Morton Divided — While Some Cheer Chief’s Efforts, Others Worry About Town’s Association With Fringe Political Group

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Morton is a small town just like any other — odds are good its citizens will show their unwavering support to its chief of police and the department. 

But a number of current and former Morton residents say Morton Police Chief Roger Morningstar’s affiliation with a fringe political group, among other things, is discouraging and it has “fueled the flames” of division in the community.

On Sept. 29, Morningstar spoke at the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) 2020 conference at Liberty University after being personally invited by the organization’s founder Richard Mack.

Both the CSPOA and Mack have found themselves facing criticism for promoting the opinion that individual law enforcement officers should use their discretion to not enforce laws that don’t align with the group’s interpretation of the Constitution, among other things.

Morningstar said he is not a member of the CSPOA and was invited to the conference on short notice, but came to know Mack when Initiative 1639, a law that moved the legal age limit to purchase and/or own a semi automatic rifle to 21, was a hot button topic.

“I’ve talked with Sheriff Mack before and when all the 1639 stuff came about,” Morningstar said of his invitation. “He got a hold of me and said ‘I’d like you to come out to Liberty University and talk about maintaining your oath of office, liberty and the importance of not forgetting our oath to the Constitution in law enforcement.’”

In 2019, Morningstar, along with Loren Culp and a number of law enforcement officials in the state, vowed to not seek out violators of the new law. Culp, Morningstar and the CSPOA have argued that the law is unconstitutional, an argument that the state’s Supreme Court has since rejected. 

Morningstar described the conference as a gathering of about 350 law enforcement officers from all around the country who discussed their ideals as well as issues they perceive as unconstitutional from state to state.

He added that the idea of not enforcing laws that they believe are unconstitutional is a “last line of defense thing,” and it was not the overall theme of the conference.

When talking about his experience at the conference on Tuesday, Morningstar remarked,  “The constitution doesn’t limit the people, it limits us as government. It doesn’t matter if you’re the president, or a state legislator or a cop, it limits what we do, not what the people do. And not a single person there lost sight of that.”

 

CSPOA and Mack

However, many news outlets and organizations will not paint such a flowery picture of Mack, the CSPOA and what they stand for. For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center has determined the CSPOA to be an “anti-government” group.

“Many constitutional sheriffs believe they can pass a local law and forbid federal authorities from coming into a county. That is patently false,” Mark Potok of the SPLC told The Associated Press in January.

Supporters of Mack have championed his role as one of the plaintiffs in a 1997 lawsuit that found provisions of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to be unconstitutional in a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court.

But he has faced fierce criticism for being one of almost 1,000 people who showed up to support Cliven Bundy and his standoff with federal authorities at his Nevada ranch in 2014. According to one news report, Mack strategized to put women in the front of the standoff as a sort of political theater.

“If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal agents,” Mack told Fox News.

Mack is not the only one of CSPOA to be involved on the wrong side of a standoff with federal authorities.

According to The Oregonian, CSPOA member and an Oregon Sheriff Glenn Palmer was associated with Ammon Bundy when he led a 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon, in 2016.

Complaints, including one from a 911 manager and another from John Day, Oregon, police chief, alleged that Palmer met with the leaders of the takeover and was considered to be a “security leak.”

Beyond Mack and his organization’s ties to standoffs with federal authorities, he has also claimed that coronavirus-related restrictions are unconstitutional as well as pushed an anti-vaccination effort in the wake of COVID-19. 

Morningstar has also said that he feels the restrictions in place because of COVID-19 are unconstitutional and when asked how he feels about the “renegade” label that the New Yorker placed on the CSPOA, he said, “What is it that makes you a renegade by saying that you adhere to the constitution?” 

 

Local Concerns

For some current and former Morton residents, Morningstar’s attendance at the CSPOA conference marked a tipping point. And it represents just a portion of their concerns.

They battle internally with speaking up and being chastised by the community or simply go about their business.

Two Morton residents and another East Lewis County resident that spoke to The Chronicle did not feel comfortable making their fear of Morningstar public, believing they would be targeted.

Some saw firsthand how it went for Rick Yearout, who tried to express his concerns about Morningstar at a City Council meeting and Sarah Brown, an Amnesty International volunteer who tried to give a presentation on policing during demonstrations.

Both had applied through the city council for their topics to be agenda items and both were denied their time to speak as soon as the meeting started because it was viewed as opposition to Morningstar.

Yearout and Brown were also met by almost 100 of the police chief’s supporters who rallied around him after online rumors that Antifa would be attending.

It’s an indication of how much support Morningstar has in the community, where he has been active in setting up after-school programs at the police station for area children, including one that focuses on learning about the constitution. 

Jonathan Hopkins, who grew up in Morton, graduated from West Point Academy and now lives in the Seattle area, said he used to believe that Morningstar was carrying himself how a police chief should, though things have changed.

“It seemed from afar that he was trying to make a better community,” Hopkins said, noting Morningstar’s community engagement and work with children. “And Morton is the kind of place that almost everyone supports the police, but they don’t now.”

As evidence to his claim, Hopkins pointed The Chronicle to an online survey about perceptions of the Morton Police Department he conducted that was shared around the Morton community on Facebook. 



Of the 113 respondents, which were made up of current Morton residents, frequent visitors and those who lived in Morton but since moved away, 52 of them stated they are less likely to go to Morton because of the perception of the police department, 28 said it has had no effect and 33 said it would likely increase their time in Morton.

