Two women at the Scott County Jail are making Quad-Cities history.
Captain Stefanie Burnett was promoted as the first female captain the jail has ever had, while Sergeant Laquisha Morgan worked to take the role as the first African-American female sergeant.
“It takes a special unique person to work in corrections,” Burnett said.
Burnett, who started working for the Scott County Jail 18 years ago, was just promoted and is now the first female captain to lead the jail.
Morgan, after nine years at the jail, is now the first black female sergeant for the jail. For Morgan, the significance of her recent promotion was at first overwhelming.
“I just started crying and screaming and jumping up and down saying thank you and I was shaking and it was just an awesome time for me and my family and my kids,” Morgan said.
And for Burnett, bittersweet, coming seven years after her father’s death.
“I was absolutely thrilled and I really didn’t think about it that I was the first female captain running a jail,” Burnett said. “I just really thought, you know, my father passed away it will be 7 years ago and I just really thought this is amazing I sure wish my dad could see this and know that I guess I am making history here.”
Being women in charge in a facility full of mostly men was challenging, but both agree once you step inside these walls, neither color nor gender should matter.
Yet early in their careers in corrections, both had to learn to deflect unwelcome attention.
“Working with male inmates when I first started again it was more difficult for me to learn as a younger female what it was like to have males hitting on you, they’re saying inappropriate things and you really learn how to handle that,” Burnett said.
Growing up with three brothers helped Burnett command the respect required to run a jail.
“As the years went by and you see the same inmates, some of them coming in and out, they start to learn hey she’s not going to put up with that don’t mess with her,” Burnett said.
Morgan has had to look racism in the eyes, but it hasn’t stopped her.
“We’ve had some very racist people in this jail but still on that same note, they have respected me because they knew that this is my job and they knew that they had to rely on me for certain things so I didn’t get that calling the n-word,” Morgan said.
By far the hardest thing she’s ever had to do came when the face of someone she was about to book into jail looked all too familiar.
“Putting handcuffs on a cousin of mine that I used to change his diapers, very tough for me and it was like devastating when he came in,” Morgan said. “I almost came to tears and I had to ask another officer to help me out with it.”
It was a sobering reminder that jail affects not only the inmates but their families and children.
At the end of the day. both say they wouldn’t change a thing
“Women are powerful,” Morgan said. “We are, and that’s nothing against men or anybody else, but we are special and so you just keep pushing and do what you gotta do to get where you want to be and don’t give up.”
