HIGH POINT, N.C. — A new Triad police chief is taking over as complicated discussions about policing continue, nationwide.
Travis Stroud is being bumped up from the interim job to be High Point's top cop.
WFMY News 2's Grace Holland talked with him one on one about the future of his department.
Q: How are you feeling about becoming chief permanently?
Stroud: I’m excited of course. I’ve worked here for a long time but this is clearly a different reality now. I’ve been interim since August of 2020 and I think the reality is sort of setting in that this is the real deal now. It’s on me to lead this agency but I'm excited. I’m nervous at the same time with everything going on. It’s been a tough past year with everything that’s out there in society right now but I’m still excited. I love this place.
What was the process of being chosen as chief?
Stroud: I put my name in the hat and submitted my resume just like everybody else does. I don’t know what happens after that but I was a finalist for an interview and I had an interview with a panel of members. There were some pretty good questions in there about plans, 'how do you react to this how do you react to that?' Just things you need to know as a chief of police. I thought the questions were very relevant to today’s times.
When did you find out you were chosen as chief?
Stroud: Not long before it was released on Wednesday. It was a very short period of time before that that I was notified by the interim city manager.
What did you feel when you found out?
Stroud: Nervous. I mean don’t get me wrong, I am very very happy. I love this place but I think the reality of it set in very quickly. It is on you now, you’ve got a lot of responsibilities.
Who are you outside of the uniform? What’s your family like? What are your hobbies?
Stroud: Me outside of work-- really I’m probably pretty boring. The majority of my adult life has been spent here at this place. I’m very dedicated to it so it’s one of those things, when I leave work, I try not to take that stuff home with me but as you move to different levels you invariably do.
So when I’m at home I’m still thinking about police work. It’s sort of just never turns off in my brain. 'How can we make our agency better? If this happens what are we gonna do?' When I’m at home I guess I’m still probably a pretty boring person when it comes right down to it.
I do have a family, a wife and I have four kids. They’re all older now. I have three they’re in college all over the place. East Carolina University, Appalachian State, North Carolina State and I have a high schooler too. We stay pretty busy just keeping up with them as parents. I like to spend time at home and just sort of kind of get away from this place for that short period of time that I am away.
Hobby-wise, I like to work out. That is a daily routine for me. I get up early and I do something in the morning and then generally I will do something at night too it’s just a good break for me mentally from everything that’s going to come during the day and after the day as I wind down. My wife and I do that together. That’s our time to see each other. She’s an assistant principal at the high school so she stays quite busy too.
Was it your goal all along to become High Point Police Chief?
Stroud: Actually, no. I always wanted to be a High Point Police officer. That was set in stone at a very early age, once I decided I wanted to be a cop. I just sort of wanted it to be here. My uncle was a police officer here for 30 years and retired from the department. I sort of got into following after him and growing up in High Point, I just love this place.
The goal was to become a cop here and I wanted to be a SWAT officer and that was I guess my kid dream. So once I did become a member of this agency I just sort of moved along. I don’t even know how to explain it, timing is everything. Right spot, right time.
It was never a goal that I set in my career to become the chief of police not once. It didn’t even really dawn on me until our former chief Ken Schultz came to retire. Then it sort of was reality hit me like 'hey he’s leaving and what’s next? Is there something that I need to do? Can I do this? Do I want to do this?' There were a lot of questions running through my head then.
What is it that makes High Point special?
Stroud: We have always, and when I say we I mean High Point, we’ve always sort of been a little bit different. We’ve been able to avoid a lot of the turmoil and a lot of the bad things that you see go on across the country in various cities. Somehow we’ve been able to avoid that here and we want that track record to continue.
For me, I guess having that positive image of our city is partly what I fell in love with. Growing up here and I watch the city grow from being a little boy till now and seeing what we have and what we were back in the day. Everybody thinks we're small, you just hear little ol' High Point but then and you see what’s going on that’s not the case.
We span for different counties, we have a pretty sizable population so we have big-time problems just like everybody else. It’s just how you deal with that and avoid the conflicts and I’m very very happy with that. One of our goals is to keep that going, of course.
What does it mean to you to be leading the department when you didn’t anticipate it but grew up here?
Stroud: I’m very humbled, I think that’s the first thing. When I was notified that I would be taking over, I was very humbled at that moment and thinking that 'OK they had the confidence in me to do this job.' I have a huge community backing supporting me in this position.
The support of our officers was the biggest factor for me. I really felt like I owed this police department and I owed the city because they’ve been good to me. They gave me a chance when I was just a 24-year-old kid who knew nothing about law enforcement. They gave me a shot and I feel like I owe it to them and the rest of my career to give them my best too.
What are some of the challenges that you see for the City of High Point from a law enforcement perspective and what is your plan to address it?
