Conducted by a task force formed by the District Attorney's Office and including borough police, county detectives, state troopers, and others, collectively known as the CLEAN Team, the arrests - and the cleanup - were part of a comprehensive effort to revitalize Norristown.
Born out of former Gov. Tom Ridge's Weed and Seed program, which offered grant money to revitalize cities and towns, the county CLEAN Team was the brainchild of former District Attorney Michael Marino, now chairman of the county commissioners. It was formed by his successor as district attorney, Bruce L. Castor Jr., in the spring of 2000.
The team, whose name stands for Combined Law Enforcement Agency Network, is the "weed" side, bringing together not only the various police groups that cover the area but also deputy sheriffs, an assistant district attorney, a corrections officer, and a borough codes-enforcement officer.
It's a police department within a police department, in the words of Assistant District Attorney Melissa Murphy Weber, cracking down on crimes from open containers and littering to armed robbery and murder.
"We want to weed out the crime, so that the community can come in and reseed [itself]," Murphy Weber said.
Every Monday, it is the full orange trash bags, rather than beer bottles, paper, and other garbage, that are strewn around borough streets.
"Ask anybody who's familiar with Norristown," Murphy Weber said. "The town's never looked cleaner."
That impression is important to Castor. Norristown isn't just the largest borough in the county, he said, it's also the county seat, the place every county resident has to come to conduct government business. "People from all over the county come to the courthouse, and it should be a safe place to come to," he said.
