LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made news in June 2020 when she said supported the “spirit” of the defund the police movement in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
However, the Michigan State Police reached record levels in the number of employees budgeted as well as the amount of state dollars dedicated to the police department in 2024-25.
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The Michigan State Police total budget – which includes local, state and federal money – has increased from $780 million in 2018-19 to $953 million in 2024-25.
The state received a huge infusion of federal pandemic money for a three-year period.
The Michigan State Police received $100.6 million in federal dollars in 2018-19, the year before the pandemic. Over the next three years, the state police received an average of $598 million a year from the federal government, about six times what it received in the pre-pandemic times.
That three-year-boost in federal money led to a record-level of overall funding for the state police. For example, overall funding (local, state and federal dollars) in the department went from $780 million in 2018-19 to $1.3 billion in 2019-20. The increase was due to federal funding, which jumped in one year from $100.6 million to $754.6 million.
But state funding has increased since the defund-the-police movement was launched in 2020. State funding for the state police was $649.4 million in 2018-19, the year before the pandemic. That state funding dropped to $516.8 million in 2019-20, but only because the state used much of the federal money to offset state spending.
State spending on the Michigan State Police increased from that $516.8 million in 2019-20 to $797.1 million in 2023-24 and increased again to $821.8 million in 2024-25.
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The number of full-time jobs budgeted for the state police has also increased since the Floyd murder in 2020. There were 3,580 full-time jobs in 2018-19 in the state police and that increased to 3,849 in 2024-25, the most jobs budgeted since online records provided by the state go back to in 2000-01.
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