Recruitment and Retention Strategies from Rapid City

Voiceover 

00:01 

Welcome to The Beat—a podcast series from the COPS Office at the Department of Justice. Featuring 

interviews with experts from a varied field of disciplines, The Beat provides law enforcement with the 

latest developments and trending topics in community policing. 

Jennifer Donelan 

00:16 

Hello, and welcome to The Beat. I’m your host, Jennifer Donelan. As most of our listeners are aware the 

United States Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services focuses on the 

nationwide advancement of community policing. Community policing cannot occur without a dedicated 

staff of law enforcement officers. Recruiting and retaining those high-quality officers though has been a 

struggle for departments across the United States over the past few years. 

The Rapid City Police Department in South Dakota was one of those agencies and focus on the word 

“was”. Things turned around in 2023 for them through a holistic approach that does not focus on just a 

single issue but instead addresses a wide variety of factors. Today, our guests are Assistant Chief Scott 

Sitts and Research and Development Specialist Dave Kinser from the Rapid City Police Department. 

Assistant Chief Sitts and Mr. Kinser, welcome to The Beat. 

Assistant Chief Scott Sitts 

01:11 

Thank you for having us. 

Dave Kinser 

01:11 

Yeah. I appreciate it. 

Donelan 

01:13 

So I don’t want to break with tradition and I want to get to the subject that we’re going to be talking 

about and I always tell folks, “I’m so excited that we’re talking about this,” but I truly do mean it. We’re 

bringing news you can use to law enforcement leadership and officers across the United States and this 

is a topic that I know so many are focused on right now. But before we dive into that, I always like to ask 

the same question which is how did you get into law enforcement? So if you could just briefly each tell 

me. Dave, actually, I’ll start with you. You’re a civilian in a police department, how did you get involved 

in law enforcement? 
 

Kinser 

01:44 

So I joined the Marines out of high school. And then I was working overseas for federal law enforcement 

with the State Department and I got stuck in Iraq for like four years and was trying to move home and 

the Rapid City Police Department kind of saved me from that situation and brought me in and it’s been 

great ever since. 

Donelan 

02:01 

Excellent. I can’t wait to hear how your military experience parlayed into your experience at the police 

department. Thank you. Assistant Chief Sitts, how did you get involved? What was the draw to law 

enforcement for you in the first place? 

Sitts 

02:12 

I grew up in a first responder family. And so, I’ve been around law enforcement in my entire life. It’s the 

only thing I’ve ever wanted to do or could think about doing. Got out of high school, again, I also joined 

the Marine Corps, and when I got out of the Marine Corps, I started going to college. And when I was 

going to college, I got hired on by a local Sheriff’s Office. So I been doing this now for a little bit over 25 

years. 

Donelan 

02:32 

Excellent. Well, thank you both for your service to our country. All right. Let’s dive in. Let’s tell everyone 

about the Rapid City Police Department. I want to talk about the past. And then, we’re going to move 

into the present and how you arrived at your situation now. So tell us about the Rapid City Police 

Department and some of the issues that your agency has faced over the last few years specifically when 

it comes to recruitment and retention. What kind of shortages were you dealing with? 

Sitts 

02:57 

Yeah. So I would say, you know, 2012 up through 2019, we were pretty typical. Our average attrition 

rate was around that 6 percent to 7 percent. After 2019 like a lot of law enforcement agencies we 

started seeing those that were eligible for retirement, they were definitely out the door, those that 

could take an early retirement, they were out the door. 

And then, we just really had a large turnover with our senior officers and even sergeants that we haven’t 

seen before seeking different professions, different careers completely outside of law enforcement. And 

our attrition rate kind of soared the last couple of years where we were averaging right around 14 

percent, which I think is pretty consistent throughout law enforcement right now in the nation that 14 

percent to 20 percent. 
 

 

 

 

And we are really struggling to keep staff, to bring in good people. We noticed that our application pool 

really dropped off before we were getting each hiring cycle, you know, 100 to 150 applicants. We were 

down to averaging about 20, 25 applicants and really struggling to fill our manpower needs. 

Donelan 

03:56 

Let me ask you, in terms of why they were leaving, can you pinpoint that? Was that because of just the 

general sentiment towards law enforcement? Was there experiences that they were having in the field 

in Rapid City? Can you talk a little bit more about that? 

Sitts 

04:10 

Yeah. You bet. I think it’s all the above. I think the social climate towards law enforcement definitely 

played a huge role. I think over the past if we look back at statistics, our communities have become 

more violent, assaults on officers have increased, and also our workload has increased dramatically 

where burnout has become a major, major factor. Our officers here at the Rapid City Police Department 

are very busy. They’re averaging per officer on patrol right around that 1,500 calls for service a year. So 

it’s non-stop for our department. So I think there are several key factors that played into that high 

turnover rate. 

Kinser 

04:45 

Yeah. And just to add to what Scott said, I mean we’ve kind of took a very outward-looking-in approach 

to kind of officer burnout and fatigue and kind of ran some numbers and had some surveys and found 

that like 65 percent of our calls were going towards the homeless problem, right? And on all our surveys 

they, you know, cops said, “Hey, we want to be cops and we’re kind of chasing these continued cycles 

that are never closing and there’s never resolution. We’re dealing with the same people day in and day 

out.”

Donelan 

05:15 

So you ran those surveys with the force that you had sort of left after the, you know, I want to call it the 

Great Escape, but after those officers who were eligible and could retire retired. So those were surveys 

with your force at the time? 

Kinser 

05:28 

Yeah. Both with the force at the time, right. Doing a department-wide survey, but then also doing exit 

interviews with every single officer that was leaving and having unabashed and unfiltered conversations 

where you say, “Hey, what happened?” Right? And you got to open yourself up to criticism if you’re 

willing to have that. 
 

