On any given day, scrolling through Facebook, X, or any other social platform can feel like stepping into a crowded room where everyone is shouting at once. Some voices are measured and thoughtful, some are speculative, and a few are simply wrong. In Sioux Falls, that digital noise has become more than an annoyance. It has become a source of real frustration for law enforcement, especially for Police Chief Jon Thum, who has watched false narratives take hold in the wake of serious incidents. Thum’s frustration is not abstract; it is grounded in specific moments when misinformation spread so quickly that it threatened to overshadow the facts. He has seen social media posts transform a tragic domestic violence case into a false story about a random attack. He has seen a law enforcement response become the subject of a fabricated rumor about a deputy being stabbed. In both cases, the truth was eventually available, but by then, the damage had already been done. The chief’s message to the public is not to stop using social media, but to slow down, question what they read, and remember that a headline or a hastily written post is not the same as a verified report. The speed of modern communication is a gift, but it is also a burden. It allows information to travel across a city in seconds, yet it also allows misinformation to do the same. For Thum, the stakes are high. Every false post can shape public perception, influence fear, and even put officers or victims in danger. He is not asking people to be cynical, only to be thoughtful. In a world where everyone has a platform, the responsibility to separate fact from fiction falls on both the people who share information and the people who consume it. That shared responsibility is at the heart of his frustration, and it is why he chose to speak publicly about something that might otherwise be dismissed as online noise. He knows he cannot stop every rumor, but he can encourage a culture of verification, and in a moment when public trust in institutions is fragile, that encouragement matters more than ever.
The first example Thum offered took place in late July, when a homicide brought Sioux Falls police to West 41st Street. KELOLAND News reported on the death on a Friday, and when additional information emerged, it also reported the following Monday that the alleged victim had filed a temporary protection order against the suspect. Those were facts, carefully gathered and confirmed. But on social media, a different story began to circulate. People who had no direct knowledge of the case started suggesting that the attack was random, a frightening idea that would understandably make anyone nervous about walking down the street. Thum was direct when he addressed that rumor. “There was information that was put out that somehow people from the public had said that was random attack or something to that nature,” he said. “It was a horrible domestic violence situation.” The distinction matters. A random attack suggests a community-wide threat, a predator lurking without warning. A domestic violence situation, while no less tragic, is a different kind of tragedy, one rooted in a relationship, a history, and a private pain that spilled into public view. By spreading the false narrative, social media users not only got the story wrong, they also added a layer of fear and confusion to a neighborhood already shaken by violence. They also dishonored the complexity of the victim’s experience. Behind the police reports and legal filings was a real person whose life ended in violence, and whose final story deserved to be told accurately. Instead, it was reshaped by strangers into something it was not. For Thum, that moment illustrated a troubling pattern: people are quick to share, slow to verify, and rarely correct the record with the same enthusiasm they brought to the original post. The rumor did not just mislead the public; it made it harder for the community to mourn honestly and for law enforcement to focus on the real tragedy at hand. In the end, the truth was reported, but the false story had already left its mark, a reminder that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.
A few months later, in late October, a law enforcement response in central Sioux Falls provided another example of how quickly false information can spiral. This time, the rumor was even more alarming: someone claimed that a deputy had been stabbed. Thum described the moment when Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Phillips realized something was wrong. “Speaking with Sheriff Phillips, all of a sudden, his phone starts blowing up,” Thum said. “People are hitting up Sergeant Benson for information, and the reality was it was misheard or mis-transcribed and then put out to the public.” The rumor was false, but the fear it generated was very real. It spread at a time when the law enforcement community was already grieving. In October, Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Deputy Katherine Frank lost her life in the line of duty, a loss that sent shockwaves through Sioux Falls and beyond. Every officer, every dispatcher, every family member of someone in uniform was already on edge. A false report of another deputy being stabbed was not just an inconvenience; it was a gut punch. It made hearts race, prompted frantic phone calls, and forced officials to spend precious time correcting a story that should never have been shared in the first place. Thum did not name the person who started the rumor, and he did not need to. The point was bigger than any single post. It was about the ecosystem that allows such rumors to thrive. In the absence of verified information, people fill the void with guesses, fragments, and misheard scanner traffic. Then those fragments are packaged as news and shared by pages with large followings. Before anyone knows the facts, the rumor has already traveled further than the truth. Thum’s frustration is not just about accuracy; it is about the emotional toll that misinformation takes on the people who are trying to do their jobs and the families who are trying to make sense of a tragedy. It is also about the disrespect shown to Deputy Frank’s memory, because a community that cannot trust what it hears cannot properly honor those who gave everything in service to it.
