IMPD asks for nearly $14 million funding boost to hire more officers

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is seeking nearly $14 million in additional funds for its 2025 budget –– a more than 4% increase from the prior year.

In 2024, the office was allotted $323,854,693 from the city budget and is asking to increase that to $337,836,405 next year. 

The proposal was presented during a Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee meeting on Wednesday. IMPD Chief of Police Christopher Bailey said the department has been paying overtime to officers to cover more shifts. 

“We have to do better as administration to make sure that we don't have tired cops that then make bad decisions,” he said. 

The department’s budget is the largest portion of the city’s budget for the next year — representing 28% of the total funds for 2025. 

The department broke its funding needs into five sections. Some of the additional funding requested for next year would help expand wellness services and cover maintenance for tasers, body-worn cameras, automatic license plate readers and video cameras for squad cars. 

A large portion of the projected budget is based on staffing numbers the department wants to meet. But, according to Councilor Rev. Carlos Perkins, who represents District 6 on the city’s northwest side, the department has failed to meet that staffing goal for the past three years.

“How can we as a body honor this budget request when there's no evidence that we'll be able to meet that number,” Perkins said, “and again, go back and tell our constituents that we need tax dollars to hire more offices where we have not proven that we can meet the projected number of sworn officers that we have?” 

IMPD Chief Bailey responded by saying that the increased funding shows a commitment to public safety — whether or not the department meets the staffing goal. The goal is necessary, Bailey said, because “every single day there are vacancies on the shifts,” he said. 

Applications to join the department have been increasing, Bailey said. But the Indianapolis Star reported in April 2024 that the department was 266 people short of the 1,743 officers allowed in its local budget. 

Bailey added that hiring more police officers doesn’t mean the department wants to focus on arresting more people. 

“It… allows our officers to spend more time doing the things we want them to do: Community engagement, investigating crimes, removing the stack of internet crimes against children — files that we can't get off the desks,” Bailey said.

“It's not about cops and robbers, locking people up. It's about doing all those things that our community expects.”

Currently IMPD is under union negotiations which could affect pay.

Farrah Anderson is an Investigative Health Reporter at WFYI and Side Effects Public Media. Contact her at fanderson@wfyi.org. Follow her on X @farrahsoa.