Michigan governor shifts tone on police funding, school resource officers

There’s been a shift in tone from Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer on policing issues, most notably on the funding of the state’s police and adding school resource officers.

After the George Floyd murder in May 2020, Whitmer said that she supported the “spirit” of efforts to defund the police as a way of reallocating resources, as reported by the Detroit Free Press. A few years later, the state is hiring more than 200 school resource officers with state police funding on the rise.

“You look at budgets and they’re focused on policing – they should be focused on education, transportation, access to health care, access to skills and leveling the playing field,” Whitmer said, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Whitmer wasn’t alone, either. Cities in California, New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania made cuts to their police departments, although the mood in Michigan seemed to change after school shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Oxford.

Whitmer's budgets have allocated more money for the Michigan State Police budget.

Michigan State Police’s appropriations for the 2022-2023 fiscal year is $861 million dollars, up from $738 million during the 2020-2021 fiscal year, according to state budget records.

Michigan officials, in January, announced that they were beefing up security efforts by adding 195 school resource officers, one each for the state’s 195 school districts, intermediate school districts and public school academies, as reported by The Center Square.

Over a three-year period, $25 million will be allocated across 195 school districts to support the hiring of school resource officers over a three-year period.

“Every parent wants their kids to be safe at school,” Whitmer said in a statement .“These grants will help us hire almost 200 more school resource officers so that we can make sure our children, teachers and staff are safe at schools.”