STATE REPS. MIKE HARRIS, R-Waterford, and Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, on the Michigan House floor in Lansing. (Michigan House photo)

In a nearly unanimous vote, Michigan lawmakers in the state House passed a $115 million annual public safety fund aimed to decrease violent crime in communities.

One of the sponsors for the bills to implement a Public Safety and Violence Prevention Fund to fund local law enforcement agencies and community violence intervention groups around the state, state Rep. Alabas Farhat, D-Dearborn, told media after the 104-4 vote on HBs 4260 and 4261 that preventing crime looks a lot different today than it did 30 years ago.

In having conversations with his partner in the effort to secure the fund, co-sponsor Rep. Mike Harris, R-Waterford, Farhat said it’s clear that the expectations and public demand for law enforcement to work in prevention, not just focusing on enforcement of law, has made policing more and more expensive.

“Go visit these departments. You will not see desk officers like you used to anymore. You’re seeing everybody out on patrol. You’re seeing people walking in neighborhoods … you’re also seeing a demand for officers to do more than just drive a car around and pull somebody over for speeding. You’re seeing investigative units, forensics units, that are doing online human trafficking cases … really sophisticated, really expensive stuff,” Farhat said. “There’s some cruel people out there in this world that we have to get to and we have to prevent them from preying on, whether it’s young children or our seniors, and that’s expensive.”

Harris and Farhat have been urging their colleagues in Michigan’s partisanly split legislature to put people over politics and approve the Public Safety and Violence Prevention Fund, which law enforcement leaders from across the state have said will allow them to hire more staff and strengthen gun violence prevention programs like some in Detroit that have reduced violent crime in some neighborhoods by up to 70%, according to the city.

Now, the bills must make it through the Democratic-majority state Senate, where House Republicans are concerned lawmakers will try to tie in other measures rather than approve the package that Republicans and Democrats in the House agreed upon.

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