"There are issues with it," Michael Roke said Tuesday of central court. "Everybody you talk to doesn't want to do it. It makes it worse." Central court was one of the initiatives proposed by Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas Judge Michael Conahan when he assumed the position of president judge in 2002. The plan was designed to centralize preliminary hearings to streamline the county's criminal cases, ensure a defendant's rights, reduce the county's prison population, and ease the burden of local police. Under the system scheduled to start in February, a defendant will have a preliminary hearing at one of two locations before one of the county's district judges. The judges will be assigned to the court on a rotating schedule and will hear only preliminary hearings in criminal cases, except homicides. District judges will preside over homicides and all other district court matters at their individual offices. The county's central court will be located at the Thomas C. Thomas building in Wilkes-Barre, and at an undisclosed location in Hazleton. That's where the problems arise, Roke said in a letter to the Times Leader. The patrolman said residents elect district judges to preside over cases in their communities.