By Andrew Wegley – 07-25-23 – Lincoln Journal Star

Lincoln Police Assistant Chief Michon Morrow speaks during an interview with the Journal Star in March 2022.  JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star file photo

My cmnt: Well it sure looks like the “Good ol’ Girls” club here. First the democrats elect, through basic mail-in ballot harvesting, Leirion Gaylor Baird who hails from Portland, Or., the worst run, most Lib-Left city in the country, who then appoints another Leftist woman, Teresa Ewins who comes here from San Francisco, the second worst democrat-run city in the country, and the first thing the woman Ewins does is appoint another woman, Michon Morrow, to be her asst. police chief. And now the woman Baird immediately appoints another woman, Michon, to be the new acting police chief when the woman Ewins cuts and runs.

My cmnt: None of these women have ever been called upon to break up a bar fight among men or to do any of the really hard work police routinely have to perform in subduing big, strong, angry men – that is without shooting them which is in fact the preferred method much smaller and weaker female police officers employ far more than their male counterparts. You may remember former Nebraska running back Scott Baldwin being shot by two female police officers in Omaha.

My cmnt: And why are we even having this conversation? Because our Left-Lib democrat mayor, who totally mismanaged the 2020 “summer of love” BLM and Antifa riots in downtown Lincoln, just had to appoint the first female, LBGTQwerty, lesbian police chief in Nebraska, who now is forced to resign a mere two years later because of her incompetent mismanagement of everything and wants to move on to a more comfortable, lib-Left city elsewhere.

Ex-Huskers RB Scott Baldwin dies; ’92 shooting paralyzed him

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Scott Baldwin, whose promising career at Nebraska in the early 1990s ended because of injuries and his battles with mental illness, has died.

Baldwin’s family said through the Nebraska athletic department that he died of cardiac arrest Wednesday in New Jersey. He was 45.

Baldwin in January 1992 was charged with felony assault for attacking a Lincoln woman but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Nine months later he was shot during an altercation with Omaha police, with the bullet lodging near his spinal cord and paralyzing him from the chest down.

My cmnt: And why was the insane and dangerous Baldwin free and running amok? Because of Lib-Left democrat policies that run our courts, prisons and mental health institutions. Notice also that even though Baldwin was black and the female police officers were white there were no massive George Floyd-style riots in Nebraska nor the rest of the country.

Baldwin ran for a career-high 170 yards and two touchdowns against Kansas as a sophomore in 1990 but missed most of 1991 because of injuries. Doctors later diagnosed him with manic depression and other mental illnesses.

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Days after former Lincoln Police Chief Teresa Ewins resigned without explanation, her interim replacement stepped into the role Monday with humility — praising the department’s leadership team that she said she will rely on while carefully avoiding negative comment on her predecessor.

Michon Morrow, who has worked at the department since 1995 and was named the agency’s acting chief when Ewins resigned Friday, told reporters that the makeup of the Lincoln Police Department’s command staff is, in part, what made it “an easy decision to step into an acting role.”

“This isn’t an ‘I’ world,” Morrow said at the department’s Monday media briefing at its downtown headquarters. “I understand in our department that everything we do, we do as a team. I frequently like to say that law enforcement is a team sport.

“And because of that support and because of the leadership, I would tell our community members that they’re still in very good hands and we still remain committed to our community policing model,” said Morrow, who was also introduced Monday to the City Council during its director’s meeting, where she received a round of applause. 

Morrow, who previously served as the assistant chief of the management division, said the department’s command staff will be “evaluating decisions that we’ve made and understanding the impact” those decisions have had, referring in part to Ewins’ decision to reduce LPD’s daily media briefings to a three-day-per-week schedule.

But Morrow, who was a captain before Ewins promoted her to assistant chief of staff soon after her arrival in 2021, also insisted that any policy changes or reversals would be made with input from the agency’s entire leadership team — while making clear that she was not casting the former chief in a negative light.

“I want to make sure that all of our communications are open and not siloed within any area of our department,” Morrow said. “(I’m) not suggesting that it has been, just that that is the way I approach leadership and that we want to always be working together.

“I certainly will not ever present myself as knowing everything, and that’s why we make sure that we surround ourselves with excellent leadership.”

Though she was careful not to deride Ewins — whose name Morrow didn’t say amid her brief comments to reporters Monday — her emphasis on collaboration was itself a break from how Ewins’ publicly presented her own leadership style.

Ewins had recently framed several department policies — including LPD’s procedure for the release of bodycam footage and the identification of officers involved in shootings — as decisions that came down to her own discretion. And even in her public statement on her resignation, Ewins referred to the department’s employees as “my officers.”

“Over the past two years, we have made great strides, even amid challenging times for our nation and our community,” Ewins said in the news release from the mayor’s office announcing her resignation Friday.

“And it is you — my colleagues, my officers … my friends — who have done the heavy lifting. I will be stepping down as Chief of this department and moving on. This was not an easy decision, but I have determined it is the best one.”

At a news conference Monday announcing a collaboration between the city’s libraries and the Lied Center for the Performing Arts, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird declined to say whether she asked Ewins to resign last week. 

“This is a personnel matter and I don’t have more details to share at this time about that,” the mayor said.

Ewins had been Gaylor Baird’s pick to lead the LPD in 2021 at the conclusion of a national search following the retirement of Chief Jeff Bliemeister in 2020.

A former San Francisco Police Department commander, Ewins was not only the first woman to head LPD, but also the first LBGTQ person. The mayor’s office said Friday it wasn’t yet sure if it would perform another national search to find Ewins’ permanent replacement at LPD.

Morrow, who served as the Southwest Team captain before her promotion to assistant chief in 2021, laughed Monday when asked if she expected to ultimately be named the department’s next chief.

“I expect to make it through each and every single day with the best of my abilities, and as decisions come, we’ll address them head-on,” she said. “And I would imagine those decisions will always be made with the best intentions for the Lincoln Police Department and the 500-plus people that we serve here and our community.”

Though officials haven’t provided an explanation for Ewins’ resignation, she had been under fire recently for reducing access to the press and had been accused by former police officers of driving them out after they had come forward with allegations of sexual harassment within the department.

Ewins’ commitment to transparency — which was one of the reasons Gaylor Baird said she hired her — has continued to be a central issue, twice spilling into public view in the week before Ewins’ resignation.

Her departure came a week after she announced she would reduce daily press briefings that have been a staple of the department for more than a century and only days after she declined to release bodycam footage from a crash involving a sheriff’s deputy in May.

LPD — and public safety in general — was also a flashpoint in the mayoral race this spring. Gaylor Baird’s challenger Suzanne Geist — and the PAC supporting her — blanketed the city with ads that included cherry-picked statistics saying Lincoln’s crime had skyrocketed under Gaylor Baird’s administration, and that her administration had silenced whistleblowers.

The Lincoln Police Union, which had endorsed hiring Ewins, also endorsed Geist.

Morrow told reporters Monday that she met with union officials upon her appointment Friday but she rejected the notion that “bridges have been burned with our union” after a reporter asked if the meeting was meant to mend LPD’s relationship with the labor group.

“I’m not in a position to suggest that they have or haven’t (been burned),” Morrow said. “I will not speak for the union — the leadership or their members.

“Again, I would just reaffirm that my goal is always to work with our department and all of those that are serving within it. I serve them as much as I serve our community. And that is how we’ll continue to move forward.”

Lincoln Police Chief Teresa Ewins (left) and Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird speak at a news conference to announce the relocation of LPD’s Special Victims Unit to a new space at the BraveBe Child Advocacy Center in northeast Lincoln. KENNETH FERRIERA, Journal Star