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Roanoke City Police Department News

Written by Scott Leamon Crime Prevention and Community Outreach Roanoke Police Department

Normally crooks and thieves would get coal in their stockings but this holiday season they will get an unwanted gift from the Roanoke Police Department in the form of five crime analysts.

The Roanoke Police Department has added three more full-time crime analyst positions, a major step forward for the department and a huge step back for any criminals looking to take advantage of your community.

“The crime analysts will not only improve efficiency in the way we research and investigate any trends in criminal activity,” explained Roanoke Chief of Police Chris Perkins, “they’ll also allow us to predict where and when the next criminal incident is most likely to happen.”

“If I have an idea of where a thief might strike, and the times when that thief likes to operate, then I can have officers in that area waiting to catch him,” said Roanoke Police Department Zone Lieutenant Stephen Keatts.

The five crime analysts have only been together for a short period of time so Chief Perkins said there will be a learning curve but he expects great things from the crime analysis team in the future.

“Recently we had officers arrest a robbery suspect right in the box where one of our crime analysts said he would be, in other words the suspect was in the area where he was predicted to be at the time he was predicted to be there,” Chief Perkins explained.

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