The Roanoke Police Department overspent a $300,000 state gun violence prevention grant by close to $100,000, an audit found, putting the city on the hook to pay the difference during tight budget times.

Beyond the overspending, the probe found a lack of oversight put teens in the care of mentors with no evidence of proper background checks, staff followed improper procurement, and a new city computer software system didn't work.

A few youth participants worked at a mentor’s business and, because the work benefitted the business, it was an obvious conflict of interest, according to the audit. Some youths were asked to do jobs, too, that would not be considered a career-building exercise that was mapped out through the grant program, according to the probe.

The findings were discussed during a city Audit Committee meeting last week.

An agitated committee member, City Councilwoman Evelyn Powers, asked how such a mess could have occurred.

“The answer is, and I know it, people didn’t do their jobs – that’s the bottom line,” she said.

The grant funding was provided by the state Attorney General’s Office using pandemic-relief money. It was used by the police department’s Rapid Engagement of Support in the Event of Trauma (RESET) team for mentoring and tutoring youth, finding them employment opportunities with the city and for operational costs, such as salaries and expenses.

The audit was started after concerned finance department staff contacted the municipal auditor’s office at the direction of City Manager Valmarie Turner. 

The grant money total was reached by September of 2024, the audit found, but spending continued until June of 2025 — with no internal check and balance to even flag that the state grant amount ran out. 

At the beginning of the grant, the city paid an estimated $51,000 to a vendor, DeAnthony Muse, before having a contract in place, then later hired Muse when it should have put the job up for bid, according to the audit. 

Muse did not return a phone message left for him by The Roanoke Rambler. The state Attorney General’s office also did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Police Chief Scott Booth, who attended the meeting, said the department is making steps to make sure the situation doesn’t happen again. Numerous employees who were involved with the grant are no longer in their jobs, he said. None of those people were identified.

A Police Business Division is now established to centralize purchasing, grant management and financial oversight under trained civilian staff, Booth said. A revised payment process is also being developed that will require approval from multiple people. And the department changed its way of approving mentors to make sure background checks are done, according to its response to the audit.

The RESET team continues to provide mentoring services through the program’s outreach workers, who are city employees, police department spokeswoman Hannah Glasgow wrote in an email Tuesday. The mentoring program has transitioned to an in-house model using city staff, she wrote.

The city, as part of its community outreach effort, hired Chris Roberts as its first youth and gang violence prevention coordinator in 2021 using a $500,000 state grant. The position was created to coordinate activities and programs between the city departments, community groups, stakeholders, and agencies in the awareness, suppression, intervention and prevention of youth and gang-related activity. Roberts is no longer in the job, and his successor is being sought, the city said Tuesday.

Booth, during the audit committee meeting, said RESET was formed in 2020, and the idea of mentoring youth as a gun violence prevention strategy was new. And personnel issues were a problem.

“Police officers are not always the best at looking at financials, right?” Booth said.

Booth, who started as police chief in 2023, also said he was immediately immersed in dealing with the city’s highest gun violence levels, which have since waned.

“You know, there were a lot of things we had to get done,” he said.

The audit did find that what was spent with the grant money was generally appropriate based on the program’s goals. 

The audit is the latest of several pinpointing problems with processes in municipal departments, from parks and recreation payments not being properly recorded to an inefficient funding strategy for fleet maintenance. 

Due to the city struggles with its software conversion, as well as turnover and ineffective processes, the audits are becoming more commonplace, said Municipal Auditor Drew Harmon.

Powers, who once worked for the auditor’s office and is the city’s former elected treasurer, released some mounting frustration during last week’s meeting.

“I truly lost sleep over this because I didn’t run the treasurer’s office like this,” said. “And it really upsets me to see that we have this going on. It shouldn’t. We’re better than this.”

The committee’s chairman, City Councilman Peter Volosin, said the most recent audit is a “tragedy of errors – not a comedy of errors.” While not naming anyone, he said “a lot of this was under a previous administration and previous chief as well.” He thanked Turner and her staff for being willing to “figure out where this stuff is going wrong and fixing it.”

Former City Manager Bob Cowell resigned in May of 2024 amid accusations of a toxic workplace. He was later hired for a city manager’s post in Georgia. Former Police Chief Sam Roman left that job during an unsettled time in the department to become a deputy city manager in the Cowell administration. Roman left Roanoke earlier this year to take an assistant manager’s role in Charlottesville.

Turner, during the audit committee meeting, said she’s glad the city has a municipal auditing department.

“I certainly look at audits as a way of making sure that we’re better in everything that we do,” she said.

In an interview with The Roanoke Rambler the day after the meeting, Powers said it is imperative that the city — which is also dealing with high turnover and job vacancies — make good hires and put people in places where they can be most effective.

"We're going to get this right. But it's going to take awhile,” she said.