A Q&A With Deputy Mike Morrison, Candidate for Chelan County Sheriff
We talk agency culture, why he’s running, and his connection with Grace City Church
This week Chelan County Sheriff’s Deputy Mike Morrison filed to challenge Sheriff Brian Burnett to see who will be the county’s top cop come November.
Morrison is the president of the Chelan County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, which is the union that represents the sworn officers, and I spoke with him about why he decided to run for sheriff. We also talked about his affiliation with Grace City Church, and why he and his family became members.
I appreciated his openness and honesty. To provide as much transparency and context as possible, I typed up most of our conversation and present it in a Q&A format below. What I cut out, I did so to protect the identities of sources or simply to cut down on the length of this piece a bit.
So without further ado, here’s that conversation:
Me: “Ok, so if you wouldn’t mind giving me just a basic statement about why you decided to throw your hat in the ring?”
Morrison: “For over a year now several members of our agency, including their spouses, members of the community, have been encouraging me to run, advising me change was needed, and after talking with those members of the community, members of our agency, talking with my family I was positive I could take that change and make that happen.”
Me: “What specifically are some of the changes you think need to happen?”
Morrison: “We need to address our culture and the divide within our agency and come up with solutions to bring us together because if we don’t trust one another the community is going to have a hard time trusting us and we’re not going to be very effective unless everyone is on the same page, and I get not everyone gets along, but if we have a 50–50 divide within our agency, some of those concerns need to be heard and we need to come up with solutions for them. We’ve known about them since 2020. There was a culture survey that was run before that that said similar results and nothing’s really been done to correct them — I mean I sit on the culture survey committee and we talk about it but it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of action so eventually someone’s gotta step up and take control and make it happen, and that was me.”
I’ve covered that 2020 survey before and can read about what sworn officers had to say about the culture and leadership at the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office here in Part I and here in Part II.
Me: “Are you worried about any professional repercussions about challenging the Sheriff?”
Morrison: “Absolutely. It’s been one of the things that I’ve thought about. I come from a law enforcement family, so they told me, ‘You know this could be a possibility that if this doesn’t work out for you, you could be terminated.’ I mean that’s concerning, especially when you’re providing for your family, and I would certainly hope that we can maintain professionalism. I understand campaigns and elections at times can be hostile. I’m hoping Brian will remain professional, which I would expect he would, and same. And we’re just trying to focus on the issues that are going on with our agency and the public is going eventually make the decision to determine which one is going to be the better candidate to lead the agency in the future.”
Me: “Makes sense. And you’re the guild president right?”
Morrison: “It’s called the Chelan County Deputy Sheriff’s Association president, but guild, union, yeah I’m currently the president. I’ve been so since 2020.”
Me: “Are there any campaign events coming up? You throwing your hat in the ring makes this really interesting and I want to continue to keep my eye on this race.”
Morrison: “More things are coming to my attention now because that actually was one of the questions that some people were more standing back to see if I would take on the challenge of running because they were aware that I could be facing a hostile working environment, which I hope that’s not the case. I hope my coworkers see me as the same hardworking person I’ve been throughout my 16-year career, but a lot of people were definitely hesitant to see if I would do it. They figured that there would be too much pressure and too much intimidation. And I’m just not intimidated by that. So we’re going to do what’s right for the right reasons and once we get in there we’re going to hopefully have a civil campaign against one another.”
Me: “Well, good for you. I mean this is democracy. Let the voters decide.”
Morrison: “I agree with that 100 percent.”
Me: “So the last question, and this can be off the record if you prefer, but I’ve heard that you’re also a member of Grace City Church. Is that true? And what kind of a dynamic does that make for you?”
Morrison: “Yeah, no, I’m fine. I was told that this would likely come up. So my family and I transferred down here in 2014. I’d worked up in Okanogan County for Omak Police Department and attended Omak First Baptist. Smaller church, 100 people, still friends with the pastor up there and so we appreciated that community and when we came down to Wenatchee we didn’t know anybody, and Grace City Church, several members invited us in, and invited us into those social circles, which we appreciated, getting to know other people in the community because you feel kind of isolated when you first jump into a new area and from that point we’ve probably been attending around 2014, 2015 is when we started there. It was my coworkers that had initially told me, ‘Hey if you haven’t found a church, come check this out and see if it works for you.’ And we attended it, the message being delivered by Pastor Josh was positive, upbeat, what we were looking for, but my main focus is that I try not to I guess be associated so much with other police officers off duty because it doesn’t really give me a chance to unwind and detach. So I had heard some concerns that had come up in regards to the church, I’m not aware of some of those things that have been there. I have not personally seen them. Some of them that were mentioned could be definitely perceived as concerning and if it were to come up that there were immoral or illegal things going on within the church, or any church, me personally and just my beliefs, that would cause me to separate if that was found to be true. Like I said, I’m there to have a good social network, be with people that are looking to build each other up, improve their community, same as what I do in law enforcement, I just to make sure I’m getting a separation from other police officers when I am outside of work.”
Me: “Sure. That makes sense.”
We spoke about a few other things that I am not ready to publish on yet, and I thanked him for being open about his affiliation with GCC. Most of the time, a candidate’s religious affiliation isn’t newsworthy. But when your pastor becomes actively involved in politics and encourages members of his congregation to run for various elected offices, that changes things.
But according to Morrison, he doesn’t have much of a relationship with McPherson at all. In fact, he said he just recently met him for the first time.
“I’m not hesitant to answer any questions about Grace City Church. I mean if what is being put out there is found to be true then I would say there’s definitely some concerns. I certainly hope that’s not the case but I mean I’m not in the inner workings of the church, or I guess you’d call it the upper echelon, with your founders and your pastors. I think actually I met Josh for the first time during that PTI (police tactics instruction) when I was walking out the final day,” he said. “It was the first time I ever talked to him directly and shook his hand so I guess I wouldn’t say I’m probably one of the more higher-up people attending the church. But I certainly have enjoyed my time. I feel like there’s a lot of good people there and they’ve always been polite to my family and we pretty much keep it specifically to being spiritually uplifting.”
You can read about the first Police Tactics Instruction session that took place at Grace City Church earlier last year here.
From what sources in local government and law enforcement tell me the swag bags with bottles of wine and other gifts for the officers, as well as the pre-training prayers, have ceased.
At the end of the interview, we talked about Morrison’s background as a member of a law enforcement family, his education and his devotion to coaching and athletics.
You can listen to that portion of the interview here:
Like I said to Morrison, him throwing his hat in the ring makes this race very interesting and I’m going to keep my eye on it.
As for Morrison’s affiliation to GCC: I have been very clear since I started looking into the organization that I have no intention of attacking or alienating any of the rank-and-file members. I know people who have attended and people who still do. For the most part, they are good folks.
I am solely interested in the leadership, their attraction to politics and guns, and of course — money.
So I would encourage folks to judge this candidate on his merits, qualifications and his goals rather than simply focusing on the church he attends. It’s not Morrison’s fault Josh McPherson took his church in a more political direction because of the Covid pandemic.
