Police prioritize filling openings, connecting to community in 2022 while planning for growth

Police Chief Jon Thum appreciates times like the one earlier this month at Dick’s Sporting Goods, when police officers walked the aisles and shared cookies with kids shopping for Christmas.

He recognizes the value of the school resource officer who takes time to have lunch with students.

And he looks forward to a new program in 2022 that will bring the Sioux Falls Police Department into neighborhoods, holding education sessions and creating a “road show” of sorts to make officers more accessible to residents.

“We need to take it outside our walls and building,” said Thum, who took over the department’s top job in July.

“Making time has to be a priority when it comes to community policing. It just becomes easier when the staffing piece gets higher.”

Filling open positions is a pressing priority for Thum, whose authorized strength will grow to 284 with the addition of four officers in 2022. There are 269 officers on staff today, though the department has experience significant interest and applications from out-of-state officers looking to relocate.

“And there’s a hiring class in February with a mix of certified and noncertified officers,” Thum said. “We’re really hopeful we can in 2022 achieve full staffing as close as possible and start to realize the efficiencies of a fully staffed patrol, being able to start to engage with the community more, because the stress of running call to call is alleviated. We really just are trying to maintain what we have.”

The community has experienced some of the calls for service that come with population growth, but on the whole violent crime is down compared with 2020.

In 2022, the department hopes to enhance how it responds to mental illness calls, Thum said. That could include pairing mental health professionals with first responders.

“It’s an area we can always be working on and enhancing by partnering with the community,” he said.

The Link, which opened this year as a downtown triage center for those in crisis especially related to drugs and alcohol, has been “working out very well,” Thum said, while adding it’s important to set the right expectations.

“We can direct them and get the resources they need, and just because they aren’t ready for help now doesn’t mean they won’t be ready in a week,” he said. “We can’t be thinking it will completely eradicate a problem. The reality is success is gained a person at a time.”

Staffing efficiency

Looking forward, the Police Department is looking at expanding its report-to-work locations. There’s one operating in southwest Sioux Falls with about two dozen officers reporting to work there daily.

The approach offers multiple advantages, Thum said. The downtown Law Enforcement Center was built without the ability to expand it, so having people report to work at different locations is “a way to alleviate stress on the building” while also reducing commutes for officers who might live near the areas where they work and find it inefficient to drive back and forth downtown before starting their day.

The city also owns land in the southeast, not far from its fire station near Ben Reifel Middle School, that’s envisioned as a future building that would serve as an additional report-to-work location.

“If you look at the expansion of the city, a lot of it is to the west and southeast, and we want to respond to that growth,” Thum said.

While the southeast building, which is scheduled for construction in 2025, would include a room for writing up reports, a conference room for training and a workout facility, it’s not a precinct, Thum said.

“A precinct has a desk officer, staff that would be able to deal with police issues,” he said. “We’re fortunate that the way our city has grown that our main campus is in the center of everything. At this point, a lot of business needs we have can be accomplished at the Law Enforcement Center. But we do have to look to the future as the city expands and we add 50,000 people in 10 years and 25 to 30 more officers, how that might require the need for a precinct.”

In the meantime, he’s focused on the new Public Safety Training Center, which will see significant construction in 2022 before opening in the fall of 2023.

“It’s going to be a massive campus and pretty neat to watch it take shape,” he said. “This campus or facility is going to be second to none in the region.”

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