 

 

 

 

Donelan 

05:46 

Right. Exactly. Let’s set the stage a little bit about policing in Rapid City, South Dakota, to begin with. 

How busy is the department? Where do you sort of stand statewide? 

Sitts 

05:57 

We lead the state in overall... Well, I’m not going to say lead the state. We’re tied kind of with Sioux 

Falls, which has triple the population of us here in Rapid City for calls for service. 2022, 2021, we led the 

state in homicides and our officers run. When we bring in new hires, we want to be upfront with them 

and this is not a department where you’re going to be looking for calls for service or looking for 

something to do. It’s literally call to call with calls holding and call stacked. 

Donelan 

06:24 

So describe for me then what’s the sort of makeup in Rapid City? Is it primarily suburban? Do you have 

urban centers? What is driving that extremely busy calls for service? 

Sitts 

06:36 

I think what we have here is, is Rapid City is kind of the hub of the west side of South Dakota. We have a 

lot of communities around this, but anyone that comes here in this area is going to come to Rapid City 

for entertainment, they come to Rapid City for shopping. I think another key factor is, is we have the 

poorest Native American reservation about 45 miles away from us. So we have a lot of visitors from the 

reservation up here too, so while our population is right around that 80,000 mark, on any given day you 

can probably add 30,000 to 40,000 just from the surrounding communities. 

Donelan 

07:06 

Thank you. That paints the picture. Chief, we’ve talked about rank and file, what was the sentiment 

among command staff? What were those conversations like in 2021, 2022 as you sort of saw the 

department struggling with the recruitment and retention? 

Sitts 

07:20 

Yeah. Those conversations, you know, to go back to our attrition rate a little bit and I failed to mention 

this, but law enforcement is a difficult job and it takes a special individual to be committed and to go to 

work day in and day out and we all know the struggles with seeing things that no person should ever 

have to see and really that toll that it takes on your own wellness, it takes on your family. So we wanted 

to look at this as a package, if everything that kind of impacts our retention that our health, wellness 

and safety of our officers and our staff and how do we really address this together. 
 

 

Donelan 

07:52 

It was a team approach? 

Sitts 

07:53 

Absolutely. You know, not only a team approach but I would say also a city approach when we’re talking 

about the stuff we were able to implement. We have a very supportive city council. We have a very 

supportive mayor and we have a very supportive community overall here of law enforcement. So really, 

this was a team conversation within our rank and file, within our command staff. And then, also with our 

other city leadership. 

Donelan 

08:14 

You can do all you want to do, your command staff can do all you want to do, but if you don’t have that 

buy-in from city leadership, from the community, that becomes a difficult if not impossible thing to do. 

So thank you for bringing that up. I want to get into how you got there but I want to first start off with, 

for our listeners, things turned around in 2023. So where does the department stand now in terms of 

staffing? Where is morale? And then, we’ll get to how you got there, but where are we right now? 

Sitts 

08:41 

So right now, today, we entered the year looking for 35 sworn police officers, and right now we’re 

currently only have eight openings and that is including the eight employees we’ve lost this year. So if 

we didn’t lose any this year, we would have been full staff. 

Donelan 

08:55 

Compared to, just to paint the picture in terms of like you’re at full staff now, what was sort of your 

worst situation there in terms of staffing? 

Kinser 

09:05 

At one point I think we were at, what? 34 down at the highest, 34, 35. 

Donelan 

09:11 

So you were 34, 35 officers down say around what? 

Sitts 

09:14 

Beginning of this year. 
Donelan 

09:15 

Oh, beginning of this year you were down—

Sitts 

09:17 

Beginning this year. 

Donelan 

09:18 

And now you’re only down eight? 

Sitts 

09:19 

Eight, and our attrition rate when I compare January through October of 2022 to January of October of 

2023, our attrition rate has dropped by 55.56 percent. 

Donelan 

09:32 

Yeah. I can hear jaws dropping. How did we get there? Let’s talk about that. We’re going to spend some 

time talking about that. So you use some traditional methods such as increasing pay and better access 

to time off, but you went further than that. So just A to Z, what was the recipe? 

Sitts 

09:49 

Yeah. The recipe was surveys, the recipe was research. I spent the summer of 2022 at the FBI National 

Academy and I was able to talk to a lot of different agencies, really invested a lot of my time there in 

taking their wellness courses and just learning about the different wellness options, what’s available, 

what some other departments are doing. And visiting with those agencies and kind of bringing back 

what other departments are doing, and then digging into what our employees want. Because what I 

think is great, what I want may not be what our employees want. So really determining what those 

employees want, what’s important to them. And then, seeing what we can bring to the table and what 

we can implement. 

Donelan 

10:28 

All right. And Dave, what did you bring to the table? 

Kinser 

10:31 

Well, so like I said, we were really crunching numbers looking at the tangible and untangibles, right? 

Especially when you’re talking from an HR perspective, law enforcement being one of the toughest jobs 

in the world because you’re balancing what customer service, public safety, and that morale and welfare 
 

 

 

 

 

issues, right? So I mean we took a real intentional look through the surveys, crunch the numbers on 

there, found out like, you know, because often times rumors start in the basement, right? And that’s 

where the sentiment comes from is the people on the ground, right? So diagnosing what they were 

having issues with and saying, “Wow. 60 percent of our calls are related to this chronic homelessness 

issue in Rapid City, right? And crisis and co-occurring substance abuse.” So we said, “Well, what are we 

doing there? How can we look to fix that?” And honestly, we’ve been working with IACP, International 

Association of Chiefs of Police, and COPS, intentionally for years to develop kind of proactive outreach 

units with our Quality of Life Unit who was embedded in our care campus, which is our diversionary. 

