Reducing Homicide Rates - Scott Booth

Chief Scott Booth 0:00

When you look at the two years before we started that, compared to the two years you know, since, since we've been here, since I've been here, you know, our fatal shootings, our homicides are down 55% and our non fatal shootings are down 44% and when I see numbers like that, when I see violence declining, I know we're doing something right.

Andrew Chand 0:33

Welcome to solving gun violence a student led podcast from the University of Virginia's gun violence solutions project, which is dedicated to finding effective strategies to combat one of America's most urgent issues, gun violence. My name is Andrew Chand. I'm a fourth year student at the University of Virginia, and today's host each of our episodes features experts sharing actionable solutions to improve community safety while upholding individual rights. Today I'm joined by a very special guest, Chief Scott booth. Chief booth has a long history of serving in state and federal law enforcement roles. Since October 2023 he has served as the chief of police for the city of Roanoke, Virginia, and prior to that, he served as the chief of police for the city of Danville, where he reduced violent crime by 52% taking homicide rates down from the highest in Virginia to a 35 year low, Chief booth will break down how he achieved these remarkable drops in violence and discuss the role of law enforcement in preventing gun violence. If you're interested in practical solutions and the future of gun violence prevention, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Andrew Chand 1:50

Chief Booth. Thank you so much for being here today.

Chief Scott Booth 1:53

Andrew, thank you for having me. I'm very excited. I know we've been planning this conversation for a while. So so great to be here.

Andrew Chand 2:01

Absolutely excited to get into it now, I just mentioned in the intro the frankly remarkable progress on gun violence reduction that you and your department were able to make in Danville with your community policing model. Could you explain for our listeners what community policing means and how exactly that was able to lead you to success in Danville?

Chief Scott Booth 2:22

Yeah, Andrew, you know, good question. Community policing kind of gets a lot of the credit for some of the remarkable success I believe that we had in Danville. And I really do believe it was a cornerstone. It was foundational for what we accomplished. But, but really, there's a there's a few things going on going on there, right? So when I was a new chief coming into Danville in 2018 what I found was a city that had no relationship with its police department, to the point that actually the former police chief that was there before me was not a believer in community policing, and felt that there were so many obstructions and barriers between the community and the police that community policing would never work. His words, I am a true believer that without you know the buy in from the community, you are never going to be able to actually reduce crime in said community. 20 years in Richmond, moving up through the ranks, something that I felt that always worked for us in that agency in that city, was having community buy in. And I mean, since then, I mean, it is my belief in that is has certainly doubled so So community policing there really looked at building relationships. And because it was so bad because there was such a level of mistrust. I'll give you an example. Is there one particular neighborhood there, Cardinal village in Danville, where the police officers would not answer radio calls unless they were driving the SWAT armored vehicle right? Because they've been shot at in 2016 and they really felt like the trust was broken. And you imagine calling 911, and you know, you're getting an armored vehicle. You're a victim of a domestic and an armored vehicle shows up. So when they told me that story on my day one or day two, I was like, Look, we got to go out here. We got to repair this. So I took about 30 or 40 officers out to that neighborhood with community leaders, and we knocked on doors. And after about two hours of that, we all sat around, and we really kind of deprogrammed about what we'd experienced. And you know, I think both from the police side and the community side, we realized that, guess what, we do need to build some type of mutual respect and communication. So that was kind of like how I jump started that, or how we jump started that there, and we just kept building on that, right? So community walks were a regular monthly thing. Then they became a weekly thing with shift supervisors and shift leaderships. Then we started building out programs. Programs that were engineered to build community trust, right? So I hired a wonderful young lady who still does that role in Danville, Ashton for drill, and Ashton was my community relations liaison, and she just started building programs, right? So I love police officers. They're so special. They are but sometimes you're, you know, you're non sworn. Your professional staff really has a place. And I found that she and I have some that do the same thing here in Roanoke. Was just so spectacular, building programs. So we started investing a lot, and I really, I would be remiss. I need to back up a little bit. Probably the biggest thing we did early on was youth engagement, right? I was like, All right, I need to have an officer that's just doing youth engagement. So I selected, she's a corporal. Now, Sylvia Brooks just another phenomenal leader in that community, and she built out our first ever youth police academy there, and they're on their seventh or eighth iteration, where they run, you know, 40 kids from the community through this mini police academy to really learn about what the police do. So I think you got to build those relationships, right? You got to get people so they will communicate. They will talk to the police. But equally important, Andrew is, guess what? You have barriers sometimes with officers, right? Officers come into a community. Many times they're not from that community. They look like folks from that community. So there's some inherent barriers. And you know, I think that it works both ways. The more exposure you have to each other, the richer, deeper those relationships are.

