Justin Cook | The Roanoke Times

Virgina Tech police Maj. Tom Foster ties up some loose ends at his desk after a long day of meetings. Foster has been assistant chief for about four months.

BLACKSBURG -- For Tom Foster, knowing Virginia Tech would be under scrutiny after the April 16, 2007, campus shootings was an incentive to apply for a job at the university's police department.

"I knew Tech was going to be sort of the agency to watch, for whatever reason," he said. "I saw it as a positive."

After 19 years with the Virginia State Police, Foster joined the Virginia Tech Police Department as its assistant chief on March 31.

In his role, which carries the title of major, he is responsible for managing the day-to-day operations of the department's administrative and operations divisions.

The administrative division includes community outreach, work toward reaccreditation, dispatch and the campus security guards, of which there are 25 during the school year. The operations division includes the department's 50 sworn patrol officers and investigators.

Because Foster took over daily operations, the duties of Chief Wendell Flinchum have changed.

"It's allowing me to focus on more policy issues and broader university issues," Flinchum said.

Flinchum said that although he now works more closely with university officials, "coming up through the ranks I still feel that I'm a police officer. It's just a different responsibility now."

Flinchum, who attended Virginia Tech, has worked with its police department for more than 23 years.

As part of the changes that took place when Foster was hired, Flinchum now oversees the school's 33-member rescue squad.

The department had an assistant chief several years ago, but when that person retired, the position was never filled, Flinchum said. It was one of the positions the department got permission to fill after the April 16, 2007, shootings that left 33 people dead.

Foster, 43, began his law enforcement career on June 1, 1986, when he joined the Salem Sheriff's Office as a deputy. Three years later he joined the state police.

With state police, Foster has served as a trooper, a sergeant, a special agent with the Bureau of Criminal Investigations Drug Enforcement Division, a patrol supervisor, a public information officer and an internal affairs investigator. He has worked in Charlottesville, Staunton, Roanoke and Smyth County, among other areas of the state.

Most recently, Foster served as area commander of the Bedford field office, a job he took in 2005. There, he supervised 25 troopers in Bedford and Franklin counties, plus two supervisors and clerical staff members.

"He's an upright guy," said 1st Sgt. Michael Bailey, who has worked with Foster for several years and took his place as area commander of the Bedford office. "I have a lot of confidence in him. The whole department had confidence in him."

Asked what he thought about Foster's move to the Virginia Tech department, Bailey said, "I would say our loss, their gain."

"The reason I hired him is his range of experience," Flinchum said.

As the assistant chief, Foster makes $85,000 a year.

Foster said that since he took the Virginia Tech job, he has had to learn "a completely different way of policing."

How to do police work such as investigations and patrols are the same, but, he said, "it's the change of the community in which I'm serving."

He described Virginia Tech as a community of 40,000 people with a median age of 19 or 20 who share the 2,600-acre campus.

Many of the crimes committed against them are Internet-based, such as credit card fraud, cyberstalking and online threats.

In contrast, a focus for troopers working out of the state police Bedford area office was traffic crashes on the winding rural roads.

At Virginia Tech, Foster said, "You've got to be techno-savvy. That has been a big learning curve for me. It's like the whole department has to be a high-tech crime unit."

Asked why he applied for the Virginia Tech job, Foster, who attended graduate school at Tech, went on for several minutes.

"First and foremost was the reputation of the agency," which is nationally accredited, he said.

Also, he said, was the size and setup of the campus, which he called "a city."

And then were was April 16, 2007.

For two weeks after the campus shootings, Foster said, he was assigned to the command post at Virginia Tech and was in charge of logistics for state police: bringing in troopers; figuring out where they would stay and eat; and making sure their other commitments, including court appearances, were met.

While he worked, he saw support for the school come pouring in.

"To be there and kind of experience that outpouring of support and spending two weeks over here working with them made me realize what an incredible organization this is," Foster said.

"It's difficult to put into words," he said. "Seeing that ... made me want to become a part of it."

Foster said he knew Virginia Tech was going to be looked to as a leader in campus law enforcement. Working there, he said, he would have the opportunity to work on policies and safety strategies that would be looked at and possibly implemented worldwide.

"These policies that are going to be developed here have a much broader reach than just Virginia Tech," he said. "Many of them are going to be applicable to policing agencies everywhere."