Stroud: There are several.
Number one is your staffing. That’s going to be big for us and I bet every agency is saying the same thing right now. We are down 24 vacancies at the moment. That’s pretty impactful for us because we have 262 sworn law-enforcement positions. That means badge and gun and we are 24 down. When you’re absent those bodies and those resources on the street it truly impacts the operational level that you’re able to give to the community.
I’d say number two issue and things we're trying to deal with out there, I think the racial social issues are absolutely something you can ignore in law enforcement right now. I think we’ve probably not done the greatest job of dealing with it in the past. I don’t know if ignore is the right word, but I don’t think that we’ve acknowledged it like we should and taking steps to address it.
We went to the International Civil Rights Center and Museum last month. That’s a big step for our command staff, but it’s just one step. It was like the opening of education for us. We’re taking it one step at a time. I don’t have some grand plan to get this done. I think the next step is to figure out how historically law-enforcement, cops have been used or have played a role in the social discord. See what mistakes we have made in the past and don’t replicate those. Make sure we’re not still doing them but surely don’t replicate them.
Number three is violent crime. There still violent crime out there and I would love to tell you that High Point is crime-free but that is not true. While our numbers are down, our stats are low, it is still too much for me. Until they’re at zero, I’ll never be satisfied.
It’s unrealistic to think they’ll ever be at zero but that’s my goal. Violent crime will destroy your city. It will, there’s just no room for it and it affects everyone. I know some people think 'oh that happens here that happens there and it won’t affect me' but it does. That’s the livability of your city, the prosperity of your city is all based on safety.
We are going to be crimefighters first. If we don’t do anything else, nothing else, we better fight crime. If we don’t it will spin our city sideways and I can’t do that to our people, to our community and our citizens. I live here I love them and I’m not about to abandon them. We’re going to come after some criminals.
What else does High Point need to know about your goals Chief?
Stroud: Crime-fighting first. People need to know that we are going to still fight crime here. It may not be pretty sometimes, I mean we’re dealing with criminals. It is not a pretty outcome sometimes.
We’re going to do that but the biggest thing I would like people to know is that is not all we do. We have a very very good community engagement effort at this Police Department, we’ve had it for years. We’ve just done a poor job of promoting it and telling the community that this is what we do in a non-enforcement method with our citizens. That is one of the newest things are rolling out now is our community engagement pillar and trying to get out there and engage with our residents in a positive way that you can get to know us too.
What will that community engagement look like?
Stroud: It’s a good question, it’s one that we are still molding to. There are some staffing things that we need to pull in place and we’re hoping some things fall in line with staffing plans.
We have all kinds of programs and events that run throughout the year that have been very successful but if we can get the community more involved then I can’t imagine where they will go. It’s unlimited. We have a community collaboration we’re getting ready to roll out and that’ll be some select citizens, really pro High Point people but I think we can bring in and work with to help us identify how we can do better as a police department in the community.
Did Former Chief Kenneth Schultz give you any words of wisdom for stepping up as Chief?
Stroud: Yes, quite a bit. Ken and I spent a lot of our career together in different spots. He was my supervisor and we spent years on our swat team together with him being our commander and me being on the team. He is the one that promoted me to Assistant Chief in 2016.
The key for me with him was having a front row seat to his time as chief. It was a true learning curve for me. There were things I didn’t know that I should’ve known but I learned through him. Ken set us up beautifully for what we’re doing now. He was a policy driven guy. Our policies are super solid because of him. He was a stickler for it and I think we made great strides because of him to get those things squared away because it’s tedious. We are paying off for it now.
I talked to him the other day when I found out that I was going to take on this role and his words were pretty simple he said, 'You got it. You are ready'.
What did you and your staff learn when you toured the International Civil Rights Center and Museum last month?
Stroud: We’ve given all our folks a survey. We wanted to see their feedback on exactly how they thought the visit went. We had never really done anything like that before as a command staff. We had overwhelmingly positive responses.
A lot of them it was their first visit but some had multiple visits to the site. We were able to sit back and really what we took out of that, the three biggest things that we took out of it was number one I’m glad we’re doing this. That’s a positive right there. We are actually taking steps and tangible steps to do something.
Number two was that they actually did learn a lot about the history part that we didn’t know. I learn things during that visit and it was a very short visit, I’m sure there was a ton more that we didn’t get exposed to, but there’s history in there that’s very eye-opening. I’m very disappointed that we allowed these things to happen as a society.
The third part, this is really the key thing, was the bonding that we had as a command staff. I expect our leaders to lead. It is the base of our strategic model is leadership and employment development and I’ve always said if you don’t have strong leaders then the rest is going to be weak
Coming out of that visit I think it was commented that we really need to do this more. Not just with the Civil Rights Museum, we need to bond more on issues like this and have discussions and reach out of the law-enforcement mode for a minute and just think in a bigger picture.