Andrew Chand 6:42

Yeah, thank you so much for that answer. I think that really fleshes out, you know, the general idea of community policing and sort of the community engagement that your departments have really been applauded for on that subject, about how a police department actually engages with its community. Could you speak a little bit more to any difficulties that you might have faced in reaching maybe communities that were historically distrustful of law enforcement, and specifically on the topic of gun violence, how would you sort of address concerns that maybe sending police officers in who often carry arms may not be the best solution to gun violence?

Chief Scott Booth 7:18

Yeah, so, you know, and that's kind of a big question there. I think that you have to have that relationship. But absolutely, there are communities that are going to have a level of mistrust because of past, you know, the way we're even looking at policing in general, the evolution of policing and during my almost 30 years, right, the way we policed in the 90s, when I was starting in Richmond, I think is much different than the way I have led departments to police. You know, in current days, we're much more strategic now, whereas before, let's, you know, using Richmond as an example, if we had a homicide or shooting or a series of violent incidents, we would kind of flood neighborhoods with cops, right? We would send police officers into said neighborhoods, and you know, he would over police many times. And there might be some law enforcement folks that don't agree with me on that, but I think for my optics of 30 years, we would kind of throw the kitchen sink at a problem, and many times it would be successful in stopping further incidents. But if you're just out there stopping folks, and I'm not saying you're not stopping doing traffic stops, you know you're not illegally stopping vehicles, but you're just stopping kind of everybody in that community, and that's going to really so every time you stop as a police officer, you have an interaction with a community member, inevitably, there can be some negativity, right? Sometimes it's it's construed, sometimes it's misconstrued. So every time you're doing that, exponentially, you have the potential of having a negative interaction. And we want positive interactions, right? Even we're doing enforcement, I would love to have officers that have positive interactions with the community. So when you're more strategic, you sometimes you can limit those negative interactions, but you're still focusing on those that would do the most harm in that community, right? And research has shown that there's a very small percentage of those violent offenders, or those offenders who commit violent acts in their community. It's not just randomly everybody walking down the street, right? And we won't go, go into into that research, but it is a small percentage. Usually, I think three to six is it's kind of the numbers that are thrown out there. And you focus on that group. And I'm not saying you're using bias or you're using any type of stereotypes with that, but you use good intelligence. Use good data on where these incident or hat is are happening, and who is committing these violent acts, and you can really move the needle on reducing crime. So you have to be much more strategic. Now, many times there are some barriers, right, some historic barriers. And one thing that I found Andrew about Danville, and I remember this is something that really amazed me early on. Because I came from a bigger city. Although I was not born in a in a big city, I worked in a larger city for a number of years in policing, and maybe we just became a little desensitized to that. But when I got to Danville, I kept hearing over and over about an incident called Bloody Monday from 1963 where officers arrested a number of protesters, peaceful protesters during the Civil Rights Movement, and during the arrest, folks were brutalized. And it really, it really left a bad mark for one of better words on that community with how they felt about the police. And even though a lot of very good things that happened in the police department in the community in those 57 or so years since we publicly addressed it, it had still really, it had been a sore in the community. And so they told me about that, and they said, Chief, you're not going to be able to do community policing here until this is addressed. So I was able to after I'd been there about a year, maybe a little bit under a year, I was able to publicly address and apologize for that incident, and I got a lot of good feedback, but also got a lot of negative feedback, which still showed me that we had a lot of work to do in that community in regards to certainly race relations and police and community relations, but that was a big first step for us, right? That was an acknowledgement that the police, guess what, we don't always get it right. And what that showed me is when we would have a use of force that was questionable, when people would get on social media, we would go to great ends to make sure we were publicly showing that video. We had an officer involved shooting very early on in my tenure there as chief, that was questionable as far as what the community felt, and there was a narrative that was coming from the community that was misinformed, and we made sure that we released that video within about 72 hours of that officer involved shooting. So you know, you get out there and you show people that you'll be transparent and you'll hold yourself accountable. And what I saw in that city, you know that smaller city, is that that goes a long way into creating constructive dialog with moving police community relationships forward. So that's huge for us, right? That transparency, that accountability, and I think that moved things along so we could get to a place where people trusted us enough for us to actually go in there and arrest those violent offenders and reduce violent crime.

