Borough Council Hires Private Security Firm

The voted 6-1 to hire a private security firm to patrol the neighborhood in and around South Walnut Street on Tuesday night. 

Security teams will walk the neighborhood on Thursday through Saturday nights from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. with the aim of cutting down on quality of life disturbances.

“They’re main objective would be to deal with the roaming bands of drunk college kids on South Walnut Street,” said council president Holly Brown.

The borough voted to contract with ELPS Private Detective Agency contingent on the support of West Chester University.  The university will front the money to pay for the security force in what is being dubbed a pilot program.  If the borough and the neighborhoods see significant improvement, the program could become permanent.

“It’s hard to quantify success,” said Jeff Stein, the founder of ELPS.  “I would recommend that we look and see if there is a reduction in calls for service.”

Despite earning an overwhelming majority vote from the borough council, police chief Scott Bohn expressed concerns about the program.

“I have concerns with [the security teams] engaging with the individuals,” Bohn said.  “Every police officer that’s hired has at least over 700 hours of training…the people hired by the security firm may not.”

“The measurements for success are subjective at best,” Bohn said.  “It should be clear that these security teams don’t have any greater authority than you as citizens.”

Borough Council expressed a desire to get the program underway as soon as possible with the target date being March 20.  The pilot program is scheduled to run from March through the rest of the school term ending in May.

If successful, the program would be reinstated on a permanent basis in September.