Lifelong friendship defines leadership style for police chief, assistant chief

A good friend will forgive you for putting a hole in their wall with a hammer.

A great friend will thank you.

At least that’s the case for Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum and his lifelong friend Nick Cook, who became the department’s assistant chief in early June.

The hammer isn’t a metaphor. Cook really did put a hammer through his friend’s wall. Thum really did thank him.

The story explains a lot about the pair’s friendship and, in turn, about how their personalities might complement one another in the operational leadership of South Dakota’s largest law enforcement agency. 

Assistant Police Chief Nick Cook and Police Chief Jon Thum

Seven years ago, Thum’s family moved into a home whose basement needed repair. Thum, his wife and all three boys lived upstairs, so a finished basement would mean more space for everyone. Cook heard about it plenty, both in and out of work. 

“It seemed like every time I’d come over there, he and his wife would be talking about it,” Cook said. 

One weekend at Thum’s house, Cook decided he’d heard enough. He knew Thum well enough to know he’d probably put the job off without a push. He also knew how well his friend could rise to the challenge of the moment. Thum was a SWAT team leader, after all. 

“One day, we were talking about it, and we said ‘well, we don’t know how to do this, but we know how to destroy things,’” said Cook. “So I just put a hammer through the panel board and pulled it off. That was the start of the destruction. We probably pulled off half the basement that day.”

As Cook predicted, Thum and his family took to the task with gusto. With the help of handy in-laws and some on-the-job learning, the work was done in a matter of weeks.

“I wasn’t ready to take on the mess of that moment,” Thum said. “I just needed help getting that project going.”

Youth in service came before police career 

Thum and Cook have honed their skills as a working team for decades — and for years before either put on a uniform. On church mission trips as teens, for projects around the house and later at the police department, Cook has long been a source of positive peer pressure for Thum.

“If there’s something that needs to be done, Nick’s always been the one to nudge me in the right direction,” Thum said.

The dynamic emerged early. The two met as grade schoolers when Thum’s father took a job as campus pastor at the University of Sioux Falls and the Thum family joined Cook’s at First Baptist Church. Thum fell in quickly with the youth group, where he made fast friends with Cook – and a few others.

Allen Kjesbo, the church’s youth pastor at the time, remembers making a strong first impression during a  post-youth group field hockey match. Kjesbo checked Thum “pretty hard” in the gymnasium.

“I guess Jon went home and told his mom ‘I love this place! The youth pastor checked me into the wall,’” Kjesbo said. “So we had a high-contact first meeting.”

Thum and Cook didn’t go to the same school, but they saw each other every Sunday and Wednesday, went to Camp Judson in the Black Hills every summer and took additional summer retreats every year. Those trips with Kjesbo took them to Mount Robson in British Columbia and whitewater rafting in Maine but also to the Crow Reservation in Montana and Oglala Lakota Reservation in South Dakota and to a clinic for migrant workers in Baja, Mexico. 

Each trip was designed to help teens grow as people, Kjesbo said, whether through service, exposure to other cultures and ways of life or by tackling challenges as a team. On hikes, the rule was that no one celebrated reaching the destination until everyone made it.

If Kjesbo hung back with younger or slower kids, he’d often hear “the drumbeat of kids coming back down to help” near the end of a hike, with Thum and Cook typically leading the charge.

“We’d be carrying these really heavy backpacks, and some kids just needed help,” Kjesbo said. “Jon and Nick were always quick to say ‘I’ll carry that for you.’”

He also remembers Cook and Thum’s affinity for dirty jobs. If the jobs involved a little destruction? Even better. In Mexico, for example, they volunteered for garbage duty, which meant burning trash in the desert sun for hours on end.

“They came back after a day just soot-faced but smiling like they’d had the best day of their lives,” Kjesbo said. “That was classic Nick and Jon. They loved to work together. That’s why it warms my heart to see the path their careers have taken.”

Police work a natural fit

The recently retired youth pastor wasn’t surprised to see Thum enter law enforcement. Thum was a youth intern for the church in high school, the one whom Kjesbo would trust to help the group out of a bind on a rafting trip or to make sure everyone had their supplies packed and ready. Later on in college, Thum was a counselor at Camp Judson, where Kjesbo directed the high school camps for 17 years. 