Hopkins attributes the shifting attitudes toward the department to Morningstar.

“Now we are in a situation where the town is being known for the political beliefs of one person,” Hopkins said. “And those political beliefs are not in the middle. And sure, it’s going to make half the population happy … but it makes the other part of the population concerned they aren’t going to be treated the same.”

City officials including Mayor Dan Mortensen — the city’s former police chief — and the Morton City Council has shown its full support for Morningstar in the past. When contacted on Tuesday, Mortensen said Morningstar has been a source of some political division, but at the end of the day, it is his right to do that.

“He would probably be less divisive if he didn’t have any political signs in his yard at all, I think that’s just common sense,” Mortensen said of Morningstar, who has an 8-foot tall Trump tower erected in his front yard. “Does that create some division? Absolutely. Is it his right to do that? Absolutely.”

County Commissioner Gary Stamper represents East Lewis County.

“This is obviously more of a city issue, rather than a county issue,” Stamper said, whose district covers the Morton area.

When asked specifically if he feels Morton looks different from what it used to because of the political division, Stamper replied, “I don’t have a real good handle on it, I don’t like some of the optics because of some of the comments. I do think that all small towns have changed from what they were 20, 25 years ago … so it has changed.”

William Serrahn, a Packwood resident, echoed Hopkins’ sentiment about the politicization of the Morton Police Department, but said he feels something worse is at play.

“I see the politicizing of the Morton Police as part of a grass roots fascist movement,” Serrahn wrote in an email. “They celebrate local people and others’ xenophobia by holding these ‘Freedom Rallies’ and encourage people to show up brandishing their weapons. It’s thinly disguised white power.”

Tiffany Buchannan, who lived in Morton until she was 22 and now lives in Adna, said the groups Morningstar willingly associates himself with is alarming.

Buchanan specifically referenced an August “Blue Lives Matter” rally where the militia group the Three Percenters showed up with assault rifles saying they planned to act as “backup” for law enforcement.

At the rally, vice president of the far-right militia group  Washington Three Percenters Robert Burwell told The Chronicle his group was working under the Morton Police Department “loosely,” a characterization Morningstar denied, though he said he supports everything they stand for.

Buchanan found Morningstar’s alleged support of the group to be “mind boggling.”

“It’s not a concern to me,” Mortensen said regarding Morningstar’s support of the Three Percenters.

Buchanan’s ultimate fear is that in a small town that is so politically divided and is so heavily armed, that one day something catastrophic could happen.

The festering political divisiveness has caused some residents to leave the area altogether.

Kim Tyskiewicz, a Morton resident and principle for the online school Greenways Academy, says she intends to move from Morton after coming to the area in January because of the political division she has seen, adding that she has lived in small towns that lean hard to the Republican party, but never found it to be an issue until now.

Tyskiewicz believes that Morningstar’s prominent political beliefs have made the division worse. She said public servants must walk a fine line with how they choose to support their politics as a private citizen.

“In the same sense as a teacher, a student should not be able to tell what political party (they are)  by the things they do when they are instructing,” Tyskiewicz said.

In the same light, Tyskiewicz took issue with the Trump tower that sits in Morningstar’s front yard.

“When your house is on main street, in front of an elementary school, and some of those elementary school kids’ parents don’t agree with you, your job is not to throw it in their face to make them feel uncomfortable,” Tyskiewicz said. “Your job is to try and assuage concerns.”

Similarly to Tyskiewicz, Sarah Spencer and Derrek Berkompas, who have three Black children, said they moved away from Morton three years ago and now live in Taiwan, citing the overt racism that their children experienced and that was observed from Berkompas at Morton Elementary School.

Berkompas said after the 2016 presidential election, he saw an increase in issues with students making racist comments like “Get ready to be deported on the Trump Train” and “At least the Blacks aren’t as bad as the Mexicans.”

The couple said that everything started to change for them when Trump was elected, and Morningstar’s “passionate” support for Trump made them uneasy about their safety and their childrens’ in Morton.

“I think when you are a prominent public figure who is responsible for applying law in a non-biased and just manner, you have a duty to reassure the public you are capable of that,” Spencer wrote in an email. “His passionate support of Trump completely undermined any confidence we had that he would be able to police people of color without bias.”

Mortensen said he has never seen Morningstar discriminate against anyone while police chief.

“I mean, he’s Hispanic so it just doesn’t work that way,” Mortensen said.

When one of Morningstar’s most vocal supporters, Jennifer Hedge, was contacted by The Chronicle for comment about fellow community members’ concerns, she replied via Facebook Messenger, “it is our sincere hope that The Chronicle is not trying to fan the flames of divisiveness in Morton, the questions posed would indicate so. We enjoy living our lives without outside influence. No other comments will be given.”

Russ Davis, who was a principal and the superintendent in Morton School District from 1988-2005, said he can hardly recognize the town he once lived in.

Now living in Clarkston, Davis recalled the Morton community to be one that took care of its own. But he no longer sees that in the town.

“I always told the (school) staff, ‘be positive or be neutral’ … or in other words, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” Davis said. “From what I’ve read, that’s kind of gone by the wayside. From what I understand, I think (Morningstar) has fueled the flames, and I don’t expect that out of a mayor, a chief of police, city council people, whatever.”