With record recruitment class, Sioux Falls Police builds on culture of officer appreciation

Next week, the largest recruitment class in Sioux Falls Police history will take the first steps toward officially becoming part of the department.

When those 26 become officers, the department will sit at little to no vacancy in positions.

“We have an incredible team at SFPD,” said Ethan Beck, a talent acquisition coordinator who specializes in hiring for Sioux Falls Police and Metro Communications.

“(They) have welcomed our candidates with open arms. This team makes my job incredibly easy and enjoyable.”

The 2024 Sioux Falls Police recruitment class

Elsewhere around the country, there’s nothing easy about filling roles in public safety.

A survey last summer by the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that on average agencies are operating at 91 percent of their authorized staffing levels. Almost two in three reported reducing services or specialized units because of staffing challenges, prioritizing essential patrol functions over specialized assignments.

More than 70 percent of respondents reported that recruitment is more difficult now than five years ago.

Sioux Falls tells a different story.

As of this month, 280 of the department’s 302 authorized sworn positions are filled. Seven new positions were added in the 2025 budget.

This week, the community will step up and show its support through National Police Week, with days of donated meals, ice cream events, mini-massages and a drive-thru hosted by Scheels serving coffee and pastries.

“It’s just a lot of support from the local community,” said Brady Lieuwen, a community resource officer who joined the department in 2005.

“Having that support means a lot to our officers, knowing it’s not something that happens around the United States. It helps us to do our jobs easier, knowing that the community is behind us.”

While the week ahead will hold plenty of little indulgences, the department also has put a more intentional focus on the team’s overall health and wellness.

Lindsey Mossman was hired as the wellness specialist in 2023 — a new position that aims to help officers after they serve as much as it does while they’re part of the force.

“The statistics aren’t too great for life expectancy after retirement for law enforcement, so my target is getting them to eat healthier and exercise more,” Mossman said. “Getting them to make better choices for longevity, and by extension it’s going to improve officer safety and officer performance.”

Wellness services also extend to mental health. When Lieuwen became an officer, “there was no mentorship program for new officers,” he said, adding that new recruits navigated the culture on their own, and “there wasn’t a friendly face until quite awhile into the training process.”

Now, not only are new recruits paired with mentors, but spouses also are included when couples are matched up for support.

“And we have a peer support team that checks in with every officer to make sure things are going well,” Mossman said. “It doesn’t have to be that they had a super-stressful event on the street. It could be: ‘You look a little down. What’s going on?’ A culture where it’s OK to talk about mental health and where it’s OK to talk about the stressors of the job.”

Hiring approach 

Recruitment is a blend of passive communication, including hiring websites and job postings, and active communication, including phone calls, job fairs and interviews.

“We have made a concerted effort to ensure all our physical and online recruitment resources reflect our competitive advantages,” Beck said.

“We’ve built one-stop-shop electronic resources such as our unique job postings, the recruitment website and my digital business card to offer candidates ease of access to a plethora of content that will be applicable for their candidate journey.”

He has learned many law enforcement hiring processes are cumbersome, including up to 10 appointments or exams over up to six months.

“In my opinion, today’s workforce is not apt to wait that long for employment opportunities to come to fruition in most cases,” Beck said.

“We have built our hiring process to be candidate-centric and to be geared towards meeting candidate where they are.”

He calls it “one of the most candidate-friendly hiring processes in the nation,” crediting SFPD with building relationships with HR that allow the two to work closely together.

” These leaders are a treasure to our city, and I am so incredibly blessed and honored to have the privilege to serve their agency.”

In Sioux Falls, it takes from two to 2.5 months from application to hiring, with some conditional offers becoming final in less than 30 days, “which is relatively unheard of in law enforcement,” he said.

The city also has been open to bringing in applicants from other career fields. The May 2025 class reflects candidates from the military, operations, customer service management, Child Protective Services, education, 911 dispatch and various sectors of health care.

“Above all else, communication, integrity, work ethic, adaptability, resilience and teamwork skills are paramount, and for candidates that possess a strong combination of those skills, we have surely found success,” Beck said.

This summer, the city will make an appearance at a couple of farmers market events to share information about roles at Sioux Falls Police, along with attending several career fairs and doing classroom visits.

Candidates are attracted by South Dakota’s lack of state income tax, internal opportunities for growth, stable leadership and the community’s positive sentiment toward law enforcement, he said.

“Above all else, it’s that overwhelming desire to serve the community that we hear about the most,” Beck said. “Sioux Falls continues to be a pillar of excellence nationwide, and our in-state as well as out-of-state candidates see that, and they want to be a part of driving forward this continued success.”

Saying thank you

Events such as Police Week go a long way, Beck said.

“I love Police Week for recruitment,” he said, adding that he plans to post highlights on LinkedIn all week. “I really do believe the community engagement and the way they’ve rallied around SFPD, especially on Police Week, is instrumental in telling the story of how incredible it is to serve for this department.”

Some officers start asking what’s on tap for Police Week months ahead of time, Lieuwen said.

“They look forward to it,” he said. “And it’s not just our officers. It’s our records staff and our janitorial staff. It’s a whole team and people appreciate it. It lifts their spirits.”

The night shift is specially taken care of, too, with late-night pickups of nacho bars from Qdoba and plenty of pizza.

“Chief (Jon) Thum always says the community of Sioux Falls never fails to show up for us because we don’t fail to show up for them,” Mossman said. “Yes, it’s a hard job. Yes, there are bad calls. But the community support Sioux Falls provides is unlike anything else in the nation. It’s really heartwarming to see. We see it a lot on Police Week, but it’s not rare.”