Lunch with Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum

I actually didn’t have lunch with the chief, but he was addressing the Breakfast Club today at NOON at the City’s admin building where I was the only citizen in attendance at the beginning (it’s mostly elected officials from the region that show up to these monthly get togethers). I go for the free lunch 🙂

Thum said that officers with more experience dealing with people and managing situations are better officers then those with degrees in criminal justice. While I believe him, I asked him this question, “I want officers to have at least a 2 year degree in criminal justice because I want officers to know the LAW when they are responding to a situation. Thum did confess he would like officers with experience in both areas, but prefers officers with people skills over law knowledge. His excuse was different laws in different jurisdictions. Well guess what? Officers should know the laws they are enforcing. I think the Chief should be focusing on hiring people with both skill sets and not just settling for mediocre. I got the feeling from his response that Thum is trying to fill a quota, and he doesn’t seem to care how he fills that quota, bodies on the street scenario.

The above picture is an officer hiding behind a utility box on private property of a local manufacturer I took a few days ago. Wondering if this is one of his ‘people person’ officers? I don’t have a problem with officers taking breaks, but they should be in a public parking lot or at the precinct.

I also presented this question to Thum, “I want to address shutting off the scanners. I researched the Federal regulations and it is well within your right to turn the scanners completely off (Thum nods) but the suggestion from the Feds is to only turn them off for sensitive situations like wellness checks, overdoses, domestic, etc. So I want to set up a scenario for you. We had a train derailment downtown a few years ago. Luckily it was just corn and it didn’t knock over the viaduct, but these same trains carry tons of chemicals thru downtown every day. What if it derails again and there is a massive chemical spill and you have to evacuate thousands of people from downtown. How will you get that info to the public in a timely manner if the scanners are shutoff?”

He did say the Fire Department has a notification system (not sure what that is) and that they TEXT people. I can tell you that downtown is full of older homes with poorer elderly people living in them, they likely don’t have cell phones. I wasn’t really satisfied with his answer. I often tell folks, once we have open government a lot of these issues disappear in the night, but I don’t think Thum gets it.