Credit to the force

The Monroe Police Department has retired its first female officer, receiving honors from the police chief and city council last Thursday for her service to the community.

Detective Sgt. Cindy Chessie stepped down after 25 years with the agency on June 29. She will start training for her new job as executive director at the Sky Valley Food Bank in about a month.

“Everything is right about this,” said Chessie, who has volunteered at the food bank for many years. “It’s a great move.”

Chessie will replace Neil Watkins, who held the position for the past seven years. The decision was last minute, but the opportunity came at the right time, Chessie said. She said she is ready to work even more closely with the public, and spend her days at a slightly slower pace.

At last week’s Monroe City Council meeting, Chessie was honored specifically for her professionalism and integrity, said Monroe Police Chief Tim Quenzer. He presented her with a chief’s coin, saying, “You probably deserve many of those.”

Mayor Geoffrey Thomas said it was a blessing the detective sergeant’s next stint will be at the food bank, and offered her a key to the city.

“Sgt. Chessie has continually impressed me by going above and beyond, setting an example for all to follow, showing strength in her work ethic and commitment to excellence,” Quenzer said. 

Chessie said law enforcement was not a career she was initially interested in pursuing. She grew up in Sultan, and attended the Sultan School District. She said she’d had her eye on education.

Chessie took some college courses after high school, and then travelled and tried out odd jobs in Alaska, Florida and California. She said she had been seeking an experience outside of small-town life, but eventually returned to the area, where she “learned it wasn’t so bad.”

Instead of going into teaching, Chessie married and became a stay-at-home mother to her two sons. When her youngest was heading off to kindergarten in 1988, she decided it was time to get back into the workforce. The Sultan Police Department was looking for a part-time records clerk, and she applied.

While at the post she was encouraged to learn more about her job by attending the Reserve Law Enforcement Academy. The training takes about 249 hours. From there she became a reserve officer, having liked what she was introduced to through the course. Before long she became a full-time officer.

Chessie moved to the Monroe department in 1992. She was the ninth officer hired at the agency. She is one of a handful of women who have been hired at the department, including former police chief Colleen Wilson. The city and MPD were much smaller when starting out as a patrol officer on the graveyard shift, she recalled.

Chessie’s resume includes a long list of different tasks and duties she fulfilled on the job.

She has been a D.A.R.E. officer, taught Personal Safety program curriculum to the Monroe School District’s eighth-graders, was a detective and then promoted to detective sergeant in 2001.

Quenzer said Chessie has always been an advocate for the field and community. She’s organized events such as a local version of the international Coffee With a Cop program, volunteered for Special Olympics Washington for nearly two decades, and acted as president of the Monroe Police Officer’s Association, which focuses on local charity work.

Many of Chessie’s efforts in her off hours were motivated by on-the-job experiences.

As supervisor Chessie investigated the MPD’s largest felonies, including child abuse and domestic violence cases. Chessie has also been an “influential voice on the Child Protection Team,” which is a multi-disciplinary group that “staffs some of the most difficult CPS cases in the state,” Quenzer said.

Chessie received a grant to start up Cops and Cribs, which provides free beds for small children who don’t have a safe sleeping situation, Quenzer said. Chessie said she has responded to and investigated five child death cases throughout her career. She believes at least one could have been prevented had the child not been sharing a bed.

Chessie is also the founder of the annual Jamie Biendl Memorial Run. The event benefits the Beyond The Badge Foundation, a program that honors officers who have died in the line of duty.

Biendl was a prison guard who worked at the Monroe Correctional Complex. She was strangled by an inmate in 2011.

Chessie said she never met Biendl in person, but worked so closely with her family that she felt like she knew her, a common sentiment with more involved cases. She said she wanted to create something that would help keep the officer’s memory alive.

More recently, Coffee With a Cop was started to create more connections between law enforcement and Monroe residents, Chessie said. It was found through development of the MPD’s strategic plan that stakeholders wanted more face time with officers, she said.

Chessie said it will be hard to leave behind her team, the members of whom she has worked with for no less than eight years, and a few for many more.

“I have worked with the best people on Earth,” she said while tearing up at last Tuesday’s meeting, surrounded by family and friends. “They care about this community and their families and everybody in the city...”