And then, kind of working on some of our high utilizers. We looked at our top 10 high utilizers, our 

number one had I believe it was 355 contacts with fire and EMS in one year and we ran the numbers and 

that was $120,000 to Rapid City and the county. So we kind of put it up as a business proposal, like how 

can we do better? But you talk about the political capital, right? Somebody that is costing that much, 

that’s two full-time officer salaries. 

So we looked at kind of that, working with our partners in our Quality of Life Unit, and helping to get 

these high utilizers out of jail into treatment and a lot of them were, again, fully employed and that was 

one of our first approaches is kind of cracking down on some of our biggest issues there. 

Donelan 

12:18 

Your highest utilizer had 355 contacts in one year. That’s almost once a day. 

Kinser 

12:24 

Yeah. And I mean if you look even further, right? I mean we calculated the total number of jail time that 

guy had had in the last 10 years, either served or in lieu of, and then on probation, and, you know, 

exceeded the actual time limit that he was alive during those 10 years, right? So I mean he had like 15 

years of stacked up jail time or something egregious. The officers see that, they know that, right? 

Donelan 

12:49 

And that doesn’t help him. It’s obviously not helping him, it’s not working. It’s not working for the 

officers. It’s not working for the community so for perspective, how much time did you have to invest, 

right? Time, energy, did you have to invest to get to that breaking down the numbers? How did you 

break down those numbers? Because I’m sure there are some who are listening saying, “You know 

what? We need to do the same.” So how did you do that? 

Kinser 

13:11 

I mean working with a record staff, and then also the court system, right? And other partners. So we’ve 

kind of got a unique partnership here in Rapid City that is easy that we probably take for granted that a 
 

 

 

 

lot of people don’t, is we share a joint building with our Sheriff’s Office, have integrated records, 

command staffs, patrols in the basement, their patrol is on the first floor, and the county runs diversion 

programs, care campus, crisis, resources, 24/7 safe bed solutions. 

So we embedded our Quality of Life Unit, two officers, and two civilians, social workers, at that care 

campus where that they were meeting with our quality of life high utilizers, we call them, and those 

individuals were tagged in all of our systems with a queue so that officers knew that they were dealing 

with a quality of life candidate. And then, also if those individuals were going to the care campus for 

detox, right? They were meeting with the Quality of Life Unit before they got released. 

So I mean it was very intentional but then also this collaborative approach to working on these high 

utilizers, right? Because eventually that constant communication, you’re going to be able to make some 

kind of difference and say, “Hey, how does it work?” But then I mean we also empowered these two 

officers to work with the court system to talk to judges, to talk to prosecutors, to talk to public 

defenders and, you know, they’ve actually negotiated treatment options where these people were given 

the option to go to treatment and get out of jail early. And some of these people had life-changing 

transformations. I mean, but selfishly, we don’t have 300 calls for service a year and you start taking 

those down and that adds up. 

Donelan 

14:53 

Absolutely. Okay. Let me stop right here and revisit the Quality of Life Unit. You’ve mentioned that 

several times. What is the Quality of Life Unit? 

Kinser 

15:01 

So that is two officers who are plain clothed just work with our homeless population and they’re colocated with our crisis services and our homeless services and our detox facility and the health and 

human service counselors. The IACP actually helped us start that unit through a grant called the 

Collective Healing Initiative and that was kind of where we kind of developed a lot of our proactive 

programming to where we are now, because we thought we wanted to focus on our most vulnerable, 

and then also our highest utilizers, right? And then, kind of work towards, well, how do we prevent this? 

And then, how do we actually operationalize this in the community? 

Donelan 

15:43 

That’s amazing. And you utilized grant funding to your benefit in several different ways. So you just 

mentioned the grant through IACP, but you also utilized I understand a Department of Justice COPS 

grant, correct? 

Kinser 

15:59 

Yes. We’ve used a lot of COPS grants and are very appreciative to them. 
 

 

 

Donelan 

16:04 

What is the grant that you partnered with Fire Department? 

Kinser 

16:06 

That is the COPS CIT grant, the microgrant. 

Donelan 

16:11 

What is the COPS CIT grant stand for? 

Kinser 

16:13 

The Crisis Intervention Training grant. It’s about collaborative co-response and crisis solutions. 

Donelan 

16:19 

How did you set that up with your Fire Department? 

Kinser 

16:20 

We bullied them a little bit. No. I’m joking, but, no, we said, “Hey...” We talked about our high utilizers 

once again, right? And said, “What are your numbers?” And then they ran the numbers, right? So we’re 

trying to get political and social support for this and I believe that they were having 1.5 million in 

unbilled EMS services a year. So I mean that’s like 30 officers or firefighters right there, right? 

So we kind of took the business approach to all this, right? And the practical because people care about 

funding, right? And if you’re trying to get new programs funded they cost money, but where’s that 

money coming from? So through that IACP Collective Healing Grant, we knew we wanted street 

outreach and different programs that are actually, you know, once again working on our officer fatigue 

and burnout, right? Because if officers aren’t having respond to those low-level calls, they’re not having 

that fatigue and all that stuff associated to those reoccurring calls that they didn’t like and were not 

obviously best responded to by a police officer. And Fire jumped on board. You know, always had a 

great relationship besides the jokes, you know, back and forth. 

Donelan 

17:23 

Yeah. 

Kinser 

17:23 

So I actually applied with a fire science degree here so that was kind of embarrassing. 
 

Donelan 

17:28 

[Laughs] I can hear it all. So you utilize grants, 60 percent of your calls were in response to basically the 

homelessness crisis and working with those high utilizers, identifying them, getting them the help that 

they actually need, you mentioned that there were some transformational stories among those high 

utilizers. Can you tell us about one of them? 

Kinser 

17:46 

Yeah. I can sanitize it out. So like I said one of those high utilizers had a brother who used up as much 

resources as he did and the Quality of Life Unit, actually got him out of jail and into treatment and I 

believe he was sober and clean and employed for 12 months before he moved out of the community. 

