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City of Roanoke sees progress in reducing violence

ROANOKE, Va. – The city of Roanoke is making strides in its efforts to reduce violence, with significant progress reported in recent months. The city’s Group Violence Intervention (GVI) program, launched just over six months ago, aims to prevent individuals from committing violent crimes.

Eric Mayo, program manager for the Group Violence Intervention for the city of Roanoke, shared some promising statistics. “Numbers have come down tremendously, I think at 55% down on homicide rates this year over last year,” Mayo said.

In 2023, Roanoke City Police reported 27 homicides and 45 non-fatal shootings. In 2024, those numbers dropped to 11 homicides and 26 non-fatal shootings.

Chief Booth expressed optimism about the progress. “I mean it feels good right, so we love the fact that our 2024 looked much better than our 2023 and 2022. We feel like as a community we are moving forward and we are reducing gun violence, all violence in our community,” he said.

While several factors have contributed to this decline, the city’s new program is playing a key role. Mayo explained the program’s focus: “What its purpose is, is to identify those most at risk of committing a violent act. We want to get ahead of that right. We want to identify those folks with a recent study we know is less than 1 percent of the population. We want to get to them before that occurs.”

He added, “We want to offer them services. We want to make sure they know we are there for them, but we also want them to know we are going to hold them accountable if they act out in terms of any kind of violence.”

Chief Booth acknowledged the ongoing challenge of gang violence, noting, “I have yet to find a city whether it’s Richmond, Danville, or Roanoke that doesn’t struggle with what you would call group or gang violence right. The nature of modern violence in communities, and not all but a big chunk, and I think Eric spoke to the very small percentage of offenders that commit the majority of certainly random violent crimes.”

The program is already seeing success, with 12 individuals positively impacted. Mayo highlighted this achievement: “For GVI not including all the other resources, but for GVI what we do, we have 12 since last July, we’ve had one reoffend whose warrant was put out for his arrest and based on the report that a member from the GVI team made with that individual he self-surrendered.”

Mayo also emphasized the collaborative nature of the program: “It’s a team. When I came to Roanoke, I was amazed by the resources that were already in place, whether it be stratified policing model, the RESET team, youth and gang outreach, teen apprenticeship, the non-profits, the help from Carilion and Blue Ridge Mental Health – all GVI does is bring those folks together, have them work in a collaborative manner, with all the same focus to combat violent crime.”

Despite the progress, Chief Booth and his team remain focused on 2025 and creating an even safer community.


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Kelly Marsh joined the team in July 2023.