ROANOKE, Va. – An internal city audit found the Roanoke Police Department overspent a grant by nearly $100,000, youth mentors did not undergo full background checks before working with children, and there were instances of child labor law violations.
10 News spoke with Deputy Chief Mike Crawley to ask about the audit’s findings.
“I think that is very concerning. Obviously, when you’re having children who are entrusted with adults,” Crawley said. “I think it was a lack of oversight.”
The audit “did not reflect any discernible signs of fraudulent billing” and found “no clients complained about the work.”
However, it identified six instances of child labor law violations where tasks involved “manual labor and mechanical activities that present potential safety and injury risks.”
“I don’t think there was anything malicious,” said Crawley of the mentors, citing a lack of oversight. “Those activities, we were relying on the vendor to monitor those. And so now we’re a whole lot better where we’re having our hands on that and being able to monitor it directly,” he said.
To address the issues, city leaders said all vendor-based mentoring services have been eliminated, and no youth under the age of 14 will be engaged in any work activities. The department also developed a new internal mentoring model in which mentors will be hired directly as part-time police department employees.
In addition, the department established the Police Business Division to oversee finances moving forward.
“We’re better today than we were before. Obviously, our checks and balances within government—that’s what they’re here for,” said Crawley.
“More importantly, we talk about the moneys that were spent. They were spent on our children,” Crawley said. “We were providing services to children who were in need. Even though we did spend more money, that it went [to children] and it had some positive results as reduction in violent crime.”
Crawley said no criminal charges will be filed, and there is no criminal investigation into the mentors.