Thum specifically mentioned two popular Facebook pages by name: Tea Storm Chasers and South Dakota 911. These pages have built large audiences by sharing local developments, often in real time. They can be the first place someone learns about a road closure, a police presence, or an emergency. But Thum says that speed comes with a cost. “Tea Storm Chasers, South Dakota 911, even other groups have started putting out information just as it is there, and the reality is that it hits,” he said. “People consume it.” That consumption is exactly what worries him. In the seconds after a post appears, it can be liked, shared, and screenshotted dozens of times before anyone stops to ask whether it is true. The algorithms that govern social media reward engagement, and nothing drives engagement like fear, outrage, or urgency. A post that says “deputy stabbed” will always outperform a post that says “unconfirmed reports of an incident, please wait for official details.” But the latter is often the more responsible message. Thum is not asking people to ignore these pages entirely. He is asking them to approach what they read with a healthy dose of skepticism. “I think we have to take a pause and look at okay, if I’m getting information from some of these sources at the moment, I probably have to take it with a grain of salt, realizing that there’s more work to be done, investigative, from a journalism standpoint,” he said. In other words, the first post is not the final word. It is a starting point, not a conclusion. The chief’s comments reflect a broader frustration felt by many public officials who watch the internet turn speculation into fact. They are not asking for blind trust in government or media. They are asking for a moment of reflection before a rumor is amplified. That moment of reflection can be the difference between a community that is informed and a community that is misled, between a public that supports its officers and a public that turns against them based on a lie.
The chief is highlighting the value of verified information and facts, and he makes no apology for that. “To see some of these sources come through that kind of maybe cast doubt on what’s happening or fuel speculation or fuel innuendo is frustrating for us, because we want factual things to go out,” Thum said. That desire for facts is not just about protecting the reputation of the police department. It is about protecting the public. When misinformation spreads, it can undermine trust in law enforcement, making it harder for officers to do their jobs. It can also cause witnesses to come forward with information based on a false premise, or discourage them from coming forward at all. Minnehaha County Sheriff-elect Josh Phillips told KELOLAND News that his department has certainly felt the impact of false information about law enforcement posted online recently. He did not need to elaborate. The previous weeks had already shown what that impact looks like: officers answering questions about rumors instead of focusing on investigations, families bracing for news that was not true, and a community struggling to separate reality from fiction. The damage is not always visible, but it is real. It erodes the bond between the public and the people sworn to protect them. It also adds to the burden of officers who are already dealing with the stress of dangerous and emotionally draining work. When they see a false story about their department circulating online, it feels like a betrayal. They are out in the streets, making split-second decisions, and then they come home to read that someone has accused them of something they did not do or reported an injury that never happened. The weight of that is heavy, and it is one more reason why Thum and Phillips are speaking out. They are not trying to silence criticism or shield the department from accountability. They are trying to ensure that the public has accurate information, because accurate information is the foundation of trust, and trust is the foundation of public safety.
After Thum mentioned Tea Storm Chasers and South Dakota 911 News, KELOLAND News reached out to both pages for comment. Austin Sindt and Derek Davis, who said over the phone Thursday that they run South Dakota 911 News, responded. They said they are trying to inform the public and see themselves as credible. They also said they correct mistakes and try to follow up on stories. Additionally, they drew a distinction between their page and that of Tea Storm Chasers. As of early Thursday evening, Tea Storm Chasers had not responded to KELOLAND News’ request for comment. The lack of response is, in some ways, part of the problem. When a page with a large following shares information that turns out to be wrong, silence can feel like a refusal to take responsibility. Correcting a mistake is not a sign of weakness; it is a sign of integrity. It tells the audience that accuracy matters more than ego. Sindt and Davis’s willingness to talk, and their claim that they correct errors, is a step in the right direction. But their comments also highlight the difficult position that independent pages occupy. They are not newsrooms with editors, fact-checkers, and legal teams. They are often small operations run by people who are genuinely interested in keeping their neighbors informed. That is a valuable impulse, but it comes with a responsibility to be careful. The line between informing and misleading is thin, and once crossed, it is hard to uncross. For the people of Sioux Falls, the lesson is not to abandon social media or to distrust every post. The lesson is to demand more from the sources they follow and from themselves. Before sharing a post, ask: Is this confirmed? Is this from an official source? Could this be wrong? Those few seconds of reflection can make all the difference. In a world where information travels at the speed of light, wisdom is the ability to pause. And in a community that has just lost an officer, grieved with a family, and watched a domestic violence victim’s story be twisted into something unrecognizable, pausing is not just wise. It is a way of honoring the truth and the people whose lives depend on it.