Administrators with Youngstown Municipal Court said they're pleased with their first day of a new method of handling video arraignments for suspects arrested by city police.
After a dozen years of having the hearings held from inside the Mahoning County Justice Center, officials were forced to start using the old city jail when the Sheriff told officials he no longer had the manpower to staff the hearings himself. Although the setup looks essentially the same as it did in the past, inmates appeared on closed-circuit video from the fifth floor of the Police Department, where they sat behind a small table and talked back and forth with City Magistrate Anthony Sertick.
Under the new system, video arraignments will only be held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons as opposed to every weekday morning.
"Doing the video arraignments in the afternoon will help prosecutor's office in preparing the charges against the defendants that we have. It also will accommodate the Youngstown Police Department in their transit issues," said Youngstown Municipal Court Administrator George Denney.
"On particular busy days, 10:30 arraignments did pose a challenge to our office. It is a bit of a convenience to have them at 1:30 and to have them three days a week now as opposed to five. It will give detectives more time to chase down paperwork," said Youngstown City Prosecutor Jay Macejko.
The city already has spent close to $30,000 to install new equipment and supplies in the courts and the old jail and Police Chief Rod Foley said a few more items will need to be added in the coming weeks.
"You know, there was some additional costs that came up over the weekend. We had to put some additional supplies up in the jail to make it operate a little more efficient up there," Foley said.
Administrators said fees paid by inmates, as well as law enforcement grant money, will end up paying for most of the new equipment.
But Foley said the shift also will take at least one officer off the streets for those hours when the hearings are being held and he hopes something can still be worked out between the city and the county to eventually move the arraignments back into the jail.
