“Roger Heard was a violent felon who shot a police officer,” District Attorney Coty Wamp told members of the Pachyderm Club at its meeting Monday.

Heard was shot and killed by Chattanooga Police Department Investigator Celtain Batterson on Aug. 11. A CPD team was attempting to serve an arrest warrant on him at the Speedway on Third Street when he grabbed a gun and shot Officer Batterson in the arm at close range.

The DA said Heard was wanted in Knox County. Previously, he had been convicted of felonies in Hamilton and Bradley counties and served 78 months in federal prison.

DA Wamp said she had seen social media posts with pictures of armed people threatening to “storm the city.”

“They say, ‘How dare that cop?’” she said.

If Roger Heard had not died that day, DA Wamp said, “He would never see the light of day so long as I’m the district attorney.”

“That’s what’s going to happen if you shoot a police officer in Hamilton County, Tennessee,” she said.

DA Wamp said Tennessee Bureau of Investigation recordings and documentation released to the public Sunday supports Officer Batterson’s actions to be wholly protocol and that there "is no need to be coy with judgment while a third party investigates" the officer-involved death.

"We're not going to hide from it,” she said.

DA Wamp said in the coming years she will put more violent offenders and drug offenders in jail, which she said will in turn lower crime.

“We see the same violent criminals over and over again, and then we see their buddies over and over again,” she said.

To get more convictions she is hiring prosecutors to specialize in gang and violent crime, child sex crimes, and drug crimes.

“Anybody that doesn’t think we have a gang problem is living in la-la land,” she said. “We’ve seen the consequences of that in the last week.”

She also said that overdose deaths in Hamilton County are six times higher than homicide deaths.

The County Commission granted her office money this fiscal year to hire a dedicated drug prosecutor - Jamie Cleo, a former supervising DUI attorney.

“I’ll give credit to the county all day long,” she said. She urged multi-agency, county-wide advocacy to “come together and affect this issue.”

DA Wamp said she will remain strict when punishing juveniles who commit violent crimes.

She spoke to 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds who "don’t care if they live or die, whose crimes intend harm or do harm."

“I will try to send you to prison,” she said. “The point is deterrence,” and to change the hearts and minds of “our juveniles,” she said.