And I mean that was huge because everybody knew his name, right? Every fire, EMS, police officer, 

social worker in the health field and able to share that, right? 

And that was part of our successes. Officers were really skeptical about us taking two of their numbers 

and turning them into a Homeless Outreach Unit, right? So I mean it was all about not only sharing those 

internally but externally. And then saying, “Hey, what are the next steps?” Well, you know, like I talked 

about that business perspective and that was just a part of it. 

I mean fast-forward now, we’re partnered with Journey On, which is a community organization that we 

help to set up to respond to low level calls for service and help us with our co-occurring crisis and 

substance abuse. They, I believe now have 10 outreach workers, supervisors, and they’re handling, I 

think they handled 10,000 calls the first year they were in operation. 

So I mean that was kind of from there to now and I mean I could talk about this all day, but I don’t want 

to keep my soap box out, because I think a lot of our other recruitment stuff is kind of what pay 

dividends. 

Donelan 

19:13 

And we’re going to get to that and I promise you, I think that there are people who could listen to you all 

day, because they are grappling with the same issues on their home front. So it sounds like to me, you 

stopped accepting the status quo. It’s no longer, “Well, it is what it is. We’ve got 60 percent 

homelessness calls.” And you got creative, and then you found the funding, and you got that buy-in. I 

don’t mean to oversimplify it, but if there’s a will there’s a way it sounds like? 

Kinser 

19:36 

Yeah. I mean and I think a lot of it just boiled down to like the chiefs putting in the time explaining stuff 

with not only the troops, but the community and the community leadership over at council and the 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mayor’s Office. It really helped our mayor was the prior chief of police so he really understood the issues 

and embraced the community policing aspects and was a big champion of going after and doing these 

proactive solutions. 

Donelan 

20:03 

Thanks, Dave. So that obviously helps with morale for your existing officers in terms of the calls that 

they’re running. In terms of attracting and keeping, but attracting new candidates and keeping officers 

who you have in your rank and file, talk to me about the better pay and the time off because that’s not 

just we’re going to get more money. You got real about attacking those particular concerns that officers 

had raised. 

Sitts 

20:27 

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it’s important to note it has to be a command philosophy. We have a 

saying around here that you have to be able to take care of yourself before you can take care of others 

and that’s physically, mentally, and financially. If an officer is not in the right frame of mind, we can’t 

expect them to go out and care for our community because when they have other problems on their 

plate, they’re not going to provide that level of customer service that our citizens need. 

And I think when we have officers not out there in the right frame of mind, again, whether that’s 

physically, mentally, financially, they’re going to make mistakes and that’s when our profession ends up 

on the front page of the news and we have protests. So we start with that philosophy and we really 

looked at what we are doing in some of the practices. 

And since then, we’ve given our sergeants permission and if an officer is not in the right frame of mind 

to be out serving our public, they have permission to send them home and paid and let them do what 

they need to do. And then, come back when you’re ready and you’re in the right frame of mind to serve 

our community. So I think with that philosophy, we really started looking at what can we offer our 

employees that coincides with this model that you have to be able to take care of yourself. So we really 

focus a lot of our incentives on financial wellness, physical wellness, and emotional and mental wellness. 

Donelan 

21:35 

Let’s start off with the first one you mentioned, financial wellness and that time off. What did you do 

there? 

Sitts 

21:40 

We did a study what other officers, other departments are making and we were able to justify this by 

our call for service volume, being that we are one of the highest call for service departments here, 

basically, in the Midwest region. So we looked at that, looked at what others are making and we were 

able to make a pretty good argument that our officers needed to be paid as such. 
 

 

 

So, back in 2020, we were starting off at 22.82, and since then we’ve increased our wages to a little over 

32 percent and our officers are now starting off at 30.17 and we’re committed to staying one of the 

highest paid agencies in the state of South Dakota. 

Donelan 

22:14 

Excellent. And then, the time off. There are those who are like, “Hey, listen, I don’t want overtime. I 

need to take a minute. I’ve got to take a knee.” What did you do there with the personal time off? 

Sitts 

22:24 

Yeah. That’s generational preferences. The generation that we’re hiring now is very interested in the 

time off, that the time spent with their family and friends and doing hobbies and not like when I came to 

work, you can throw me all the overtime you want, I’m going to eat it up, but times have changed. Time 

off ranked very, very high in our employee surveys, and so we looked at that. 

And one of the issues we notice when we hire new employees, they start off with a zero sick leave 

balance or a zero vacation balance and what happens if you have that family emergency or you need to 

take some days off, they don’t have that balance there. So we implemented right off the bat, we’re 

going to give you 40 hours of vacation, and we’re going to give you three days of sick leave, day one 

through the door, to kind of take off that stress of not being able to take some time off. 

What we were seeing is if employee had a family emergency or medical emergency, really what it was is 

all the other employees in the department would donate vacation and donate time to them. So we just 

adjusted that and make sure they have that peace of mind that they do have some time off and some 

vacation right away. So that was one thing we did, add some more time, and another thing we did is we 

increased the rate of what you, your accrual vacation. 

So prior to you had to be at the Rapid City Police Department or with the city here for 13 years, and 

once you hit that 13-year mark, you start earning four weeks of vacation a year. So what we did was we 

bumped all that down. So now you max out your vacation accrual at seven years and there was three 

steps before you max out. So we bumped all that down, we cut it down, so our employees are earning 

more vacation a lot sooner. 

Donelan 

23:52 

80 hours of sabbatical leave at year three? 

Sitts 

23:54 

Yes. We did implement sabbatical leave. If you would have asked me five years ago about sabbatical 

leave, I probably would have laughed you out of the room, but, yeah. We’ve implemented sabbatical 

leave. So we know that the first three years in law enforcement, you’re drinking out a fire hose. You’re 
 

 

 

 

 

going through a lot of training, it’s a lot to take in, and really that first three years, you need a break. So 

we’re going to give you that break. We’re going to give you 80 hours of sabbatical leave. It’s not going to 

come out of your vacation balances. And then, we’re going to give that to you again every four years 

after that. 

