Simplified: Sioux Falls is a safe place, Mayor Paul TenHaken emphasized during an annual public safety briefing Tuesday morning. That's no accident. TenHaken oversaw a significant increase in public safety spending – including new resources to help police solve crimes in real time. Here's a closer look.
Why it matters
- Violent crimes per capita reached a five-year low in 2025, and an "unprecedented low" rate of property crimes, as Police Chief Jon Thum told reporters Tuesday.
- Meanwhile, the Sioux Falls Police Department's annual budget increased by 75% over the last decade, with a total of $57.7 million in 2025. Per capita police spending also increased by just shy of 40% during that period – so the population increase accounts for some of the overall budget growth, but not all of it.
- That growth has also included an increase of about four dozen sworn officers since 2016, and the average salary has gone up 47% in that time to a starting salary at $72,000, Finance Director Shawn Pritchett told Sioux Falls Simplified last fall.
"One of the most important things residents expect is to feel safe in their communities," TenHaken said Tuesday. "It's probably one of the topics that people bring up the most."
Tell me more
Tuesday's crime statistics showed decreases in nearly every category, with fewer homicides, assaults, overdoses and robberies.
- Police also saw fewer drugs seized, which Thum attributes to a combination of better education on the dangers of drugs as well as less overall availability of those drugs due to crackdowns at the southern border.
When it comes to property crime, the only increase was in fraud due to higher rates of cyber scams targeting senior citizens and others, Thum said.
Stolen vehicles were also down significantly, largely due to education campaigns and the help of a new real-time information center that helped recover 37 stolen vehicles last year.
You can see the full public safety briefing here:
What happens next?
If you ask Thum, there's more growth on the way.
"Our projection is to grow every single year," he said, adding that going a year without adding new officers would be "a step backwards."
There's also an uphill battle to fight against recidivism. Minnehaha County Chief Deputy Jeff Gromer said an estimated half of the population in the county jail is people who were arrested on a new offense while on either probation or parole.
That stat was shared just a day after lawmakers in Pierre killed a bill that would've provided $2.7 million in funding for five years of a leadership development program for inmates.
- TenHaken said the city accepted it'd be a good location for a new men's prison, with the understanding there'd be support from the state for programs to combat recidivism.
"Yesterday was a litmus test, and it failed," TenHaken said.
