Should Police Chief Thum be terminated?
l3wis I wasn’t making the suggestion, but a friend and I were discussing all the murders in Sioux Falls over the past year and he suggested it.
I actually defended the police on one aspect, they have no idea domestic disputes are occurring in private residences unless someone reports it, so prevention of domestic violence is a tough one to tackle and actually takes the work of many non-profits in our community.
But I can’t defend the police when these murders occur in open spaces like a public park.
I think Thum has done a good job of trying to clean up a department that has morale issues, BUT he needs to UP the patrols of the officers. Several of these murders were preventable because they occurred in public spaces.
Just look at the Dunham Park incident. Nobody called the incident in while the physical fight was occurring in the middle of the afternoon in a park surrounded by apartments? C’mon!
I’ve said since the city’s covid lockdown SOME city employees haven’t really changed their habits of laziness. I have often said that ALL city employees need to have there workflows annually inspected, and if they are NOT up to par, lay them off. It would be harder to fire them do to how a Union works, but you could lay people off due to budgetary reasons. In other words cutting payroll so the mayor would have NO choice but to lay people off. Now while the mayor has the power to hire and fire whoever he wants to without interference from the council, the council does set the budget and they could slash payroll and leave it up to the mayor to cut the fat.
And the mayor’s lack of effective employee leadership is contributing to the problem. When your a city employee busting your butt filling potholes and you see the mayor that makes 5x what you do doing jumping jacks at an elementary school in the middle of the morning, it makes you not want to fill those potholes very fast. And cute little challenge coins don’t mean nothin’.
I have often said city employees are an INVESTMENT and we should make sure that INVESTMENT is working for us. So whether that is a parks worker or a patrol officer we need to give them all the tools to be successful and effective.