Sandy Hein was a Police Officer with the City of Alexandria, Virginia for 23 years. She worked for 19 years as a detective in the Criminal Investigations Section. 16 of those years were spent working sex crimes, first in the Youth Unit and then in the Violent Crimes Unit where her primary responsibility was Adult Sex Crimes. She served as a negotiator on the Alexandria Police Department’s Hostage Negotiations Team for ten years.

She was a certified Instructor with the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) and served on the training faculty of the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance (VSDVAA). She was an associate instructor at the Northern Virginia Criminal Justice Training Academy’s Introduction to Hostage/Crisis Negotiations Course and is trained in Critical Incident Stress Management. She has trained law enforcement officers and allied professionals in Virginia, Florida, New Mexico, and Idaho in the areas of sexual violence, SART response, crisis intervention, hostage negotiation, and police investigative procedures.

She was part of a collaborative effort that developed the Virginia Statewide Protocol on Sexual Violence, helped create the Commonwealth’s Attorneys Services Council ‘Trauma to Trial’ program, and served on the Treatment and Intervention Committee for Governor Kaine’s State Commission on Sexual Violence. She has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice from Old Dominion University. She currently teaches Criminal Justice at the local high school and is a negotiations consultant for The Black Swan Group.