NEWS BRIEFS
Book 'em, Penn-o
By the middle of next month, the University of Pennsylvania Police Department will have many rights previously reserved for the Philadelphia Police Department. UPPD will be able to issue warrants and to arrest and process perpetrators, instead of sending cases to Southwest Detectives. No other private police force in the Philadelphia area has these rights.
New technology is also going to change the way the UPPD operates. The campus police will now be able to use photo arrays, an electronic version of the mug-shot book, to assist victims in identifying suspects and will use thumb-print scanners for identification.
WEPIC more sites
Seven more colleges and universities will develop programs modeled after Penn's WEPIC community-school collaborative, thanks to funding from the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and the Corporation for National Service- Learn and Serve America. The grants, which will total $1.4 million over the next three years, will fund community-school and service-learning projects in Colorado, Georgia, Maine, New Mexico, Ohio and Rhode Island. The seven programs were chosen from 40 proposals solicited by the WEPIC Replication Project.
Game over
After nearly a two-year legal battle, Penn and the owners of University Pinball and University Laundry have settled their differences. The settlement ends two lawsuits filed by the owners after their businesses were briefly closed by city inspectors in 1997. The terms of the settlement are being kept confidential by mutual agreement between the parties. A third lawsuit against the city Department of Licenses and Inspections was also dropped in exchange for a $60,000 settlement.