Andrew Chand 12:32

Yeah, well, Chief booth, thank you so much for honestly, a very candid answer and a very complicated answer, as well as this is a super complicated aspect as we try to negotiate the role of the police in a more holistic approach as well to, you know, reducing community violence. But thank you very much for absolutely talking about that. On this note, again, once you have established this trust, I want to learn a little bit more about how your emphasis on community outreach and being able to build ties with the community and establish relationship in which they trust you. How does that factor into the way you train your officers?

Chief Scott Booth 13:07

So you know, going to take this back to 2020, right, when the whole country was really reeling from George Floyd, murder of George Floyd, right? And we saw that a tremendous amount in Danville. Is in Danville at the time, we actually had a lot of very peaceful protest with a lot of constructive social dialog, right, that emerged out of that. And I felt it was, it was pretty good for our community. We had a good experience, or other places that did not have great experiences. And I think by then, we had been building a pretty decent community policing model for about two years. At that point, things were really starting to catch right people we were talking about earlier, about releasing video and having these good, constructive dialogs and people learning to trust us. So we were at a good place. And I think it was just the nature of that community. They were looking for positive relationships. So it was kind of the perfect storm. There a lot of support from elected officials. All those things existed and still exist in Danville, but during that time, and I remember, I just graduated a number of officers from the regional Academy in Danville, like a lot of communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia, they have regional academies where a number of agencies come together and do their officer training. Here in Roanoke, I'm lucky enough that we have our own academy. I came from a municipal Academy. I came from Richmond Police Academy is where I started my career. So I really like having that, the ability to kind of to train our officers, or where we want our community to have those officers on day one. So I started thinking that, you know, we send these officers to a regional Academy for 2020, some weeks, and then we send them to field training for another eight to 12 weeks, usually, you know, depending on. Agency standards, or certain Department of Criminal Justice standards, but every agency kind of adds or adds to that. And I was like, but there's no community based standard for officers, right? And I kind of had this epiphany that hit me when I was swearing in these new officers, and I was talking to them, and I kind of made a promise to them, as well as a community that day that we're going to change that in Danville. So what we did, and I think this is foundational, once again, like that, the community component of getting out talking to people, this is another foundational piece that I really tied to, and that's it's allowed them to have a voice in how we train our officers, right? And up to that point, I had allowed the community to sit on interview boards for hiring officers, on promotion boards when we promoted officers. So I had allowed them access. We had a use of force review board with community members. So I given the community the ability to come in and tap into some things that we were doing, but I wanted them to have to be able to tap into how we trained officers. So we designed with with help from a young man by the name of Dr Josh Hearn. Josh designed a program for us. He's an assets based manager, kind of a community leader there in Danville, works for the Danville Regional Foundation now, and I said, Josh, I want you to design me a program. I'm going to be hands off initially. I want you to design me a four week program. So he came up with, and we came up with what we call the Community Leadership Immersion program. Now in Danville, it's called the Bridge program, but at its core, it's four weeks where they hear from numerous community voices that talk about the history of Danville, talk about how those folks want to be policed, talk about the good and the bad of that community, good and the bad of the police. And you know, it really gave officers an idea of of what the community expectations were, and it gave the community an idea of what the police role was. And, you know, the first couple iterations of that, where we had some negative experiences, right? We had some folks that were just mad at the police, so they kind of dumped on these brand new officers that hadn't even served really day one, you know, in the police department, yet they just been in training, but I think since then, it's really grown into something that that department in that community is proud of. So that's foundational, right? Four weeks there, and it culminates with one week of community based training, or, excuse me, a community project. So it's four weeks of community based training, a community project, where officers go out there and build something for that community. So for me, that was a game changer for us, and we've seen some other communities in the Commonwealth do that. We're doing that here in Roanoke. We're continuing to build that out. So that's a that's a great thing that we're doing there.