Why was it important for you to be at the One Nation for Justice March last Sunday?
Stroud: Last year‘s event went so well it was almost flawless. I can’t think of one problem that we had. So that was one successful event not just for One Nation for Justice, but for High Point and for the police department to pull off an event like that. You don’t see that going on everywhere else every day.
That was an important step for me when I was Interim Chief trying to make the decision of can we support this again. It was sort of an easy sell because like I said in the interview last week, when the idea was presented to me again they said, 'We’re looking at justice and unity and peace'. That’s sort of what we want every day, it’s not sort of what we want every day it’s what we want every day. If I can get that at the end of the day that’s our end game.
I felt like they did that during the March last year and I think that they did it again this year. I had no issues with it whatsoever I think we need to support it. Our job is safety and we’ve got to make sure you go from point A to B and we’re going to do those things but I felt like it was important for us to be actively involved.
Since the Derek Chauvin verdict, how have you been talking to your officers and how do you think about it as a chief?
Stroud: That verdict is impactful for not only the High Point Police department but for law enforcement across the country. You can see the ripple effect that the whole thing has had from the incident to the conclusion.
I think almost every cop that I know and the ones that I talk to, we didn’t like what we saw. I have never heard one of our people say that was a great job. Because it wasn’t. I remember the first time I ever saw the (video). It was actually just a still shot, it wasn’t a video and I didn’t even read the headline that was below it. I remember thinking to myself 'why is his knee on his neck?'
We don’t train that. We don’t do those things. We knew this was going to be impactful for the community in law enforcement as a whole and clearly, that prediction was right.
What ramifications did the Floyd case have for the perception of law enforcement and how does that fit into your discussions of what the department can do better?
Stroud: I think for us it’s very disappointing because we all sort of get labeled in there. I know it’s easy to do because people get emotional but I’m gonna tell you that I’ve been around these folks for a long time. I’ve been in the street, I’ve been doing it I’ve watch them interact in the street. I know our people and we just do not do those things.
Again, some of the things that we do and we engage in or not gonna be pretty. It’s a rough and tumble business and that’s just the way it is. It will never change no matter what the Derek Chauvin verdict is or what the next incident is.
For us, it was very disappointing to be lumped in to one group. This 'cops are bad', that’s not us. I think we’re a little bit offended by it sometimes to but I also think if you sit back and you look at it which you have to, and say, 'OK I get where they’re coming from'. The message we have to each other is let’s not do anything to bolster that claim. Don’t do anything to push that narrative and operate within the standards we expect to.
What changes has the department made since George Floyd’s death?
Stroud: You hear a lot about police reform going on right now. A lot of it is policy driven. Luckily our policies were solid in the first place. Many of the things that you say that people are demanding to change right now we already had in place which is beautiful.
There’s not a lot of adjustment that goes with it, you were already acclimated to it because you’re doing it. We’re talking about law enforcement best practices, that was one of the parameters, we’d be foolish not to be evaluating all of our policies. It takes time to do all those because we have a lot.
If you look at all the incidents across the country, the common denominator is use of force. We did make some small wording adjustments, we wanted to be in line with the industry standard. Here’s a perfect example, not once in 26 years have I ever been trained to do a chokehold at this place. I wouldn’t even know how to do it. Despite that, we made sure we put it in our policy.
So we did small things like that to sort of get in line with the best practice standard. Do you need to intervene was another one. I don’t think it has to be written down, I think it’s common sense but we did anyway. We have it by policy which is important to us because it’s a standard. Disciplinary matters derive from policy.
We already had deescalation in our policy and been practicing that for a while now. We don’t shoot at moving vehicles, that’s been in there for a while so I was very happy that we didn’t have to make a lot of changes.
You said previously you’re working on getting body cameras for all officers, why is that so important?
Stroud: Trust me when I say this, I am an advocate for body cams. We want them. We are in the process of rolling our program out now and we have about 50 deployed on the street with a plan to get all of our uniformed patrol folks body cams. 135 is the goal and the number we’re trying to get to. Here’s the issue, it takes time and it takes money. We have a budget and number and we’re going to get it done it just takes time to get it done properly. We want our body cams to link with our dashboard cams. That’s important for us because it gives you different views and different angles and two cameras is better than one. The body cam may fall off in an incident and we would be able to pull back to the dashboard camera to give us what we need.
The body cams are a big deal, you see everything that’s going on down there in Elizabeth city. I’m an advocate for the video we use it every single day. It’s saved us so many times where it clears up issues. There is no doubt that this is what happened in those incidents.
