ROANOKE, Va. – Roanoke leaders are calling on the community to help curb crime and rejuvenate neighborhoods.
As things slowly return to normal, community engagement leaders both from the community and city leadership say now is the time to focus on building relationships.
“Our motto which we setup is neighbors caring for neighbors,” said Noble Neighborhood Watch leader Clay McClintock.
He is the lead of the Noble Neighborhood Watch in Northeast, which he says was once a hotbed for crime. He says his group helped change that.
Work in some neighborhoods will target crime while others will target things like infrastructure.
Josh Johnson is Roanoke’s Neighborhood Services Coordinator. He has a goal to rejuvenate community relationships with local leaders and law enforcement, but also with each other as well.
“A lot of these grassroots movements are most successful when you have the community backing it up… when it comes from the ground up within the community. The violence that we’re seeing are in our neighborhoods. We’ve seen that with the vaccine rollouts by getting it in our neighborhoods with pods,” stated Johnson.
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