Karen Lynch

Good Cop, Bad Daughter: Memoirs of an Unlikely Police Officer Karen Lynch

Karen Lynch was an unlikely person to become one of the first female cops in San Francisco. Raised by a counter-culture tribe in summer of love Haight-Ashbury, she was taught to despise "The Man." But when the San Francisco Police Department was forced by court order to hire women, she found herself compelled to prove to the world that women could cut it as cops, a betrayal that caused her police-loathing mother to brand her a Nazi. Good Cop, Bad Daughter is an often humorous, poignant adventure story of Karen's journey from pot-smoking Cal student, to Renaissance bar serving wench, to street cop. Recounting the story of the first women cops, she reflects on life with her bi-polar mother, and comes to realize her chaotic past unwittingly provided the perfect foundation for her chosen career. As she finds family and acceptance in a men's club that never wanted her as a member, she fears she will one day face her mother, not as a daughter but as an arresting officer. When that day came, and it did, her private life and her career would collide dramatically.