The East Lansing City Council has moved to amend next fiscal year’s budget cuts to the Independent Police Oversight Commission and the Human Rights Commission at its June 2 meeting.
The council approved a $6,000 budget for ELIPOC’s use-of-force analysis after proposing to gut the commission’s budget by $42,000 on April 28.
The city also amended the Human Rights Commission budget to return the total of $2,000 in proposed cuts to their budget.
For ELIPOC, that budget allows them to hire a consultant to analyze the use-of-force reports they get from police for the 2026 fiscal year. ELIPOC Commissioner Chris Root said that they’re “still working on completing a contract with a consultant to analyze the 2025 data” at the commission’s Wednesday meeting.
Root is drafting the use-of-force section of the commission’s 2025 annual report, which describes that year’s work, review of complaints against ELPD officers, study of use-of-force incidents and observations about officer encounters with individuals in crisis, juveniles and people experiencing homelessness.
Last year, they hired a consultant to analyze use-of-force spreadsheets created by ELPD and ELIPOC, which ELPD gave them access to in early January last year when they requested it.
However, this year that process has been much more difficult. ELIPOC’s January request for the use-of-force spreadsheet including all aggregated 2025 use-of-force data this year was not fulfilled until June 4.
ELPD does not plan to release a 2025 annual use-of-force report according to Root, after previously releasing them for the two years prior. As such, ELIPOC is the only source for this year’s use-of-force report.
“They're not going to do one (a use-of-force report). If we don't get the spreadsheet and a contract with somebody to actually use the spreadsheet to do some serious analysis, then we're just going to go here without any information about use-of-force in this town,” Root said in an interview with The State News. “Is that really what the city and the police department want? Do you think that is going to be satisfactory to people in this town?”
One concern listed in an analysis of the 2024 ELIPOC use-of-force report was inconsistencies in ELPD’s data gathering and entry methods.
