LANSING — The No. 2 officer at the Michigan State Police has announced retirement plans after more than two years of turmoil, an official confirmed Thursday, Jan. 15.
Lt. Col. Aimee Brimacombe, who Col. James Grady named chief deputy director of the MSP in December 2023, “is planning to retire in the coming months,” MSP spokeswoman Shanon Banner said in an email.
Grady’s selection of Brimacombe as his No. 2 was immediately controversial. Critics said promoting Brimacombe up four ranks, from first lieutenant, when she had recent discipline on her record, was unprecedented.
Both Brimacombe and Grady received overwhelming votes of non-confidence in June from two MSP unions, one representing troopers and one representing command officers. Also, Republican lawmakers have called for the two MSP leaders to resign or be fired, but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who named Grady the MSP director in September 2023, has stood behind Grady, who stood behind Brimacombe.
Banner did not immediately respond to an emailed question about whether Brimacombe gave any reason for retiring and Brimacombe did not respond to an email about her retirement plans sent Jan. 6. Grady has no plans to retire, Banner said Jan. 15.
Brimacombe, a lawyer who went through recruit school with Grady, received a five-day suspension in 2021 for using an MSP vehicle for personal purposes, over a six-month period, and for being “insubordinate” when she refused to immediately return the vehicle as directed, records the Detroit Free Press obtained under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act show.
A second internal affairs complaint against Brimacombe, involving the captain who flagged her unauthorized use of the MSP vehicle, was also sustained prior to her promotion, according to records filed with the State Ethics Board. That investigation, completed in 2022, found that Brimacombe abused the internal affairs process by filing a “false and disparaging complaint” against then-Capt. Thomas Deasy, after Deasy complained about her vehicle use. Records show Brimacombe was not disciplined for filing the complaint against Deasy, although the complaint against her was upheld.
Though Brimacombe’s career flourished after her improper use of a state vehicle, Deasy’s reversed direction. Banner confirmed in January 2025 that Deasy’s contract as a captain expired in October 2024 and he was moved to the director’s office with a lower rank of 1st lieutenant.
Deasy’s demotion was among a raft of high-level demotions and departures in the last two years. Notably, the MSP’s longtime human resources director, Stephanie Horton, left in April 2024 for a job at MSU. Records obtained under FOIA show Horton cited “changes in leadership” in her exit interview and described her final few months at MSP as “really tumultuous.”
Shortly before leaving for MSU, Horton had objected to performance bonuses of close to $10,000 each awarded to Grady and Brimacombe, arguing that neither had been in their current posts long enough to be eligible for the bonuses.
Then, two high-ranking officers in their 50s, Maj. Beth Clark and Lt. Col. Chris Kelenske, unexpectedly retired, on June 1, 2024.
The bonuses were among issues cited in a January 2025 complaint to the State Ethics Board against Grady and Brimacombe, brought by the MSP Command Officers Association and the MSP Troopers Association. The board dismissed the complaint without holding a hearing, saying the complaint did not provide evidence of an ethical violation subject to the board’s jurisdiction.
Brimacombe was also at the center of a significant controversy over an alleged MSP excessive use of force case and an unusual $999,999 settlement the MSP paid to the brother of one of Brimacombe’s Facebook friends.
In a federal lawsuit filed against Brimacombe in February 2025, and earlier filed in state court, two troopers accused of using excessive force during a 2022 arrest near Owosso alleged that Brimacombe had received a complaint about their conduct from a Facebook friend, Tiffany Homola, who is the sister of the man they arrested, and that Brimacombe pressured the Shiawassee prosecutor to bring unwarranted criminal charges against them and sought to “help enrich her friend’s brother” through the civil lawsuit. Brimacombe described Homola as an acquaintance, not a friend.
The criminal charges against the troopers were dismissed after a 2023 preliminary hearing at which Brimacombe testified. The lawsuit prompted an MSP internal affairs investigation that cleared Brimacombe in December 2024, finding the allegations unfounded. But records the Free Press obtained under FOIA show that Brimacombe had extensive involvement in the settlement paid to Homola’s brother, Jacob Long, in 2024, despite a personal connection to the case, even after she was promoted and left her job overseeing litigation. Brimacombe’s motion to dismiss the troopers’ lawsuit is pending before a federal judge.
Most recently, Brimacombe figures prominently in a December lawsuit brought against Grady by Heather Luebs, an executive management assistant in Grady’s office, though Brimacombe is not a defendant in the lawsuit.
Luebs alleges she was wrongfully demoted and saw her pay cut by $8 an hour as a result of a misdirected text message she sent June 9, 2025 — the day two MSP unions disclosed their members had cast overwhelming votes of non-confidence in Grady and Brimacombe.
Luebs alleges Grady scheduled a virtual meeting June 9 to discuss the votes by the MSP Troopers Association and the MSP Command Officers Association, in which 90% or more of members who voted expressed non-confidence in the MSP’s top two leaders. Brimacombe was not among those invited to the virtual meeting, but another top MSP official, Maj. Christopher Hawkins, was among those invited to participate remotely, the suit alleges.
Luebs, whose office was directly outside Grady’s office, says in the lawsuit that she saw Brimacombe enter Grady’s office just before the virtual meeting was scheduled to start.
Luebs then texted Hawkins: “FYA — Aimee is in his office with him. Not sure if he’ll acknowledge that.”
However, Luebs inadvertently sent the text to both Hawkins and Brimacombe, according to the lawsuit.
“Brimacombe was furious, storming out of defendant Grady’s office and shoving her phone into plaintiff’s face,” the suit alleges. “She then reentered defendant Grady’s office, had a brief conversation with him, then stormed out again, slamming the door.”
State Sen. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, who is also chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, called Brimacombe’s planned retirement “an overdue step forward … to begin restoring public trust in the MSP and morale within the agency,” in a Jan. 15 statement. Runestad repeated his earlier call for Grady to step down or be fired by Whitmer.
This story has been updated to add new information.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Beleaguered MSP leader with ‘no confidence’ from troopers to retire
Reporting by Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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