Tyson showdown one part of retiring Iowa sheriff's career
Tony Thompson headed Black Hawk County Sheriff's office 16 of his 31 years there
CEDAR FALLS — Tony Thompson was supposed to be catching bad guys. Not taking on the nation’s largest meatpacker.
But that’s exactly where the multi-term Black Hawk County sheriff found himself four years ago as he and others sounded the alarm on a coronavirus outbreak at the Tyson Fresh Meats plant in Waterloo amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thompson found himself being quoted in The New York Times and interviewed on national news cable network talk shows. There was even talk of him running for governor of Iowa.
It’s not the position Thompson expected to find himself in when he was a kid from Winterset attending the University of Northern Iowa and aspiring to follow the family footsteps in a career in law enforcement.
“My dad was an MP (military police), so for a while I thought that made some sense,” Thompson said. He joined the U.S. Army in 1988, served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and became a Black Hawk County sheriff’s deputy in March 1994.
That was more than 30 years ago. Now he’s at the end of his career with the Sheriff’s Office. He’s served 16 of those years as sheriff and did not seek re-election this past fall.
“My undergraduate degree was in communication studies,” Thompson said. “It served me well, that undergraduate degree. being able to represent myself and be a little fleet-footed when the time came to address something bad.”
He didn’t dream that would include taking on Tyson Foods after the deadly coronavirus outbreak at its Waterloo pork plant.
In April 2020, as part of a county emergency response team combating the pandemic, he was one of 19 county officials who called for the company to pause production until improvements were made. He said “more could and should have been done” to protect workers. He was also critical of the state’s response.
After lawsuits was filed by the estates of several deceased workers, Thompson called the company’s response to the outbreak “corporate greed at its finest.” In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, Thompson called the company’s response, “inept, reactionary and dysfunctional.” At that point, Thompson said, there were more than 1,300 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 in the county, 90 percent of which could be traceable to Tyson.
Thompson said he went to the national media after company board chairman John Tyson took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in April 2021 expressing concerns over supply chain disruptions from plant closures at Waterloo and elsewhere, citing Tyson’s responsibility to feed the nation.
Production was halted for a month so cases could be documented and improvements made. In August 2021, Tyson announced it was requiring all its employees to be vaccinated, including the 3,200 in Waterloo. By November more than 60,500 of the company’s workers had been vaccinated according to The New York Times. In December 2021, the company fired seven Waterloo plant managers following an independent investigation into allegations that, earlier that year, they bet on how many plant workers would get sick from the virus. Company officials expressed regret to Thompson and Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart over allegations in the civil suits.
“There are so many people who died here in Black Hawk County out of sheer politics and ignorance,” Thompson said. “I stepped up and I spoke out. But I did so because it was the right thing to do. Not because I was trying to make some kind of political statement. I was trying to save the lives of my citizens.
“What became painful for me was when it got into our nursing homes,” he added. “People started dying because their nurse, their care provider was married to a Tyson worker.”
Whether it’s responding to a public health emergency, or an officer on the street responding to a call for service, law enforcement responsibilities, and techniques have changed significantly since Thompson put on a badge more than three decades ago.
“When I was hired you wanted those guys that can fight, you wanted those guys who were tough and could stand it,” Thompson said. “Now it’s people that can talk, that can think their way through a problem, work their way through a problem — diversion, and defuse a problem. Use your brains over your brawn.”
The showdown with Tyson isn’t the only thing Thompson wants to be remembered for. He’s raised considerable awareness of the importance of mental health treatment in uplifting people and breaking the cycle of incarceration. He’s even authored a book on the subject — “Anyplace But Here: The Uncomfortable Convergence Between Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System,” and is a frequent public speaker on the subject. He holds a master’s degree in criminal justice public administration from Liberty University.
Thompson indicated it’s just more challenging to be a cop these days, using drug interdiction as an example.
”I just don’t know how you do what my partners and I used to do to find drugs,” Thompson said. “All these court cases are so liberal, and have come around to where the rules are so tilted toward the bad guy, it just makes it really, really challenging to do good, hard police work.”
Not unlike some of his predecessors, he’s also occasionally butted heads with the county Board of Supervisors, who hold the county purse strings, on a lack of progress on some matters.
“In an era of dwindling budgets, and higher expectations from our citizenry, there’s going to be more and more challenges that just require better teamwork and better transparency and better engagement,” he said. “Kind of that ‘all-hands-on-deck’ kind of mentality. My prayer is that the current and incoming board sees that, and that the county is in great position to be able to move beyond the pettiness of personal opinion and just see the greater good or the larger picture.”
But he and other law local law enforcement agencies, with budgetary support from elected officials, have been able to cooperate and make technological advances in their communications and record-sharing capabilities — which Thompson said are critical in public safety response to crimes, accidents and other incidents. They also were recognized locally for their measured approach between public safety and civil liberties in being a presence during local protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in late May 2020.
”I don’t know that anybody looked George Floyd’s video and said that’s okay, sitting there with your knee on his neck for however long that was. There was no good honest cop who said ‘that looked okay to me,’“ Thompson said. “Folks that want to express their First Amendment rights, and do so respectfully, they should be able to do that safely,” as opposed to those who would “pillage and burn.”
The key, he said is to treat everyone with respect no matter their circumstance. He remembers as a young deputy a child sitting on a parent’s hip waiting to visit a family member in the jail. The goal is to change the environment and cycle of how that child will turn out.
“One percent of the population commits 90 percent of the crime. And at the Sheriff’s Office you get very familiar with that 1 percent because you work with them every day,” Thompson said. “You learn very quickly as a young deputy as long as you treat people with dignity and respect, they will treat you the same way. That’s why my staff and I have had a lot of positive results over the years because that’s the way we approach things.
“I was walking to lunch the other day and this gal stopped me on the street and said, ‘Hey, can I give you a hug?’ She said “ ‘Hey, five years clean and sober.’ She said, ‘I’m so proud.’ I said, ‘I’m proud of you too.’ “ The County Jail is “not 272 beds, it’s 272 opportunities to positively impact somebody’s lives,” he said.
He’s had a productive run in law enforcement, not without setbacks, unfinished business and cases yet to be solved. He still yearns for justice for the families of two young Evansdale cousins, Lyric Cook-Morrissey and Elizabeth Collins, abducted and slain in 2012. After going missing that July, their bodies were found in December of that year in a wildlife area in Bremer County about 20 miles away. Thompson said it is still an active case in the hands of capable investigators from multiple agencies.
In retirement, Thompson said he will continue to advocate for mental health and thinks he may have another book in him.
Meanwhile, a family tradition continues. One of Thompson’s sons, Bryce, is an Iowa state trooper and the other, Brady, is a helicopter pilot in the Iowa National Guard.
The sheriff followed in his own father’s footsteps with a combined 21 years’ military service in the Army and Iowa National Guard. Thompson retired from the service in 2009 with two Meritorious Service Medals and four Army Commendation Medals, among other decorations.
As a new grandpa, Thompson says it’s time to start paying back a 30-year debt he owes his family — his sons and wife Janel — for their decades of support.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. They are listed below. Clink on the links to check them out, subscribe for free - and, if you believe in the value of quality journalism, support this column and/or any of theirs with a paid subscription.
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Pat, this is an excellent profile of an outstanding public servant. Wow, Sheriff Thompson served in turbulent times, and from what I know, served with courage, compassion and vision. His record is one of truly working for the people. Sounds like he might have been equally as effective in higher office. The people of Blackhawk County sure had a good one!