Roger Morningstar’s only crime was bad timing.
Well, OK, maybe that’s not entirely true, but who’s to say what is or isn’t a crime in this day and age?
The disgraced former Morton police chief — whose exit was so ignoble that this newspaper has been confidently printing “disgraced” as a qualifier for over a year — was in court last week over charges he used a city credit card to make unauthorized personal purchases.
Morningstar entered Barr and Alford pleas, which is the legal term for claiming you’re innocent but admitting the evidence is so damning no one would ever believe you.
And so ends, for the time being, the saga of one of the most entertainingly inept officers ever to stomp around a Lewis County crime scene — with a whimper, in court, over charges that he used the city credit card to purchase vitamins as part of a multi-level marketing “opportunity.”
I’m sure he regrets everything, especially while watching the news.
Had he not been so disgraced, he could have leveraged his die-hard support for twice-failed U.S. Representative candidate Joe Kent into a spot with Kent’s National Counterterrorism Center, perhaps offering further insight into what Morningstar once claimed was a liberal plot to infiltrate the Lewis County Republican Party to push critical race theory on the unsuspecting conservatives.
Morningstar would have been in hog heaven carrying a badge and gun and barking into a megaphone in 2025, declaring war on the same antifa agents that never arrived in Morton back in 2020. He could pass the time between declarations by shooting his shot at DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in the comments of her latest ICE-laden thirst-trap Instagram post. (“Love this look for you girl! You know the LIBERAL MEDIA also spread lies about ME and a dog.”)
Just imagine Morningstar calling the full Morton police staff into his office, inspired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, to give a rallying speech and pausing frequently to catch his breath while demanding physical perfection and MORE HOT, LESS WOKE out of his officers.
But alas, Morningstar leaves us with just anecdotes, headlines and the type of history lessons doomed to be repeated.
His resignation from the Morton Police Department — and, later, the Lewis County Republican Party, for which he was a state committeeman — came after an investigation by the Criminal Justice Training Center, which found him to have committed sexual harassment, lied on his job application and engaged in “unethical professional standards.”
(To be clear: If Morningstar were famous, the “Controversies” section of his Wikipedia page would be bursting with incidents, allegations, scandals and rumors I don’t have time to mention here. Searching his name on chronline.com brought up dozens of headlines, none of which were particularly flattering.)
Keep in mind that this investigation took place shortly after law enforcement everywhere had united behind the “Thin Blue Line” slogan — adopted partially in response to a call for police to hold each other more accountable for violations of things like, you know, civil rights.
And yet, the investigation included testimonies from numerous former colleagues, all of whom seemingly had no problem spilling the tea on one of the most prolific sex offenders ever to squeeze into a tactical vest.
The report hinted at a lot of this:
“Excuse me, I’m from the CJTC, and I’m investigating an officer of the law.”
“I’m a little too busy for that, sir.”
“It’s about Roger Morn-”
“Oh s*** MORNINGSTAR? How much time ya got? Wait, which stuff are you looking into, the sex stuff or the money stuff? I gotta call a couple buddies. You know he got fired from like his last four jobs, right?”
While his former coworkers had no problem calling out his malfeasance, his local political buddies have been silent. The local Republican Party eventually confirmed he had resigned his post, proving that it’s somehow easier to lose your job as a cop than it is to get the county’s red hat club to see a red flag.
Winlock Mayor Brandon Svenson, a frequent Morningstar collaborator, was the Republican party chair at that point. Beyond confirming via text that Morningstar stepped down, the outspoken Winlock mayor hasn’t made a comment — despite volunteering and training with Morningstar on the Morton police force, working beside him on a political committee and presumably spending plenty of down time discussing how to read just the first three words of the Constitution.
None of the Lewis County commissioners condoned his actions, despite his prominent role in the political group that endorsed two of them. Their only response was to remove him from their Veterans Advisory Board several months after the CJTC report — and even then, only after he stopped showing up for meetings.
And Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza hasn’t mentioned Morningstar since he surrendered his badge and gun. A few years ago, the sheriff’s office was approached about contracting for police services in Pe Ell; Snaza referred the fine folks in the county’s westernmost municipality to his friend overseeing law enforcement in its easternmost.
Morningstar campaigned hard for Snaza’s re-election in 2022, writing a letter for this Opinion page to voice his support.
“I’ll proudly serve alongside Sheriff Snaza. No matter the challenge. I will follow him anywhere,” he wrote. (These days it’s worth asking if “anywhere” includes Arizona.)
After it all, the only person who came to his defense was the attorney who got his 364-day sentence for identity theft suspended and his fine reduced to restitution served.
It amounts to a slap on the wrist — a half-hour of detention for a kid who tried to rob the school, but only got caught leaving the door unlocked.
Morton deserved better.
Morningstar deserves worse.
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Aaron VanTuyl is an occasional columnist and host of The Chronicle’s News Dump podcast.
