LINCOLN, Neb. (KMTV) — It was a short stay in Lincoln for now former police Chief Theresa Ewins, who was only confirmed as the Lincoln Police Chief on July 19th, 2021. Ewins resigned from the role on Friday, effective immediately.
She took over a troubled department that saw its fair share of challenges in her brief tenure.
When Ewins became chief, the Lincoln Police Department was mired in sexual harassment lawsuits and had a shaky relationship with the community it served after a year of tension following the killing of George Floyd in May of 2020.
Despite her rocky tenure Lincoln Mayor Leiron Gaylord-Baird was complimentary of Ewins in her statement on the resignation saying in part "During her tenure, Chief Ewins and I worked to deliver the high level of public safety that we have here in Lincoln, I thank her for her service to our community. Together we added officers, dispatchers, and support personnel positions to LPD's staff and negotiated a labor contract that made LPD officers the highest-paid law enforcement in the state."
The officers they added though didn't fix many of the problems in the department.
An independent review of the department published in September of last year found that LPD continues to have one of the lowest staffing levels of any police department for a city of its size despite having some of the highest pay for officers in Nebraska.
It also found that nearly half of all the women on staff who responded to the survey, 47%, reported they had faced discrimination and harassment.
No reason was given by Ewins or the Mayor's office for her sudden resignation. In her resignation statement, Ewins thanked the community and the law enforcement she worked with, and said in part "This was not an easy decision, but I have determined it is the best one."
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