East Lansing police talk with bystanders Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, outside the Douglas J Aveda Institute, 331 East Grand River Avenue. Budget cuts have reduced police staffs across Michigan. State News File Photo
Six fewer officers are patrolling the streets of East Lansing today compared to a decade ago, a trend which also can be seen across Michigan as budget cuts hit law enforcement.
In 2003, there were 64 officers with the East Lansing Police Department, or ELPD, East Lansing police Capt. Jeff Murphy said. Currently there are 58, he said.
Murphy said a loss of six East Lansing officers might not seem significant, but it represents about a 10 percent cut. He said he believes and hopes the decline in officers will not affect students’ safety.
“We’ve tried very hard to not cut any services,” Murphy said. “We’ve still been hiring new people, just not as many. It’s been a slow decline over the years.”
Murphy said most of the decline can be attributed to positions that went unfilled after retirements. He said he has not witnessed any officers laid off since he started working with the ELPD, and he does not know of any plans to cut officers in the near future.
East Lansing is not the only city with fewer officers on the streets. In Dec. 2001, there were more than 22,400 officers across Michigan. This past December, there were about 18,800 — about a 16 percent decrease — said Hermina Kramp, deputy executive director of the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards.
The Michigan State Police also saw a decline in the number of officers from more than 1,200 in 2002 to about 950 in 2012, said Tiffany Brown, spokeswoman for the Michigan State Police Department.
The number of Michigan State Police posts also were reduced from 62 to 29 in early 2011 because of budget cuts, Brown said.
The money saved from the buildings helped pay for additional officers, she said.
“By doing that, we were able to increase the number of officers on the road,” Brown said. “Putting 100 sergeants back on the road increased our patrol visibility by 13 percent.”
Kinesiology junior Denae Asel-Templin said the reduction in police officers might lead to an increase in crime rates, but she’s less worried about crime in East Lansing than in her hometown of Bay City, Mich. — near Saginaw which was listed by Forbes.com in 2012 as the most dangerous city for women.
“(Having fewer officers) doesn’t really make me feel unsafe in East Lansing because you see cops all over here,” Asel-Templin said. “If I were to live at home, I would definitely feel less safe.”
Still, the numbers might not mean the streets are less safe than before. Bruce Baker, an analyst with the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency, said it is hard to link crime rates to the number of officers on the streets.
“If you bring (officers) in, there will be more arrests,” Baker said. “Crime goes up when you have more police because more crimes get reported.”
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