Hundreds of people were ticketed or arrested during a state-funded saturation patrol that put 15 additional state troopers on the streets of South Dakota’s largest city last week.
The troopers labored from Aug. 27 through Aug. 29 under the banner of “Operation Prairie Thunder,” a two-pronged public safety initiative announced in July by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden.
One part of the operation, branded with a caricature of a buffalo with a badge on its hat and lightning bolts on its sunglasses, involved Rhoden directing six members of the South Dakota National Guard to process deportation arrest paperwork for the seven Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stationed in the state. That prong of the public safety platform also included an agreement between the state Department of Corrections and ICE to help the federal agency sniff out immigrant inmates without legal status in the state’s prisons.
Guard troops in Sioux Falls and Rapid City began their work last month; the Corrections Department turned 10 migrants, paroled in mid-August, over to ICE agents for removal from the U.S.
The other prong of Rhoden’s plan put additional Highway Patrol resources on tap for Sioux Falls, whose metro area is home to nearly a third of South Dakota’s residents.
Calls for service in the city have grown significantly since 2015, as has the population. The 16 homicides in the city last year were the most in its history.
The Sioux Falls Police Department’s statistics show its overall per capita violent crime rate fell in 2024, however, the year covered by the department’s most recently published annual report. That year, the city had fewer aggravated assaults, stolen vehicles, burglaries and fraud cases than 2023. Narcotics arrests rose slightly from 2023 to 2024, and police seized more narcotics by weight — the largest jump was in grams of Fentanyl seized — but the number of drug arrests was 700 below its 2019 peak.
The late August saturation patrol is the first of what will be two per month for the next five months. After that point, Rhoden told South Dakota Searchlight this week, “we’ll reevaluate” the city’s need for additional assistance.
Troopers made 174 drug arrests during the first patrol, 44 of which involved felony-level drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine. The governor said 32 of the felony arrests involved methamphetamine, and troopers served 24 outstanding felony warrants on people stopped by troopers during the operation.
You can read the full article at South Dakota Searchlight.