Michelle Bennett has permanently stepped into the role as Mercer Island Police Department’s (MIPD) first female chief.

The city of Mercer Island made the announcement of Bennett’s fixed status on Dec. 29, 2025, five months after she began serving as the city’s interim police chief.

On July 11, 2025, the city noted in a press release that it and former police chief Chris Sutter “have mutually agreed to Chief Sutter’s separation from the Mercer Island Police Department, including a severance package. The City wishes Chief Sutter well in his future personal and professional endeavors.”

Bennett, 56, has worked in law enforcement for the past 35 years, including 31 years with the King County Sheriff’s Office and four years with the Edmonds Police Department as its interim and permanent — and first female — chief. While working with the sheriff’s office’s contract cities of Sammamish and Maple Valley, Bennett served as those cities’ first female police chiefs as well.

Mercer Island City Manager Jessi Bon appointed Bennett as chief of the 32-commissioned officer police force along with five support staffers. A press release notes that Bennett brings extensive experience in modern policing practices (data-tracking systems, expanded specialized programs and more), a strong commitment to community-oriented policing, and a collaborative leadership style that aligns with the city’s values and expectations.

“Chief Bennett is highly regarded for her successful tenures as chief of several municipal police departments in the region, acquiring extensive and invaluable experience in the process,” Bon said. “Her proven ability to lead the department effectively, coupled with the confidence she has earned from officers, staff, city leadership, and the community, make her exceptionally well-qualified to serve as Mercer Island’s permanent police chief.”

While Bennett said it feels “pretty awesome” to be MI’s first female chief, it’s doing her job that really matters.

“I think, for the most part, people don’t really look at gender, whether internally or externally. (It’s) more just competency of doing the job,” she said.

Regarding the philosophy that she brings to the job each day, Bennett added: “Community-oriented policing is probably one of my strengths. I’m really interested in bringing community and the department together, working with all the different entities within cities, building bridges and relationships wherever needed.”

She said Mercer Island is a great city with fantastic officers.

Bennett, who grew up in the Tri-Cities and later moved to Shoreline, has four kids and now resides in unincorporated King County, just south of Newcastle, with three of them.

She mentioned that being involved in the public service sector is important and noted that her dad was a teacher and her mom was a nurse. As for her siblings, her oldest brother retired as a colonel in the Army and now teaches Russian for the Department of Defense in Alaska; her second brother is a family law attorney in Seattle; and her younger brother is a middle school band teacher.

The Reporter asked Bennett a series of questions about her robust career, highlights and challenges along the way, goals as MIPD’s chief and more.

What have been some of the highlights and challenges for you over the years?

Highlights would be creating community organizations or programs that benefit officers in the community. In Sammamish, we started a Sammamish Police Foundation. That was pretty cool. And a Healthy Communities Coalition that brought together nonprofits and other stakeholders in the city to address community problems. It’s probably one of my favorite things we were able to do collectively.

Challenges: Well, finances are always a challenge, right? So, in the sheriff’s office, there was a period of time where the budget was so bad, we actually had to physically lay people off. Here in Mercer Island, obviously, it’s challenging working out of basically a modular trailer. So, there isn’t a public-facing entrance. With public service, I love having volunteer programs or youth explorer programs or other things that we can provide to the community, and right now, we don’t have really the space to do that.

That I would say is a challenge currently.

What have you learned from the experience (of) 35 years?

Well, probably on a humanistic sort of patrol level, I’ve learned over the years, you know, maturing in the job. That it’s important to focus big picture. Sort of that thousand-foot view versus what can be… You can very easily get hyper-focused onto smaller things. And so, in that vein, everyone is a human being. Everyone has their own challenges. We never know what people are going through in a given day. So, everybody is somebody’s mother, brother, son, sister, husband, wife, child, right? It’s important to treat people with respect and kindness and empathy and compassion. And I think here in Mercer Island, the officers really embody that.

What’s the experience been like on Mercer Island thus far?

