“The Dancing Police Officer”
Lynn will speak her truth about being a dancer, police officer, single parent without child support, and stepmother. Her work in domestic violence and mental health continues to dominate her personal and professional life. To be a bridge between conflicting parties and bring peace is her path “less taken.” She strives to empower and inspire young women to show them it’s okay to be you, as Betty Friedan’s book “The Feminine Mystique” showed her at age fourteen.
Lynn Hesse is the award-winning author of the novels: Well of Rage, Murder in Mobile, A Matter of Respect, Murder in Mobile, Book 2, Another Kind of Hero, and The Forty Knots Burn. As a modern ballet dancer and former law enforcement officer, she writes and lives with her husband and his rescue cats in Stone Mountain.
She was Police Officer Standard Training (POST) certified as an officer at Georgia State University. She was one of the first female officers in uniform in DeKalb County. In 1980 she won the DeKalb County Police Department Academic Award, and in 1997 she won the Larry Quinn Award for academic merit and honorable service. She was also a detective in the Traffic Specialist Unit, handling death notifications, specialized accident scene investigation documentation, and criminal prosecution of offenders.
She was part of a seven-woman coalition that fought DeKalb County to allow women to make rank in the 1980s. She was part of a team who rallied for peer counseling and the Employee Assistance Program. As a sergeant, she developed a squad to answer domestic violence 911 calls in the highest crime area of the county. While a lieutenant, she supervised approximately thirty patrol officers and a Mobile Crisis Unit consisting of a nurse and an officer who answered calls involving the mentally ill.
Lynn retired from law enforcement in 2003. She is a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, Sisters-in-Crime, Walton Writers, National League of American Pen Women, International Women Police Association, and Crime Writers Association, UK.
- Facilitator: Wade Marbaugh
- Musician: Mick Kinney