ROANOKE, Va. – After just four months at the helm, Roanoke Police Chief Scott Booth is already charting a course to reduce crime and foster a safer community.
Chief Booth talked about the recent school threats and his hopes for Roanoke moving forward.
A chaotic and stressful week for Roanoke Police but Chief Booth remains steadfast in his commitment to implementing positive change throughout the Star City.
“For me, 120 days in, this has been an extremely positive experience and you know we can’t get it right all the time, but I feel like our community gives us some grace on things and our community is there for us because I know we are going to be here for our community,” Chief Booth said.
One main goal from Chief Booth, since he started, was building trust and communication both in the community and at the department, for him that started with community walks, forums, and conversations both internally and externally.
“Decrease crime, we are going to continue to chip away at that. We had a really tough 2023 when you look at lives lost in our community, 2022 wasn’t great and 2024 I want to be much better for our community,” Booth said.
The partnerships Chief Booth has made and fostered are something he is thankful for especially with federal partners.
“This is what our community deserves, and we are not going to let egos get in the way, but we are going to solve the problem,” Booth said.
He was able to get immediate resources from those partners when safety in schools and the community are at risk.
“It’s all of us working together. And I saw a lot of that with the school threats case,” Booth said.
Chief Booth said Roanoke PD is hiring and is hopeful to bring more people on board, but that hasn’t stopped from having all hands on deck to create a safe community.
“When we have a loss of life in our community, that’s gameday, right, we have to really roll out the resources on that, so we significantly increased our response to both our homicides and non-fatal shootings. So, you’re not just going to have a detective, you’re going to have a team of detectives and officers now that respond to those incidents,” Booth said.