesterial District Judges, and Chester County Court Administration, among others, is tentatively set to be formally unveilled at the Commissioner's "Sunshine" (work session) meeting at 10:00 Tuesday in the Commissioner's Meeting Room on the 5th floor of the Historic Chester County Courthouse. This has not been officially confirmed as the agenda for Tuesday's meeting has not been posted at the county's web site.


According to sources familiar with the project, the initial plan would have seven booking locations stations across the county - the Coatesville, Schuylkill, Tredyffrin, West Goshen, and West Whiteland police stations, along with the State Police stations at Avondale and Embreeville. All seven facilities are the only ones in the county which have the CPIN/LiveScan units, which allows for a more complete record of a defendant's criminal history than the traditional prisoner processing, where a prisoner is fingerprinted using ink and the prints are forwarded to the State Police headquarters in Harrisburg.


At the present time, the plan is to have the District Judges preside over the on-call preliminary arraignments from their courtrooms. However, there had been a proposal where the judges would be issued laptops with web cams to allow them to conduct arraignments, in theory, from their homes or other locations outside of the court offices. The one issue that seems to come up is the processing of paperwork if such arraignments are not conducted at the court offices.


Tuesday's presentation to the Commissioners should shed some light on this project and answer some of the remaining unanswered questions that may be out there...


Borough Council approved a contract to a Delaware County firm to design the proposed two-story expansion of the West Chester Police station.


Council awarded the contract to the Media-based Spiezle Architectural Group at last night's meeting. Details of the contract were not readily available as of this writing, however Spiezle is also involved in another major building project within the borough.


Spiezle was recently awarded a contract by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education to design the proposed Student Recreation Center on the North Campus of West Chester University.


The rec center, which would be located near the intersection of South New and West Nields Street, has indirectly stirred up controversy, as a parking garage is proposed for a vacant parking lot on the southwest corner of the intersection has stirred up neighborhood opposition...


And, finally, as a follow-up to last night, your humble blogger attempted to get some video footage of last night's celebration in the SouthEast. Unfortunately, the video didn't turn out too well (it's kind of difficult when the flash on your cameraphone isn't that great).

However, there was some salvagable footage from Barnaby's after the last out that I'll be posting on YouTube later this week. In the meantime, here is a very good YouTube video from "dubcukid" that pretty much shows what went down last night. Other than one arrest for unknown reasons, it appears that the crowd, while vocal, was reasonably well behaved.

Of course, that was the case last year when the Phillies won the pennant; we all know what happened when they won the World Series...