Donelan 

24:23 

That is huge. Previously unheard of, now I can see where people want to sign up with you. You have one 

quarterly paid wellness day, talk about that. What is that? 

Sitts 

24:33 

Yeah. So each quarter an employee can take a wellness day. This is not a free day off where you can sit 

at home, we are going to ask that you do a wellness activity and we’ve contracted with several local 

providers you can go in for, you know, if it’s deep float cryo, massage therapy, red light therapy, several 

different types of therapies. You can go in there, you can spend an hour doing that therapy, you don’t 

need to take a vacation day. The city’s going to pay. We pay for that activity. And then, you can have the 

rest of the day to focus on yourself. 

Kinser 

25:02 

One thing to add to that, so this is not just the day, this is taken off your schedule. So this is one of your 

normal scheduled shifts so you replace one of your days you’re going to be working with this, and the 

only requirement is you have a one-hour meeting with the peer support team and talk about wellness 

and health. 

Donelan 

25:21 

And in real world scenarios in many departments, you have to come in on your off time to do activities 

like this. Giving them the time during their shift, that seems pretty key to me. 

Sitts 

25:33 

I agree. Again, it helps prevent that burnout. And again, one of those therapy sessions is meant for your 

physical or mental wellness and it’s been met with a huge success. You know, we were worried about... 

It’s a fine balance, because at the time when we implemented this, we’re struggling with numbers 

already, but if we don’t implement this we’re going to continue to struggle with numbers in the future. 

So we kind of have to suck it up when people are off on their sabbaticals or off on their wellness days 

with those low shift numbers and may offer those overtime to fill that shift until we get caught up. 
 

 

 

 

Donelan 

26:01 

I just was about to ask you. Like how can you stand having... You know, because that’s a lot of hours 

added up when you start talking about your full force and people having access to those opportunities, 

how has it been? You’ve been using overtime, are you managing? 

Sitts 

26:13 

We are managing. And again, at the beginning it might have been a little bit tricky, our sergeants, and 

our supervisor did a great job balancing the schedule. It have the least amount of impact, but as our 

hiring increase—and I forgot to mention that—our hiring comparison from 2022 to 2023, we’re up 87.5 

percent. So getting these extra bodies in, getting these extra individuals trained and getting them out on 

the street, it definitely has lessened that burden. And right now our sergeants, we just polled our 

sergeants and interviewed them about wellness days and sabbatical leaves and our sergeants are all on 

board and want the program to continue. 

Donelan 

26:46 

That’s amazing. And I’m glad to hear that you sort of walk the walk and you managed through the 

beginning of it and it seems to me that things have settled a bit. That’s great news for those who might 

be thinking about implementing some of these initiatives. Not to downplay them, but you also have a 

250 student loan repayment monthly and no co-pay for therapy and counseling? 

Sitts 

27:07 

Correct. Yes. Again, important to us where we’re talking about that physical and mental wellness. So we 

have some great benefits already through the city. Right now therapy is 100 percent covered, except for 

the co-pay part and we have a $30 co-pay. So we’re going to take care of that $30 co-pay. If people need 

to talk to someone, we encourage that. We’re trying to erase that stigma, and it’s also been a great 

benefit and it’s been taken advantage of probably more than we would have guessed initially. 

Kinser 

27:34 

I just wanted to put a cautionary tale out there when people are implementing all these things, right? 

And a lot of the effort and intentions goes towards attracting new candidates, right? But you got to take 

care of the people that have stuck with you and are still here, right? So I mean if you don’t retroactively 

give people sabbaticals that have put in the time and effort and only focus on the new hires, you’re 

definitely going to have unintended consequences with these types of programming. 
 

Sitts 

28:00 

And I’ll piggyback on that, that was one thing we contemplated was a hiring bonus, but I was really dead 

set not to have a hiring bonus. I think we have to reward those employees that have been here, those 

employees that stuck it out. And so, instead of a hiring bonus, we give employees a $3,000 recruitment 

bonus if they referred an individual that gets hired on at the police department. 

Donelan 

28:21 

That’s creative and I have not heard of that before. Thank you for bringing that to light. So you have all 

these amazing tools now at your disposal to help the officers who you currently have employed and to 

attract new candidates. Let’s talk about that hiring process. You just gave us a figure between 2022 and 

2023 in terms of your hiring, how has that landscape shifted for you? 

Sitts 

28:43 

Well, thanks to the COPS Grant, we were able to hire a recruiter, a professional recruiter who has done 

an absolutely amazing job with our social media. We’ve partnered with a marketer here in town and 

really have hit the internet and she has done an absolute fabulous job in getting new bodies in here and 

we’ve turned over a lot of our hiring process to her, which has freed up supervisors and other officers 

from doing the hiring in the past. 

So out traditional, going to job fairs at colleges, doing all that advertisement and, but again, I think a lot 

of this circles back, and if I look at a lot of the classes we’ve hired here this year, our staff is our best 

recruiter. Our employees getting word out, our employees talking positive about the Rapid City Police 

Department, telling their friends, telling their family, they are our best recruiters and we’ve paid a lot of 

$3,000 recruitment bonuses this year. 

Donelan 

29:36 

That’s awesome. You got me thinking here. South Dakota might be cold but I can handle it. In terms of 

the type of candidate you’re going after, has that changed as well? And if so, how are you reaching 

them? 

Kinser 

29:48 

Yeah. I can talk to this a little bit. So I wanted to kind of circle back to like the recruitment process itself, 

right? So back in the day, we were getting 150 applications, right? And that dramatically shifted to about 

30 where you were actually telling people you’re on a list for the next year, we might call you, right? 

