ROANOKE, Va. – The Roanoke Gun Violence Prevention Commission held its monthly meeting Tuesday night following a week of more violence in the Star City.
Both shootings last week were in Southwest Roanoke, an area where people say violence is not the norm.
Vice Mayor Joe Cobb, also the Chairman of the commission, opened up the meeting by saying gun violence can happen anywhere.
“There’s a lot of chatter about ‘I can’t believe this happened in our neighborhood’ and I just scratch my head and say, well imagine how Northwest Roanoke feels when it’s like every week,” Cobb said.
According to Roanoke Police data, there have been 20 incidents of gun violence in the city, with 14 of the incidents in Northwest Roanoke.
“I think we still have to prioritize Northwest because [75%] of the shootings this year that have been aggravated assaults or homicides have been in Northwest.”
The data also shows five of the incidents were homicides and 15 were aggravated assaults. At this time in 2022, data was the exact same (5 homicides, 15 aggravated assaults).
Most of the conversation at Tuesday’s meeting surrounded the lack of communication between the groups working to combat the issue.
Elliott Major is a member of the commission. Major said if the commission doesn’t know what some players are doing, then the public won’t know either.
“I have not seen the strategy … what is the strategy of RPD? I don’t know, I really don’t. I would dare say a majority of the city, residents won’t know that,” Major said.
There’s no question that the commission along with the city council has felt a lot of pressure from the community regarding the issue of gun violence.
“The temperature is up because people are asking for some ‘solutions’ from those responsible for those solutions and we have not yet found a way to clearly articulate what we’re doing, how we’re doing and the effect we’re going to do over here,” Major said.
Vice Mayor Cobb hopes a joint meeting between the commission and city council will address a lot of the communication issues.
“What is council’s role in what we can do now? What is the police’s role? What is Star City Safe … what is the commission’s role? What is the citizens’ role? Then how do we stay in communication with each other about that,” Cobb said.
The joint meeting is tentatively scheduled for May.