Andrew Chand 17:58

Well, speaking of Roanoke, I think one of the things I find most admirable about your story and sort of learning about you, is that you had such a great success in Danville. And rather than, you know, staying with that, floating comfortably, you move right on to the next challenge. I wanted to ask, like after being in your current position in Roanoke for some time now, what have you realized is similar to Danville, and what have you realized is different? In other words, have there been difficulties in applying the model you use to Danville to your new city of Roanoke?

Chief Scott Booth 18:29

Well, you know? And that's a that's something I do think about from time to time. And, you know, I did have it really good in Danville, because we had built a model that continues to work well for that community, but I think it shows kind of a lot about what excites me about policing. I really like, for one of better words, to move that needle forward, right? I really like to move the needle. I like to gun violence. I'm passionate about but how we can, we can reduce gun violence in our communities, how we can save lives. So, you know, I gotten to a point. We gotten to a point that I felt like we had Danville figured out. So I was called to, I feel moving to another community. So, so I've been here for two years now, coming up on two years, right? And Roanoke is a lot, but it's a lot of really good, right? There's so many opportunities here. This is a great community. And one thing Roanoke was doing that is I started kind of toying with the idea of maybe seeing if I could come up here and and do some things and be the chief here. They had put together a gun violence prevention commission, you know, three or four years before I got here with which is a group of council appointees, thought leaders that come together, really folks from kind of all walks of life here in Roanoke, and it showed me that they cared about the challenges, the issues of gun violence. So that attracted me, going into a community like that in Danville, they really just kind of wanted, Hey, Chief, we need you to solve the problem, which, you know, was. Fine, but I wanted to kind of be a little bit more collaborative and walk in the door with that collaboration already existed. So I did find that here in Roanoke, there was, there was truly a collaborative model that was already here. We just needed to tweak a couple things, right? And I came in in 2023 which was a really challenging year for Roanoke, it was their worst, statistically, their worst year on record for gun violence. And that's another thing. I'm always like, Hey, if you come in when it's really bad, it can only get better, right? So, yeah, kind of a laugh moment. But anyway, so you know, I was like, alright, it's going to get better. I know it is. There's so much talent there in that police department, and there's so much, so many people in that community that want things to get better, we're going to make this happen. So coming in, meeting a lot of collaborative leaders, city council, the city manager, you know, the team that was in place, we had to do some adjusting and refocusing. But like I found in Danville, there's always talent within that organization, right? There's always people that you can identify that are going to start moving things forward for you, for us, and a big thing for me is focusing on where the where the crimes happen, right? So we're able to kind of identify, you know, those specific hot spots of violent crime, and, more importantly, those violent offenders, and really get focused on them. And when you look at the two years before we started that compared to the two years, you know, since, since we've been here, since I've been here, you know, our fatal shootings, our homicides are down 55% and our non fatal shootings are down 44% so every loss of life, every person that is shot or injured to me is a horrible thing, make no mistake. But I'm a numbers person, and when I see numbers like that, when I see violence declining, I know we're doing something, right? So we had a very good 2024 compared to 2023 and 2025 is really dead even compared to last year, right? So I figured that, you know, we're entering the phase of a new baseline in our community, right? We had a few bad years, and then community working together, you know, focusing on the things that we need to focus on. You know, things are moving forward. So that excites me. So I'm feeling the same excitement that I felt, you know, after a few years, couple years in Danville. And we're really, we're really keeping that movement here. So, you know, Andrew, that's what I kind of, as a chief in police, in a police department, I found out that this is what really kind of, is my meaning. You know, the reason I want to get up in the morning and do this job is still to really see that impact that good policing can have, and good collaborative models like this can have on a community.

Andrew Chand 22:44

Well, first of all, that's great to hear that that Roanoke is going well and seems to be trending on the downwards, just like Danville. I wanted to ask, when you speak about collaboration with the community, what other types of actors is the police department working with to prevent gun violence? Because obviously gun violence, when it is happening, is an armed issue that may need to be addressed by police with force, but a lot of the work that I understand it is preventative. So what community partners are you guys working with, or that have been especially helpful in sort of preventing gun violence before it arises?