Now we’re in a super hyperactive and competitive market, and one of the big things too is we were 

having a training sergeant doing all our recruitment and balancing our training load. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I mean you were losing that institutional knowledge every three years when that person got 

promoted or retired or moved on, right? So that was kind of the focus why we turned to the COPS Grant 

to say, “Hey, look, we are looking at...” Not a lot of agencies that have a full-time recruiter at our size, 

which is I think we’re at like 140 sworn right now. 

We said, “Hey, we really need to professionalize this and also we’re looking at doing some different 

things for our recruiting campaign specifically looking after, going after our military veterans.” I believe 

we’re over 60 percent veteran staff, something high like that. And a lot of those candidates are pretty 

resilient from their time in the military, have more life experience and more, you know, they’re a little 

bit older than your traditional college candidate. 

Our design was to go after that military SkillBridge program, and if departments aren’t using that, they 

should. Basically, in a nutshell real quick is that program, you find somebody that’s transitioning out of 

the military, it allows that military member to come be duty assigned while they’re still in the military to 

you as an unpaid intern. So the military pays their pay and benefits for six months, while you’re putting 

them through the academy in that PTO phase. 

And that’s usually when people say, “Hey, I want to be a cop or I don’t,” right? And so, as a department, 

we were spending like 50 grand to train people, and if you can get that military SkillBridge program 

active, the military still pays them their pay and benefits and you’re just training them to be an officer. 

And when they get out of that military diamond service, you just offer them a job. And then, they come 

onto your payroll at that time. I mean that’s a really cool program. 

Donelan 

31:51 

That is so cool. You are training officers on someone else’s dime, getting them exposed during that time 

when you can lose officers so you’re getting them exposed. They can make that decision as to whether 

or not this is the career for them. And then, by the time they come out, not only have they been trained 

on someone else’s dime but they’ve also had that time to digest what it really means to be a police 

officer, and they come in confident, if they say, “Yes. This is what I want to do,” or they walk away from 

it. And that sounds amazing. 

Kinser 

32:21 

Yeah. And like I said, we wouldn’t have been able to run with a program the way we have in our 

recruitment program if we didn’t propose an innovative idea to COPS to say, “Hey, look, we want to try 

a different recruiting strategy. We’re a mid-level, small agency in rural South Dakota, we want to try and 

target this surrounding six states, look at the military installations and also these technical schools.”

And really intentionally focusing on that, right? Especially those schools that have academies, so we’re 

getting reciprocity eligible officers that were not having to put through the academy, right? And that’s 

three months of training where you’re going to house and pay for somebody. So I mean there was a lot 
 

 

 

of really intentional design behind our outreach and recruitment and focusing on our target areas, these 

vocational and colleges with law enforcement programs that specifically do reciprocity eligible hiring. 

Sitts 

33:12 

I’ll just say in addition, you know, I think all departments would appreciate the diversity of their 

department to mimic the diversity of their community. So we’ve launched an Empower Her campaign to 

attract female candidates and we’ve also been to and visited a few times some united tribal technical 

colleges, again, to promote diversity within the police department. 

Donelan 

33:31 

It’s been proven that if your department reflects a community, you’re going to have a more effective 

policing that community. So that’s phenomenal. Virtually every single law enforcement agency in 

America is trying to recruit officers. And so, it’s extremely competitive. I mean when you’ve got South 

Dakota, and then you’ve got police departments in Florida who they’re like, “Hey, come enjoy the sun 

and the beach.” Has it been that focus on going after these military members, like what has set Rapid 

City apart from the rest? 

Sitts 

33:59 

Yeah. I think if you’ve ever been to Rapid City, we’re at the heart of the Black Hills here in South Dakota. 

It’s a beautiful area. A lot of the people and candidates we attract are into the outdoors and hiking and 

hunting and fishing and we’ve been getting a lot of applicants from the East Coast and the West Coast 

that come to the area and fall in love. 

We are 16 miles from Mount Rushmore so it’s a large tourist area during the summer and a lot of our 

applicants that will come back and say, “I was here for the summer. I fell in love with the area. I want to 

come back.” Obviously, they weren’t here during the winter, but the winters aren’t too bad so—

Donelan 

34:31 

I’ve been there during the winter. 

Sitts 

34:34 

You get used to it. 

Donelan 

34:34 

I think I cried one day. I was so cold. [Laughs] 
 

 

 

 

Sitts 

34:38 

So, yeah. I think we’re just kind of unique in that area. A lot of South Dakota when you get across the 

river or you start heading east of us, it’s real flat and it’s farmland, but that’s not the area where we are 

at. And again, it’s a great area. Five and a half hours from Denver, Minneapolis isn’t too bad for a drive. 

So we’re rural but we’re in a great location for that kind of lifestyle that we’re a little bit more laid-back 

lifestyle with hunting and fishing and tourism being our main attractions. 

Donelan 

35:03 

I’m packing my bags now. And my snowsuit just so you know. Before we let you go, before we close. 

Looking back on... I mean there’s just so much that you’ve done, right? It’s almost hard to digest, but 

looking back on trials and tribulations and the journey, if there was anything that you would look back 

on and say, “Hey, you know what? I could save people a lot of pain now that I know what I know.” Are 

there any lessons learned that you think are valuable for our listeners? 

Sitts 

35:29 

I think one of the biggest lessons learned is this package we have forward is not what we initially 

designed or what we had presented, so to save yourself a lot of time if you’re looking at implementing 

this stuff, and I hear a lot of, “Well, we can’t do that because of the government red tape.” My biggest 

set of advice would be to get with your city leadership, include city council president, and that finance 

director, the HR director, and the city attorney in on those initial meetings and you can really figure out 

what you can do and what you can’t do. 

