Pressing Nebraska's lawmakers about their response to protests

Protests are asking for change, but are lawmakers listening?

Adrian Smith, Deb Fischer, Ben Sasse and others have all been quick to condemn racism and violence, but protesters are asking for actual change.

Calls and emails were sent this week asking what actions leader of Nebraska may be considering.

Hoping to discuss this important topic, after four days, five calls, nine emails, the actual voice of our Washington delegation remains silent.

Congressman Smith's staff said, he's sticking to his written statement. The same with Fischer's office.

We never heard back from Senator Ben Sasses’ office.

One of Nebraska’s most outspoken lawmakers, State Senator Adam Morfeld, was not surprised in the lack of response.

“I regularly wonder why our federal delegation doesn’t do anything on a variety of issues, so I’m not surprised that they are not doing anything on this issue," said Senator Adam Morfeld.

Senator Morfeld tells NTV he’s been working on legislation on the state level to address some of these issues including more citizen oversight of police forces and ensuring officer’s badge numbers are present.

He feels he needs to run for Lancaster County Attorney after the Douglas County attorney decided Not to prosecute Jacob Gardner who is accused of killing James Scurlock.

Morfeld added, “to me that’s a miscarriage of justice. To me, that’s something that’s just as likely to happen in Lancaster County and have the same result based on the prosecutor that’s currently in office and we need to have criminal justice reform. That starts in our prosecutor’s offices.”

Morfeld believes it’s up to the local Senators to make a change in Nebraska.

“I think that our federal delegation is not likely to do anything so it’s important that state and local leaders step up and that’s exactly what we’re doing," said Morfeld.

The judiciary committee will be holding listening forums next week to discuss what actions the public thinks their leaders need to take when they do go back into session on July 20.