Chief Scott Booth 23:18

Yeah, so you know, we have Roanoke is certainly more resource rich than what we found in Danville, bigger city, and it's kind of that regional hub, you know, largest, largest community, Western Richmond. So we have some folks that that we need to tap into, and we've been pretty good about being able to bring them into the conversation even before I got here. We have groups like fed up, you know, which is a group of family members that have worked to reduce gun violence in the community. Other governmental agencies, like the sheriff's office here is great. I've never seen a sheriff's office with a more collaborative mindset than what we've got here in the Star City. Mental health providers, social service providers. A lot of that, once again, had already been built out. Roanoke was practicing the whole of government approach to gun violence before I ever walked in the door. So we had to tweak some things, but they already had a very collaborative approach. Something that we did build out last year is we built out. You know, I'm huge believer in the concept of focused deterrence. So when you look at Operation cease fire, as it emerged in the 90s in Boston, right? It was, it was a, it's a, and I won't bore you with going into theory. I'm sure a lot of your listeners already, already know what that is, and heard that. And if not, please, research focus deterrence. But there's, there's a concept called group violence intervention, where you're able to do an analysis of your shooting. So we did an analysis. And when you talk about people, you bring in. We had folks from the Attorney General's office that helped us with the funding the state attorney general's office, and we brought in folks from from the John Jay College. They have the. National safer communities group that came in and did an analysis of 18 months of our shootings, but Right, both fatal and non fatal, and we looked at the commonalities and said shootings, and we developed kind of the groups or folks that we need to be most focused on. And we built out what is called a group Violence Initiative here in Roanoke, we call that pivot, Roanoke pivot, which is partnerships in violent outreach and transformation. Partnership in violence, outreach and transformation pivot, and that's something that brings kind of everybody to the table on a regular basis, and talks about the incidents as they occur, and also talks about, Hey, who do we need to connect with? And when you go and do a what they call a custom visit, right? And say, we have a shooting, and we know that we we don't have enough to charge that offender, but we know that that there's a chance of retaliation. We know that there's some possible offenders that are, you know, are adjacent to this incident. What that calls us to do is we have a group of folks, not just law enforcement, but some of those aforementioned service providers that go to that person and do a custom notification, knock on that door and say, Look, you know, we these are the sanctions if you continue that behavior. But these are also the services that we can provide right to kind of take you away from, you know, those violent tendencies of criminal behavior. So pivot Roanoke. Roanoke, pivot is seems to be working for us, and that's one of the things in our tool bag that we're going to continue to build out on. So, yes, very collaborative here.

Andrew Chand 26:39

Chief Booth. This has been a fascinating conversation. I really am amazed to just learn about these methods that while they're sort of new or maybe unheard of until now, they're obviously, at least in Roanoke and Danville, have been very effective in reducing gun violence, which is exactly what we're looking for on the podcast. I do have a final question for you, and it's zooming out, sort of looking at the national level. What would you say the solution to this general gun violence epidemic in the United States looks like to you? And what role do you see police departments across the country playing in sort of resolving that epidemic?

Chief Scott Booth 27:17

Yeah, so, so big question, but I think a lot of it, Andrew is once again, whether you look at a city of, you know, 40,000 or 400,000 the police have to be a part of the conversation. They have to enter into said conversation with with open hearts and open minds. They have to try some things that are a little bit different, right? You know, not everything has to be about arrest, it also has to be about us becoming bridge builders and working with other partners in the community to address the challenge of gun violence. I think that is what works. I'm a huge believer of intervention and prevention, right? When we look at especially gang and group violence, something that really was a big part of our success in Danville was something like a project. Imagine right where you're we're where we're doing intervention and prevention in conjunction with a very focused law enforcement approach. So I think every community, if they have the resources, should be trying to build out the intervention and prevention side, as well as being more focused in their approach to addressing violent offenders. I think you have to do both. But really, you know, the police need to be at the table, open hearts, open minds, working with other folks to really address this public health issue that is gun violence. And it's not just one thing. There's 10 things that work that will have an impact. So guess what? Every human life is important, right? Every life is important. Let's do all 10 of those things if we have to, just to save lives.

Andrew Chand 28:48

I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your wisdom with us. I very much appreciate it.

Chief Scott Booth 28:54

Yep, thanks. Andrew, great conversation. Appreciate it.

Andrew Chand 29:09

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of solving gun violence. For more information on Chief Booth's work, visit Roanoke va.gov and to learn more about the University of Virginia's gun violence solutions project you can visit gvsp.virginia.edu, please make sure to follow us here on Spotify to get notified right when we post our next episode. We'll see you next time you.