Mayor TenHaken waits two years to fulfill a campaign promise

It only took almost two years after Paul was elected for him to kind of act on his campaign promise of better public safety;

The Long Game in Public Safety
By Mayor Paul TenHaken

People will occasionally ask me if Sioux Falls is still a safe community, and the answer is always “yes.” Year after year, Sioux Falls’ population has grown steadily as more and more people are drawn to Sioux Falls for career opportunities and our incredible quality of life. During this past year, our crime rate has maintained a low rate—especially when compared to other large cities.

I have often told people this argument rings hollow. The claim is our crime rate has simply grown in comparison to our population growth. Apparently a lot of newborns are dealing drugs and committing these crimes. A very large percent of our population growth is due to current residents having babies, this is something that is never brought up in our population growth problems.

Since I took office, we have expanded our team of police officers investigating drug dealers by adding an additional narcotics sergeant as well as a new Narcotics Crime Unit. These officers are focused on crime tips from members of the public to help put drug dealers out of business.

The rumor going around is that the police department is understaffed by over 20 officers. So while we are spending money to fix the State Theatre, and parapets on the Pavilion, we are not properly staffing our SFPD.

We continue to make strides toward opening the area’s first triage center to provide an alternative treatment path than jail or hospitals for addicts in the midst of a crisis.

Remember the argument for building the new Administration building? We were told the city has ran out of office space, but mysteriously we now have an entire empty building for a triage center. Don’t get me wrong, we need it. But instead of building an admin building 2 years ago we should have built a triage center in conjunction and attached to the new jail.

I’m glad Paul is putting our press releases about being tough on crime, but talk is cheap, and this should have been done the first day he walked into office. Because we all know, if you have a rising crime and drug problem it doesn’t go away by simply ignoring it for two years. Paul has ignored his charter regulated duties of managing the city, his most important and only job, that includes overseeing the police department. And the whole time he ignored these duties he violated the charter by trying to do the council’s job of legislating and setting budgets. It’s time for Paul to do his job and the council to do theirs.