Spencer
City in Roane County, 2,291 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Roane County Sheriff's Office.
A department is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decision city-or-town-is-its-police-department). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.
Where it sits
- County
- Roane County
- People
- 2,291
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Spencer follows West Virginia law on arrests, release, and courts; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.
- Who decides release first
A county magistrate sets bail first, with an on-call magistrate for arrests after hours. Magistrates need not be lawyers. Only the circuit court can release a person charged with an offense punishable by life in prison.
W. Va. Code 62-1C-1W. Va. Code 62-1-5- Time to see a judge
An officer must take an arrested person "without unnecessary delay" before a magistrate of the county where the arrest happened. The law sets no number of hours.
W. Va. Code 62-1-5(a)(1)- Money bail
Magistrates and judges may set money bail.
W. Va. Code 62-1C-1
Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Some of this is medium confidence and still being checked. The name of the Supreme Court-approved risk instrument was not found. Whether jailers release on a bail schedule without a magistrate was not found.
Crime
Offenses reported by Spencer Police Department, Spencer's own department. The county sheriff and state police may answer calls here too; their offenses are on their own pages.
The crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | 7 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 277 |
| Murder | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 5.9 | |||||
| Rape | 1 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 56 | |||
| Robbery | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 | |||||
| Aggravated assault | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 203 |
| Property crime | 41 | 53 | 79 | 34 | 51 | 2,621 | 1,213 |
| Burglary | 7 | 2 | 8 | 3 | 8 | 284 | 193 |
| Larceny | 33 | 51 | 68 | 30 | 42 | 2,275 | 927 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 93 | |
| Arson | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 64 | 42 | 58 | 75 | 73 | 3,169 | 2,075 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 10 | 9 | 13 | 20 | 21 | 741 | 680 |
| Vandalism | 8 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 7 | 366 | 327 |
| Fraud | 2 | 2 | 5 | 8 | 4 | 213 | 162 |
| Drug abuse violations | 37 | 17 | 24 | 36 | 32 | 1,483 | 646 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 1 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 84 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 3 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 39 | |||
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 1 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 41 | ||
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 33 | ||||
| Other Group A offenses | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 51 |
| Human trafficking (not in the total) | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1.8 |
Offenses Spencer Police Department reported to the FBI in incident detail (NIBRS), each year, the second table by the arrest class each offense falls in. Per 100k: offenses per 100,000 people the department polices, 2021 to 2025 added together, beside West Virginia's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
Source: FBI NIBRS national master files, each agency's offenses and the FBI's population for it. West Virginia: the crime index: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, CrimeDB's chosen value per year (the state page's figures); outside it: FBI NIBRS, agencies that sent incident detail.