And a lot of the stuff when we’re talking about increasing the time off, or sabbatical leave, that really 

doesn’t cost anything out of our budget. Those were easy wins for us, so get that city leadership on 

board, do the research, define the need, and the cost savings, because really, if I can just hit that real 

quick. So right now, if I’d had to replace 12 officers this year, if I’m just talking salary alone and benefits, 

not training, it’s going to cost me somewhere between $652,000 to $870,000 just to pay those officers 

their salary until they can work independently. And that’s not including all the cost of training and 

everything like that. So we’ve projected this year, another benefit we offered is a longevity bonus. 

So after a longevity bonus payout, the first nine months of this wellness package is going to cost 

approximately $493,000. If I had to replace those 12 officers, I’m still saving nearly $300,000 and you 

can’t even put a price tag on the productivity, and then the efficiency and the institutional knowledge 

that walks out that door, right? We know that with experienced officers, we generate less use of force, 

right? We generate less complaints. There’s less complaints to investigate, there’s less use of force, 

which equals less lawsuits. So keeping these experienced individuals inside of our department and 

serving our community, that $300,000 is nothing compared to everything else those experienced people 

bring. 
 

 

Donelan 

37:18 

Dave, any lessons learned for you? 

Kinser 

37:20 

Yeah. I mean I think everything boils down to, in government, right, your political and social capital, 

right? I mean every program we do, we have it lined out, like here’s our expectations, here’s what we 

think is going to happen, but I mean also like from the high utilizers to the different like longevity 

bonuses and that, have the numbers, have them ready, involve that leadership like the chief said. I wish 

we had Chief Hedrick on here to talk about how many hours and hours and hours he politicked all of 

this, really the champion behind the scenes and meeting with the council members and the mayor and 

the finance director and HR to get all this pushed through. But everything we did, I mean Scott and I 

probably wrote a 100 different memos and backed it all up with research and I mean just come correct 

and have your stuff ready and show the real tangible value in these programs, because like he was 

talking about, if you would have brought up sabbatical leave 10 years ago, everybody would have just 

snickered at it. 

But I mean we were working with the COPS Office and IACP and we’re looking into sabbatical and the 

only place I could find it was this small, I think 10-person agency in Wisconsin. I called the chief, had a 

real great conversation with him, and said, “Hey, can I get your policy and any documents you got?” And 

said, “You know, what’s really stopping us from doing this?” We had that conversation. Sure shifts are 

going to be low but, it’s just making that investment. 

Now that we’re all through the first phase of sabbatical, it’s super easy because it’s just for those first 

three years. And then, it’s cumulative every four years after that throughout their career. 

Sitts 

38:54 

And to piggyback on that, I think you might find this a little eye-opening also, but doing that research 

and visiting with city leadership and visiting with city council prior to, when this went to council, when 

this whole wellness package went to council for approval, it went on consent with no questions. We 

were prepared to give a presentation on why this is needed, no questions asked on consent and it was 

amazing. Not only that, we probably had 30 officers that attended that city council meeting, so those 

officers like with their presence, made it known that this is important to them. 

And what I’m not talking about here is also how our morale has increased, which I think you can see 

through the 55 percent decrease in attrition. 

Donelan 

39:34 

And that’s the most important thing, right? It’s how are your officers feeling? I mean they are going out 

there and putting their lives on the line and I know we say that all the time, but facts are facts and that 
 

 

 

 

takes a lot out of a human being day in day out, seeing the things that they see, the pressure that 

they’re up against day in day out, and to be able to actually do something about that, put the 

recruitment and retention aside, just to be able to do that for your officers is massive. 

Two of the things that struck me most about your journey: A, it’s just changing your thinking, it sounds 

like. It’s that laughing off sabbatical leave and accepting it as a real possible option for you. It’s getting 

creative and breaking the mold and doing things that you’ve never done before that might feel 

uncomfortable at first seems like to me, and you guys can say, “No. That’s not what it was.” But it just 

sounds like a lot of it is just the mental game. You got to just break free of past and get creative about 

the future. 

Kinser 

40:26 

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it’s a different world than 10 years ago. I mean trying to get overtime shifts 

staffed this day and age is really hard because this generation of officers wants to use their time off. 

Donelan 

40:39 

Yeah. They do. And I think the pandemic too had a lot to play with that, right? We all know time is 

limited, but wow, that really I think shook a lot of people and it re-engaged folks on what’s really 

important in life, et cetera. So I’m not surprised to see that generational change of people wanting that 

time off versus money in their wallet. 

The other thing that you’ve talked about so much throughout this time with us is the research and stats. 

And correct me if I’m wrong, it doesn’t sound like you can downplay that at all. I mean you had the 

information to back up what you wanted to do and just like you described that one council, I mean you 

didn’t even have to make the presentation. There was no real arguments there. You had the data, you 

backed it up, and change happened. 

Sitts 

41:17 

Yeah. Absolutely. I think that was definitely key and I think it’s important for us in law enforcement to 

remember is we’re competing with private organizations and private businesses. So this is the stuff that 

these private organizations and businesses are doing and this is what we’re competing with. So we have 

to adapt to the times, we have to adapt to the new generational preferences and expectations. 

And again, that was one of the common trends that we noticed in 2020 throughout 2022 was people 

were completely leaving the profession of law enforcement and going into these private organizations 

that do offer these benefits. So if we’re going to remain competitive and we’re going to attract quality 

employees, these are the type of efforts that we’re going to have to make and we’re going to have to 

stay proactive moving forward. We can’t call this good enough, we got to continue to constantly 

evaluate and be prepared to adjust and remain competitive. 
 

 

 

 

Kinser 

42:01 

Yeah. I think one thing too, that we kind of didn’t really go in depth about was our peer support team 

and the design of that. 

Donelan 

42:08 

Tell us more. 

