After putting in 36 years of law enforcement time, almost 33 years with Chelan County, I have chosen to endorse Mike Morrison for Sheriff. This was not an easy or quick decision. I first met Mike many years ago when he worked for Omak PD. We were attending a class together in Seattle. After observing Mike and participating in some scenarios with him, I broached the topic of whether he would be interested in coming to work for Chelan County. He later applied and was hired as a deputy. Soon after completing his FTO period, Mike became the school resource officer for Cascade School District. I was his direct supervisor and he impressed me with how outgoing and self-directed he was. I had supervised prior SRO’s, and I immediately observed that he was doing things differently, to the good. On his own initiative, he began working with the district to identify students who were “on the edge”. Mike met one on one with some of those students, and in many instances did home visits with them and their families. I received positive feedback from both parents and the school district about Mike’s performance and work ethic. Another avenue Mike took to positively influence the district’s students was to become a volunteer track coach. Mike spent hours and days of his own time coaching after school hours and travelling to events, many of which were well outside Chelan County. Eventually COVID introduced itself to the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office. By then I was supervising detectives and Mike was reassigned to a patrol squad. Due to illness within both the patrol ranks and detectives, the investigation division found itself paired down to just 2 or 3 bodies, where it had previously been 6. Investigators fell behind and were not keeping up. Numerous important cases came to light involving various school districts in Chelan County. Even though Mike was no longer an SRO and was working in patrol, he volunteered to work these cases from start to finish. Successful convictions came out of those cases in a quick and efficient manner. If Mike hadn’t stepped up, it is likely those cases would have withered a long time. I want to see Mike Morrison elected Chelan County Sheriff to enable his work ethic to blend through the department and further into the community. 



Some noise has been made in local media about the taxpayer dollars used on employee issues, grievances, and lawsuits. I believe the noise about this should be much louder as it is such a waste of rare & valuable taxpayer resources. Using publicly available information distributed widely through the media, one can discover that aprx $2,000,000 has been paid to sheriff’s office employees and their lawyers. When a guesstimate of what was paid to the county’s private attorney is added in, conservatively that number would be closer to $2,250,000. Another Federal lawsuit from an employee has already been filed against the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office and is set for trial in Spring 2023. Should the county lose or settle that case, I am certain the money paid out to CCSO employees will round out to $3,000,000, or likely more. 3 million dollars may seem an appropriate amount for a big department or large county, but Chelan County is not big or large in regards to numbers of employees. This much money has never been paid out to improperly disciplined employees in Chelan County history. If this was a corporation, the board of directors would certainly vote to replace the management. Elect Mike Morrison sheriff and stop wasting Chelan County tax payer dollars.

Sergeant Bruce Long

Chelan County Sheriff's Office - Retired