“It made sense that Jon ended up in a service profession,” he said. “I’d call how he approaches policing as a community service.” 

Thum always wanted to be an officer. Cook did, too, and he took the leap first, starting out as a 911 dispatcher before taking a job with the SFPD.

Thum worked two years in a printing shop for Cook’s father after graduating from the University of Sioux Falls with a degree in business. He worked a lot those first few years out of college, holding onto his part-time college job at Hy-Vee as he tried his hand at sales. A 9-to-5 business offered stability, which was appealing for someone who saw a family in his future.

He made it two years, but it wasn’t exactly easy.

“I’d be working on T-shirt orders or spirit wear for Patrick Henry Middle School, and Nick would be telling me stories from what he was doing, and I’d be like ‘man, I’m not sure I’m in the right career field,’” Thum said.

Near the end of his time at the print shop, Thum rode along with Cook as a job candidate. He doesn’t recall all the details of the traffic stops, only that one was a DUI that involved several officers offering backup. The former USF football player was taken by the teamwork aspect of the work.

“Everybody’s counting on each other. They know each other, they know their jobs, they know the tasks to be assigned,” Thum said. “It was that sense of purpose and service but also a sense of community, as a team … that’s what cemented it for me.”

Cook recalls knowing as much. He could see it on his friend’s face.

“I remember making some traffic stops with him, and he’s just over there smiling,” Cook said. “And I do remember the DUI. … What he’s referring to there, that’s what we do every day. When you do a DUI investigation, you have somebody covering you, so you know you’re safe. You rely on that person to watch your surroundings for you. After that day (Jon) never stopped talking about it.” 

Different leadership tracks

Thum and Cook took separate paths at the SFPD. Thum gravitated toward patrol work and excelled as a SWAT team member, eventually becoming the department’s SWAT training officer. Cook leaned into narcotics investigations and wound up in leading them. 

Only once before 2021 did the two compete for the same job – a detective’s slot that neither got. Thum was more disappointed for Cook than himself, he said. 

When they found themselves finalists to replace outgoing Chief Matt Burns, their friendship took some of the pressure off the high-profile process. There were media profiles, several rounds of interviews and a public candidate forum.

The forum could’ve been adversarial, Cook said, but it turned into more of a conversation.

“It was just me and him up there talking (at the forum), and we do that all the time anyway,” Cook said. “We were talking about the job and how we approach it, and we don’t really track differently there. (That part of it) was oddly easy.”

Even within the department, there was surprise at how little tension there was.

“The impression was that there was no way we could be in professional competition without it damaging our relationship,” Thum said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Our friendship doesn’t hinge on what happens here.”

When the assistant chief’s job opened up, Cook was once again a finalist. Thum was one of the four panelists charged with making the selection, but he could’ve been overruled by the other three, who represented human resources, the mayor and the Minnehaha County state’s attorney.

In the end, Thum said, the group concluded that every candidate was strong, but Cook’s experience and organizational strengths made him the ideal choice. 

The assistant chief is the operational manager for the department, handling the nuts and bolts of budgets and internal affairs. That always has been Cook’s strong suit. Paired with an instinct to push his friend in the right direction, Thum sees that as an asset to the department and the community it serves.

If you trust someone enough to know they’ve put a hole in your wall for your own good, after all, you can trust them to tell you what you need to hear — especially when you’d rather not hear it.

“One of the things I told Nick was that he could be brutally honest with me, and it will not be taken personally,” Thum said. “Our friendship doesn’t hinge on what happens here. If there’s something hard to tell me, I have the expectation that he would tell me. You can’t surround yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear.”

There’s value for the community in that level of trust in the top offices at the SFPD, Kjesbo said. He sees Thum as “a healer” in times of conflict between police and communities, and believes that Cook’s role as a motivator and manager will help both men achieve their goals.

“They’re not career builders. They’re out to find a place where their voices can be heard,” Kjesbo said. “I really think Jon is somebody who will work to keep the police and the community on the same side.”