Kinser 

42:10 

Our peer support team really took off in 20—I believe it was like 2017, 2018—where we took an 

intentional look at how we’re doing our critical incident stress debriefings and our overall just wellness 

and concern in our patrol and with our officers, because they see a lot of stuff, that cumulative trauma, 

that compassion fatigue, and like the assistant chief was talking about, if you’re not in that right 

mindset, you can’t go out there and really help out anybody else. 

So we took a look at our peer support team, part of that collective healing initiative was officer wellness 

and resiliency and we took the initial steps. Got a 12-person peer support team trained. The assistant 

chief was on that team, we had commanders, we had some line-level supervisors, but most importantly 

we had the informal peer leaders, right? Because they set the culture and really know the pulse of the 

agency. But I mean that intentional design from every element of the department and civilian staff, 

taking care of our people and pulling people aside, having those conversations like, “Hey...” You know, 

but then working with them now, just having supervisors with the ability to say, “Hey, maybe you should 

take a wellness day, right?” But I mean that’s different thinking. 

And with the COPS Office, we applied for Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act grant, and 

got a full-time wellness coordinator to kind of support that peer support team, right? Because as we 

know our officers that have these ancillary duties usually have four or five, right? So we wanted to make 

it as easy as possible on them, but also bring some different aspects to that. 

Our peer support team is thriving, they’re involved in a lot of our wellness activities like our quarterly 

wellness days talking, you know, doing those critical stress debriefs. So I mean I think it’s really pivotal 

that you have a dedicated team, but then also the culture that supports it, right? Because if you’re not 

supported or taking action when there are people having issues, another thing that like we didn’t talk 

about is everybody knows when there’s a really big issue, right? Or something happened, legally, you 

didn’t say anything, but everybody knows if an officer is struggling and we’ve really taken really good 

care of our officers. 

We’ve had some go to treatment, quite frankly, and other things and they felt supported or they were 

having issues and pulled them out of their role and supported, right? But then that also talked about like 

going in and working with the families, right? Because it’s easy enough for an officer to skate by at work, 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

but if you let the spouse know that you’re going to take care of their spouse if something’s going on and 

their livelihood is not going to be affected because they’re out of a job, but I mean that’s a lot of 

unforeseen aspects is making a safe and... environment that takes care of people. 

Donelan 

44:49 

And the fact that you guys have seen results so quickly, right? I heard you, chief, when you said we’re 

not going to sit idle, we’re not taking any of this for granted, we’re going to keep thinking proactively, 

but the fact that what you’ve done so far, which is a lot, but the fact that you’re seeing results so 

quickly, the fact that you changed culture so quickly. I mean changing culture is like turning a freight 

liner around in a canal, and that you’re seeing that, that to me is just real proof that this is positive 

change. 

Sitts 

45:17 

Yeah. I agree. That culture change has to, you know, all cultural changes they need to start from the top 

down, and you can’t forget those police training officers. They play such a pivotal role in that culture 

change. The days of training someone and going to a very critical incident or scene and looking over and 

telling the new hire officer like, “Suck it up. We’re going to get 10 more of those this month.” Those days 

are over, you know? 

Stopping and acknowledging that happened, that sucked, we shouldn’t have had to witness that, but we 

got some support for it. So getting your police training officers on board and making sure those 

sergeants and everyone up else in that leadership is on board with this new philosophy that, you know, 

the Rapid City Police Department and I think all law enforcement, when we go through extraordinary 

steps to make sure we’re hiring the right candidate and they’re a good fit and they’re not broken, but 

this profession does a great job of breaking them. So we need to make sure we put them back together 

again. 

Kinser 

46:07 

And I mean that’s something too, I mean like I said everybody knows when something’s going on and if 

they see command staff really bending over backwards, investing the time and effort and even if that 

person does leave on their own volution. It’s pretty public. Actions speak a lot louder than words in 

those aspects. 

Donelan 

46:25 

And you guys are certainly stepping up. You’re not just talking about it, you’re doing it, and they see that 

and that’s clear. So just like you called that one 10-person police department and asked them about 

sabbatical leave, I know that we have people who are listening who would love to make contact with 
 

 

you, why reinvent the wheel if someone’s already done it, right? And if you guys are doing it and it’s 

working, why not spread the love? So how can people get in touch with you if they’d like to talk more 

about any one of the several programs that you’ve launched? 

Sitts 

46:52 

Yeah. Anyone interested, feel free to email me at scott.sitts@rcgov.org. S-C-O-T-T-dot-S-I-T-T-S-at-R-CG-O-V-dot-org. 

Kinser 

47:06 

And if you’ve got some of the funding aspects or a grant person, you can reach out to me, 

dave.kinser@rcgov.org. That’s Dave, D-A-V-E-dot-Kinser, K-I-N-S-E-R-at-R-C-G-O-V-dot-O-R-G. Also, if 

you don’t get these emails, just call the PD and ask for me or Scott. 

Sitts 

47:28 

605-394-4133. 

Donelan 

47:33 

Well, I have a feeling your emails and your phones are going to be blowing up. 

Sitts 

47:36 

Hey, we welcome it. 

Kinser 

47:36 

I’m going to take a sabbatical. [Laughing] 

Donelan 

47:37 

I’m about to take a sabbatical. I cannot thank you guys so much for spending time with us and for being 

so open and honest and sharing this wealth of knowledge with our listeners here on The Beat. I wish you 

the best of luck. I’m not sure how much you’re going to need because it sounds like you are rolling along 

there. Thank you so much for joining us here on The Beat. 

Sitts 

47:59 

Hey, it was great visiting with you. Thank you very much. 
Donelan 

48:01 

Absolutely. Alright, you guys take care and thank you everyone for joining us here on The Beat. 

Voiceover The Beat Exit 

48:07 

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Disclaimer 

49:05 

The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 

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products or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of 

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