Milwaukee Common Council to consider $9.7 million federal grant to hire 30 police officers

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) --- The Milwaukee Common Council will consider accepting a $9.7 million federal grant to hire 30 police officers for the next three years Tuesday, Nov. 24.

This comes after the Finance and Personnel Committee narrowly voted to accept the grant last week. 

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and the Milwaukee Police Department met virtually with BID/NID leaders to discuss the federal police grant on Monday and why it is so important.

"Having 30 additional personnel is only going to help us as an agency to address those calls for service, to help combat the violent crime we're seeing, to address the reckless driving that we're seeing in our city, that has gone on that we've tried to address over those years," Milwaukee Police Department Acting Chief Michael J. Brunson Sr. said.

Since this is a federal grant, no Milwaukee or state taxes would be used to hire the officer. However, the money has to be used for that purpose, and cannot be used for anything else.

In a statement Monday, Common Council President Cavalier Johnson said, "I firmly believe we must make the choice to accept the funding and not allow our city to risk taking a step back from addressing deadly threats at a critical moment."

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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