SEATTLE — A Seattle police officer who has been on the force for over 40 years is filing a $10,000,000 claim against the Seattle Police Department (SPD) for allegations of racial and gender discrimination within the workplace.
Detective Denise "Cookie" Bouldin has been a trailblazer in the Seattle community since she became a Seattle police officer in the late 1970s. When she began her tenure with SPD, there was only one other African-American woman in the department.
Bouldin has been an integral part of the Seattle community for decades. In 2006, Bouldin started a chess club for Rainier Beach youth. Bouldin felt as though chess served as an appropriate metaphor for life's important decisions, and it instilled both strategy and patience. In September 2022, a park was named in her likeness in Rainier Beach.
"It's really important to understand that Detective Bouldin did not want to be in a place where litigation was something that would occur during her career in relation to her service to communities," said Detective Bouldin's attorney, James Bible. "She's proud to have been an officer, and she wants to continue to do exactly that. But she also wants to create authentic change and not just window dressing."