The community has been amazing. Very supportive, very open, very welcoming. The officers have been amazing as well. It’s a real family feel within the police department. Lots of folks dropping off treats or cookies. Unfortunately, sometimes wandering around the portables trying to figure out how to get in or where we are. But we do meet them there. So, that has been lovely. The welcoming from other city staff members, our city manager and council has been lovely as well. People are just very friendly and very open. It’s really a great community.

What do you hope to achieve moving forward? What are some of your main messages that you want to get across to the community and the staff?

Kind of a sort of a three-tiered model. Number one is obviously we want to make sure that we protect and serve the community, that people feel safe here, that we respond quickly to calls and that we do thorough investigations. It’s also important that our officers have the equipment they need and the support they need to do their job and to go home safely every night. That’s very, very, very important. And then we also serve our city as a whole. We’re one city. All the departments, public works, finance, all of us are together in this. And so, we need to work collaboratively and we do very well with each other to make sure we’re meeting the needs of the city and its population.

I’ve read somewhere else that mentioned something about anti-bullying.

That would definitely be something I’m passionate about. When I was with the sheriff’s office, I was working in the city of Shoreline in the early 2000s and another officer and I were able to get a $50,000 Department of Justice Grant through the Juvenile Accountability Incentive Block Grant to create an anti-bullying program for secondary schools. And that was part and parcel to the legislation in 2002 (with a Senate House bill) that said that there had to be an anti-bullying policy in all schools in the state.

And so (later), I was fortunate enough to get to go into a lot of different schools and arenas and community groups and all kinds of stuff talking about some of the hazards and dangers of the Internet, cyber-bullying and how people could be sort of these keyboard warriors where they think they’re anonymous in what they’re doing where in reality they’re creating a lot of issues for someone else. It can be very, very harmful.

So a passion I’ve had over the last 10 or 15 years is talking with different businesses or community groups about de-escalation, how to de-escalate someone who’s perhaps being verbally aggressive. And then, obviously, preventing any kind of workplace violence.

We should treat people like human beings. We should be kind and respectful.

And again, like I said, being here at Mercer Island, that’s one of the things that struck me with these officers. They’re just amazing and professional, genuine, caring, empathetic. It’s been really, really great.

I wanted to just briefly feed off what’s happened in the last week or so (with the homicide-suicide). There are some tough things that we have to deal with, that you guys have to deal with — like really tough things. What’s the message you try to get across to your officers when these situations arise? And how do you talk to the community about this as well?

I’ve been so impressed with the community response, really focusing on the humanness of the victims in this tragic incident. And coming together as a community to recognize and honor those victims. That’s very powerful. It really, truly shows the spirit and the grace of Mercer Island. For our officers, going into those scenes, it’s pretty awful, as you can imagine. And it’s so tragic for all those involved. And officers are human beings as well. So it’s important to take care of our staff and our officers. Doing critical incident stress debriefings or providing for any needs that might come up because, as you know, officers over time can face sort of cumulative stress. Where when you go 30 some years and you’re going to calls like these, it can really impact a person. So that mental health and wellness is really important to focus on for our staff as well.

What drew you toward the law enforcement realm? Did you want to do this as a kid, maybe (influenced by) family, friends?

It’s so funny because people are like, ‘Do you have any family in law enforcement?’ No, no, no. My mom was adopted, and around 2015, I actually found her birth family living in California. Guess what? Almost all of them are cops. Who knew? Who knew? But initially, yeah, I knew I wanted to do this from about the age of 14 or 15. And how lucky to already know that that’s what you want to do. And I think part of that was kind of a sense of justice and fairness, wanting people to be protected and taken care of. And so, kind of from out of the gate, I focused my studies and focused my life on that kind of service. And luckily got hired at the age of 21, which was pretty awesome. And I had been an exchange student for a year overseas, so I had a little bit more life experience. And yeah, I brought some various things to the job, but I would not do anything differently. I would not change the path. I’m very fortunate and blessed to have had this career.