Mississippi Highway Patrol opens new facility in Starkville
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Mississippi Highway Patrol Officers with Troop G walk into their new building on Highway 25 South in Starkville prior to the facility's ribbon cutting on June 29, 2026.
STARKVILLE – For the first time in more than 60 years, the Mississippi Highway Patrol Troop G has a new home.
Officials from around the region and across the state gathered in Starkville Monday morning for the ribbon-cutting on the new 25,000-square-foot facility that allows all of the Department of Public Safety divisions to be housed under one roof.
"This has been a long time coming," said MHP director Col. Tadd Pitts. "There was a lot of discussion about the needs of this substation."
The new $13.5 million facility sits on 10 acres of land at the intersection of Highway 12 and the Highway 25 bypass on the north end of the new Cornerstone Park sports complex. The land was donated by the Oktibbeha County Economic Development Agency in 2013.
The new facility is nearly three times larger than the old site, allowing room not just for the offices of the MHP and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, but also for a maintenance building, a commercial driver's license testing pad, a helipad and an emergency generator. The latter will allow the building to serve as a command center during disasters.
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Local officials stand outside the new Mississippi Highway Patrol Troop G building located on Highway 25 South in Starkville prior to the ribbon cutting on June 29, 2026.
"This is a very momentous day for the Department of Public Safety," said DPS Commissioner Sean Tindell. "The old Highway Patrol substation was old and outdated. It had reached the end of its usefulness as a functional building for DPS."
For Capt. Calvin Mangum, who commands the Starkville-based Troop G, the new building's biggest advantage is that it is large enough to house everyone.
"Just being able to have everyone in one place will make it easier. Investigators, narcotics, crime scene analysts are all here," Mangum said. "And everybody has their own office now. We even have a shop in the back, so we don't have to work on vehicles in the parking lot."
The Mississippi Drivers License Bureau shut down for a week this month to move across town and get fully operational.
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Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, speaks during ribbon cutting of the new MHP Troop G location on Highway 25 South in Starkville on June 29, 2026.
"They've been here for a week. We've only been here a few days," Mangum said. "We've got just enough stuff moved over to be operational."
While the general public will not get to see most of the sprawling complex, the part they do get to see is impressive.
"The driver's license bureau looks like a bank," Mangum said.
Troop G was formerly housed in a two-story building on Highway 182 that was built in 1964. An addition in 1986 boosted its size to roughly 9,000 square feet.
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State and law enforcement officials celebrated the opening of the new MHP Troop G facility on Highway 25 South in Starkville on June 29, 2026.
The new MHP substation in Starkville is just one of multiple projects the DPS is undertaking across the state. In late April, the highway patrol moved into its new headquarters in Pearl. Tindell added that they will open a new state medical examiner's office in Oxford soon.
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