It’s important for our community to know that we have 50 out there right now but that means we have a lot of other officers that are working without a camera. We could have an incident with one of those officers tonight and people could say 'well they have body cameras so why aren't they giving us the footage?' Well we may not have footage. Over the course of the next several months hopefully, we get them all deployed and will be in much better shape.
How do you hold your officers accountable when mistakes are made?
Stroud: First, I think it’s important for them to hear that from me. When I took over as interim that was one of the first things we did.
Then it’s hiring the right people. From the get-go, it will really tamp down your problems. If you get people in the door, that’s just a fact.
Then one of the biggest parameters is training. You have to acclimate people to do things. This is a stressful profession you’ve got to make split-second decisions. That’s why training is so important, to put them in those situations in training where we can slip up.
We’re really coming out of COVID hard on training. I think every law enforcement agency will tell you that COVID hit us as far as training goes. In this profession, we’ve got to be together and you’ve got to be in close quarters to do these things.
So we’re coming out of Covid hot. We told all our training folks, they did a phenomenal job putting together training plan that we are going to be active. Be ready, they’re gonna be full days and the most impactful stuff that we see in the street we’re going to train on first.
As a law enforcement leader and as an App State grad, how are you feeling after the deadly standoff in Boone that killed two deputies?
Stroud: That was a tough one to swallow this week. It was because it is close to home and I guess closer to home for me because I did go to school up there. My son is an Appalachian student so we have a pretty good connection to that whole area.
I know those are Watauga County deputies but they're still law-enforcement officers. They wear a badge just like I do and that’s why our mourning bands are on for them.
When I look at them and I see their pictures I see our folks. They could’ve been wearing a High Point uniform. That could’ve been our officers that were involved in that. My heart goes out to them, their families and their community. That’s going to hurt that community up there.
How do you as a chief and a department try to prevent violence like the Boone stand off from happening?
Stroud: The earlier you can get in front of something when you see those red flags, the better chance you have of coming up with a positive resolution. I find it hard to believe in that situation for it to go as bad as it did, that there were red flags all over the place that could’ve been found before. Now that’s not necessarily on a law-enforcement side.
There’s all kind of avenues for him to get help and it may not even be on a law enforcement side. It may be a mental health side, I don’t know I don’t know enough about it. But when you see something say something. It sounds very cliché but it is. That’s how the ball gets rolling. We deal with it a lot on an easier to understand level, with domestic violence.
Typically it’s a behind closed doors crime that goes on. People don’t wanna speak about it, there’s a stigma that goes with it. There’s an embarrassment that goes with it and people don’t wanna raises red flags. But if you don’t raise the red flags then it gets to a point where you’re in a critical incident time.
With all these challenges, what motivated you to lead this department?
Stroud: I think it has to be something inside you that motivates you to do this job. It is not just a passing fancy or a part-time gig. I think you have got to want to come in this job and be able to protect people and to help them. I think those two go hand-in-hand. If you have that, that is the biggest thing. That allows you to push through some of the discord.
We are all getting labeled as bad apples, but we know we’re not. I know I’m not. I know I’m not gonna do those things that I see you out there and things that have been done in the past. I know our people are not gonna do that. Once you have that, it makes it much easier to, while you don’t like it, push it out of the way and say this is our mission and this is our plan to help people.The biggest thing for our Police Department is this-- I know our people and they’re good people they’ve done a great job through the years.
The day we don’t show up for work, you’re in trouble. Society is in trouble. That’s facts, period. People can argue at all they want but I can tell you that in a society without good forthright, key part there, righteous law enforcement officers-- if you don’t have that you’re in trouble.
As long as you have people with that servant attitude and servant mindset in place in the greater good of the community it’s gonna be hard to beat us. It is. We’ll take our lumps here and there but I don’t know if you’ll ever beat us.
What is your number one goal as chief?
Stroud: I still think it comes down to keeping (officers). We recruited them, we hired them. It takes roughly 12 months to get someone in the door from when we hired them to whenn they are hitting the street so it’s a pretty big investment.
We learn who they are in the meantime and if they’re not good, then the facts are we get rid of them. We get rid of a lot of people. Yes we could be staffed better if we hadn’t gotten rid of some folks but they weren’t just cut out for this job. Some make that decision on their own too. The ones that we do have here now it is so important to keep them in play and to keep them wanting this job.
We’ve got to have resources that means people at the end of the day. We’ve got to make somebody want to come out here and do this job despite all the turmoil.
Officers that we have here are trained properly. We know what they can do, we know what their skill sets are. Experience is something you get shortly after you need it. These officers have experience they’ve seen things on the street they’ve done things on the street and those are the ones that we want out there.
We want the new folks to because you’ve got to have a cycle. New folks have the energy but they don’t have the experience yet. So retention is number one. I want the people that are here to stay here. I want 30 year careers, that’s what I want.
Chief Stroud will officially begin the position on Sunday, May 2.