Author: Teresa Wippel
November 24, 2024, My Edmonds News
Retiring at age 55 may seem young, but Edmonds Police Chief Michelle Bennett figures that after a 35-year career in policing — along with earning a Ph.D. and raising four kids — it’s time to step down.
To be clear, Bennett — who was hired as Edmonds’ interim chief in 2021 and several months later was appointed permanently — loves Edmonds. But a combination of reasons are behind her decision to retire, effective Feb. 15, 2025.
For starters, there are the realities of the city’s budget situation and that the police department is likely to be facing some organizational restructuring and layoffs. “I love being here, and I care about the community. I care about the staff, but I can retire,” Bennett said. “So how fair is it to, you know, to stay and other people are leaving, and it’s no fault of anybody that’s here, right? We have a legitimate budget crisis in the city.”
Another factor in her decision was her family. A single mom, Bennett commutes nearly an hour and a half each way to work and she has twins who just started middle school.
“I need to also focus on my life and the time I have with my kids, because they’re only young once,” Bennett said. “It’s a hard choice because I love this department and I love policing and I love service, but it’s not a hard choice because, you know, I really love my family.”
Even though Bennett has only served as Edmonds’ police chief for four years, her history with the department goes back to 1989, when at age 19 she worked as an Edmonds police cadet. She even has a newspaper clipping on her office door from those early days that showcased her work with a local food drive. (The caption mistakenly identified her as a “policewoman.”) Also in the photo was then-Edmonds police detective Al Compaan, who would go on to become the city’s police chief before retiring in December 2019.
“He’s an amazing human, and I love him and his wife,” Bennett said of Compaan and his wife Anne.
Compaan stayed in touch with Bennett over the years, and he was the one who suggested in early 2021 that she apply for the job of interim Edmonds police chief. At the time, Bennett had retired after working for the King County Sheriff’s Office for 30 years — essentially her entire career. She had just gone through a divorce, and was homeschooling her four kids “at the height of the pandemic.”
Following some consideration, she decided to apply for the Edmonds job. “I thought, what a great opportunity to come in and just… give back to where I started,” Bennett said.
Then-Mayor Mike Nelson offered her the interim role, and Bennett said she was impressed with what she found in Edmonds: “People are amazing. The officers are outstanding.” She applied for the permanent police chief job and was confirmed by the Edmonds City Council in August 2022, becoming Edmonds’ first woman police chief.
Bennett’s career with King County started in 1990. She was working in loss prevention at the Bon Marche (now Macy’s) in Lynnwood and attending college when she was offered a job with the King County Sheriff’s Office. She returned to finish her bachelor’s degree in law and justice at Central Washington University’s Lynnwood campus six years later. Over the years, she also earned a master’s degree in psychology and organizational development, followed by a doctorate in education.
“I’ve always been interested in education and curriculum and instruction,” she said, adding that both her dad and stepmothers were educators.
Since 2008, Bennett has been teaching about once a month at the Northwestern University Command College in Illinois, which is focused on police command staff leadership, including captains, chiefs, majors and assistant chiefs. “It’s kind of fascinating to learn about different police departments, how they work, what their systems are, what their problems are,” she said.
When Bennett arrived in Edmonds, she focused on helping the department modernize its systems. This included digitizing records and processes, from the evaluation system to field training to scheduling. The department now has digital records on use of force, pursuits and commendations and complaints.
“That’s important for police agencies for their accountability and transparency, where it’s all documented,” she said, adding that Edmonds Cmdr. Josh McClure played “a huge part” in the digitization effort.
Bennett also pointed to the department’s work to implement state requirements for body cameras and in-car cameras, as well as incorporating “less-than-lethal” tools such as a Bola-Wrap to constrain people who are fighting and pepper ball munitions.
And she is proud of the department’s continued efforts — begun by Compaan — to diversify its police force. The department is now around 28% women, close to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) goal of 30% by 2030, “so that’s pretty exciting,” she said.
Since Bennett arrived, the department has added a community engagement officer, moved the domestic violence advocate position from part time to full time, added a full-time parking enforcement officer and hired an additional staff member to address records requests associated with police body cameras.
