The Mississippi Department of Public Safety told the Appropriations Committee it is seeking increased funding for personnel, facilities and technology for fiscal 2026.

“Let's make the request and understand that we're not gonna get everything we ask for, but this is an opportunity to highlight what we've done as an agency,” Commissioner (Department of Public Safety) said during the committee hearing, introducing the department’s request and 2024 performance highlights.

The agency highlighted several operational and public-safety trends to justify the request. It said the Mississippi Capitol Police, now part of the Department of Public Safety, made 915 felony arrests in calendar 2024 after making far fewer arrests in prior years; the medical examiner’s office reduced a backlog of thousands of autopsy reports to about 137 outstanding; and the state saw a decline in homicide autopsies from 551 in 2020 to 433 in 2024. The commissioner said the declines “suggest a downtrend” in homicides and a drop in suicides investigated by the medical examiner’s office.

The department outlined a series of line-item requests and program priorities: expansion of highway patrol staffing through a new cadet class (the department said it hopes to graduate 65 cadets), funding for 45 new troopers’ salaries, quarterly firearms training, new software and digital timekeeping, completion costs for the new headquarters (including parking and furniture), HVAC work at training and forensic facilities, and capital and special-fund requests for vehicles, equipment and cyberdefense software. The commissioner said the department wants to hire additional forensic and medical-examiner staff and use contract work to clear a backlog at the crime lab.

On driver services the department asked for capital funds to replace an end-of-life software contract (IDEMIA) and to begin the procurement process for a new statewide system that the agency said will take about 12–14 months to procure. The department said it seeks $11,000,000 in capital funds to begin obligation for that contract at the end of fiscal 2026 and asked for funds to support new driver-education initiatives, including simulators and mobile driver-license stations for disaster response.

Committee members asked about specific requests, facility timelines and whether shortfalls reflected earlier planning. The commissioner said additional funds for the headquarters were identified by the Department of Finance and Administration and characterized the remaining need as an amount “short of what we need” to finish interior work, parking and furniture. He also described a longer-term vision for a statewide real-time crime center that would consolidate camera feeds and analytics to support school safety and rapid response—an idea the department called a future capital/technology priority.

The department also described increasing demand from smaller counties for state assistance and said part of the requested staffing increases would let the agency deploy support to jurisdictions that lack local capacity. The commissioner said some cost figures were being requested from the Department of Finance and Administration and that some items would come from special funds or matching federal sources.

The presentation closed with committee members thanking the agency and indicating follow-up on particular items such as detention-center billing and the pace of trooper schools.

Ending: The department left the hearing with clarifications requested by committee members and with the understanding that staff will follow up on cost details and potential funding sources. No formal votes or appropriations were taken at the hearing.