Former Sheriff Troy Dunn retired on November 12, leaving a year left on his term, and Thomas was appointed Sheriff by the Rice County Board of Commissioners to fill out that year.
Sheriff Thomas said that most of what he has been doing since taking the helm is focusing on the tasks in front of him. “We’re just trying to get some traction,” he said,” and making sure things are going in the right direction.”
His first order of business was filling out the leadership team. Thomas had been Dunn’s Chief Deputy, so he had to fill the space he had vacated, and that job has gone to Joe Yetzer. Chief Deputy Yetzer is a longtime member of the Sheriff’s Department, most recently serving as a Lieutenant overseeing the patrol division of the department.
Moving up to fill Yetzer’s role is Administrative Sergeant Paul LaRoche. Laroche has been with the Sheriff’s Department since 2008. The newly minted lieutenant is now the former Commander of the Cannon River Drug & Violent Offender Task Force.
Thomas said they have two deputies who are in field training. When they have finished, he said, the sheriff’s department will be fully staffed. The two deputies were selected out of a field of twenty applicants during a hiring process earlier this year. While they are worthy of the job ahead of them, and excellent additions to the Sheriff’s department, Thomas said it’s somewhat alarming that the pool from which they were taken was not bigger.
“We’ve also seen a shortage of people who are interested in going into law enforcement. This last hiring process, we only had twenty people apply for two spots, which is better than what I’ve heard from other bordering counties. But when I first started back in 1996, I applied for a job up in the Metro, and there were 450 applicants for one spot.”
Thomas said as he settles into his new position there will be many tasks at hand, not the least of which will be construction of the new County Jail and Public Safety Center. But for now, he said, the important thing is to simply ensure a seamless transition and keep county law enforcement running smoothly.
“Right now,” he said, “we just need to make sure that everything that needs to get done, gets done.”