The department also produced a five-year strategic plan to guide its work through 2029, although some of those priorities may have to change due to the city’s budget crisis, Bennett said.
“There are concessions everybody’s having to make,” she said. “So everyone is in this, in this boat of trying to assist in the budget situation.”
Addressing Mayor Mike Rosen’s request to all city departments to find $7 million in budget cuts, the police department has proposed cutting some of the positions hired in recent years, including the full-time parking enforcement officer, a public disclosure specialist and the community engagement coordinator. In addition, the Edmonds City Council is looking at a proposal to restructure the department’s command staff, which has grown in recent years from one chief and one assistant chief to include a chief, two assistant chiefs and three commanders.
The addition of those new police command positions — approved by the council as part of the 2022 budget — were in response to a 2021 Center for Public Safety Management (CPSM) audit that called the department’s management rank structure “dysfunctional” with no mid-level commanders. Prior to the current structure, Edmonds officers were promoted to corporal, then to sergeant, with the next rank being assistant chief.
In fact, many of the department’s recent initiatives were in response to the CPSM audit. Now, with the city facing a projected $13 million budget deficit next year, Bennett said, “I wish if I could do something different, I had a crystal ball and knew that we had the brewing economic problems that we had.”
As part of the community’s discussion about cost savings, Bennett also addressed another idea being promoted by some to address the city’s budget woes: That Edmonds could save money by shifting to a regional policing model similar to that offered in King County — Bennett’s former employer.
Some have pointed to Edmonds’ neighbor, Shoreline, which contracts with the King County Sheriff’s Office for police services. Bennett also served as police chief in both Sammamish and Maple Valley, both with King County Sheriff’s Office contracts. The difference between those cities and Edmonds, Bennett said, is that the King County cities were formerly unincorporated and did not have their own officers and equipment, so decided to contract with the county to avoid the expense of starting their own departments.
“You have to think about when you start your own department, you have to buy cars, you have to buy equipment, you have to hire people, you have to get a building, you have to get a jail, you have to get all the things people don’t think about with contracting a 911 center or dispatch,” Bennett said. “You have to have personnel, you have to have legal, you have to have risk, you have to have payroll, you have to have HR, like there are so many pieces. So it’s not just in saying it’s half the cost to have a contract…look at the cost in having to have all of that infrastructure built in.”
In addition, she said her police staff has asked the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office about contracting with them, but it would be “really, really expensive.” The sheriff’s office also currently lacks the infrastructure and personnel to accommodate Edmonds’ police calls.
What about the idea of having three nearby city departments — Edmonds, Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace — combining into one regional force? “You have three different governments that would have to decide, right, that they want to work together,” Bennett said. “And is Lynnwood the same community as Edmonds, because then you’ll lose local control.” In the end, the police chief said, such a decision will come down to one thing: “What does the community want?”
As Bennett prepares to leave the department, she also reflected on the future of policing, especially given recent state legislation aimed at addressing police abuse of power in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
“I think you have legislators who are saying, ‘well, you know, some of the things we tried that just really didn’t work out the way we thought,’” Bennett said, pointing to the “unintended consequences” of recent state laws, from restricting police pursuits to stopping suspects on “reasonable suspicion” rather than probable cause. For example, legislation addressing the caliber of weapons “effectively made illegal all of our less-than-lethal ammunitions,” she added.
“What people are forgetting about again and again is through some of those legislative initiatives, people that are victims of crime grows dramatically, not just people, but businesses, retail theft,” Bennett said.
“Our powers given to us by the community, given to the legislators who elect them to give us what our laws are. So there’s a balance of what does that look like?” she continued. “And I think transparency and accountability in law enforcement is really, really important. I think some of the legislative changes were good. We need to be accountable for what we do. We have cameras tracking every single thing we do right now. That’s good and I welcome it because we’re doing great things.”
Despite the divisiveness that comes when discussing policing, Bennett said she is hopeful about the future of its role in the community. “When you’re talking about law enforcement and citizens and community relations, there’s a broader scope of, well, we just have some incivility in general, where people disagree with each other. The better angels of our nature need to prevail here, where we’re all humans. Can we see the humanity in each other, and maybe spend some focus on what we hold in common versus what’s different, because it has to start there.”