A recent initiative in Roanoke involves individuals implicated in serious crimes

Roanoke, Virginia – The Gun Violence Commission meeting on Tuesday included a discussion of a novel strategy for reducing gun violence in Roanoke.

The Gun Violence Intervention Program, or GVI, was launched by the Roanoke Gun Violence Commission in an effort to lessen violent crimes.

Direct interaction with group members implicated in severe violent occurrences is the main goal of this program.

Two-thirds of the victims and suspects in these incidents are minors, with over half of them being between the ages of 18 and 35.

“It’s the drivers of crime, the shot callers, the leaders within those groups that we really want to concentrate our efforts on,” said the program manager for GVI in Roanoke Eric Mayo.

According to Mayo, there were 18 instances at this time last year compared to 37 this year.

“We’ve looked at numbers already. Finally, crime is down. Our goal is to get to zero. We want to eradicate violent crime. So, I hope with the implementation of this program, that we are able to do that. That’s our ultimate goal,” said Mayo.

According to Chief Scott Booth, instances involving groups account for roughly half of gun violence, and efforts are being made to lower the involvement of minors.

“It’s very important that we intervene in some of the incidents we’ve seen this year, you know, where young people and they were about, you know, an inability to manage conflict and exasperated by social media,”

In addition, Booth stated that the agency is working on de-escalation training in light of the two officer-involved shootings this year.

“How do we reduce that, because that does cause a level of pain and trauma in our community. So we have a de-escalation model that we’re currently training all officers in to give them another tool on their tool belt, you know, with how they engage and, and deal with critical incidents in the community,” said Booth.