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West Chester committee honors slain officer; police chief reports promotions, staffing and crime trends
Summary
At the West Chester Public Safety Committee meeting, Police Chief Josh Lee opened with condolences for Corporal Timothy O'Conor Jr., shared donation details for the family, and updated the committee on promotions, recruitment testing, monthly calls for service, and a suspect identified in a recent string of car thefts.
Chief Josh Lee opened the committees public-safety meeting by asking members and residents to keep Corporal Timothy O'Conor Jr. and his family in their thoughts after the officers on-duty death, and he shared a QR code and an address for donations to the Pennsylvania State Police Survivors Fund in the officers honor.
Lee, identifying himself as police chief, said the department recently promoted four officers and is conducting expanded recruitment testing. "We currently have two vacanciesand I expect that we'll have four within the next couple months," he told the committee, adding that more than 30 candidates passed recent written and physical agility tests and dozens more are registered for upcoming testing.
On calls for service, Lee said West Chester handles roughly 30,000 calls annually and that monthly volumes in December, January and February ranged from about 2,800 to 3,200. "We average in the high 2,000s or low 3,000s every month," he said, describing the range as typical and noting that a one- or two-hundred-call difference between months did not appear statistically significant.
Lee reported a suspect identified and arrested in another municipality in connection with a series of car thefts that affected West Chester over the last 12 to 18 months. He said he expects to return next month with further details and potential charges related to those incidents.
The chief also reviewed nuisance-crime trends and noise-complaint statistics for February, saying the department received 15 noise complaints and issued no noise citations that month. Committee members asked follow-up questions about the January spike in call volume; Lee said calendar-length differences likely accounted for modest month-to-month variation.
The committee did not take formal votes on police policy during the meeting. Lee asked the public to consider supporting the slain officers family through the posted donation avenues and said the department would share the fundraising details on social media.
