DPD Recognizes Officer Of The Month
Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
The Dalton Police Department named its Officer of the Award winner at Tuesday morning's meeting of the Public Safety Commission. Master Patrol Officer Sean Hudson was recognized as the June 2025 recipient of the award for his work to coordinate the agency's Summer Law Cadet Program. The annual summer program brings together students from the high schools in Whitfield County with first responders from the DPD, Whitfield County Sheriff's Office, and other agencies to learn about careers in law enforcement. The program is hosted by the local American Legion post which also provides support for the program.
Caption: DPD Assistant Chief Chris Crossen (left) recognized MPO Sean Hudson (right) as the June 2025 Officer of the Month
"The program has been around for a while," Assistant Chief Chris Crossen told the members of the Public Safety Commission. "Several years ago, MPO Hudson started coordinating the program and it has really taken it to a new level. It used to be, you know, 15 or 20 students from Dalton High School with our school resource officers and some members of the American Legion... well, it is now expanded to where it encompasses every high school in Whitfield County, it encompasses the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office, other first responders, and they really give (students) an experience in the summer of what it's like to be a first responder."
Crossen also told the PSC that Officer Hudson's work is being used as a blueprint for other American Legion posts around Georgia to create similar programs for their communities.
"Michael Schwartz, the Georgia State Vice Commander of the American Legion, came and observed the camp because he heard about it, and he now wants to take this to other American Legion posts around the state and make this the model of how a program like this could be run during the summer," Crossen said.
"You know, when we started, there were several other states in the country that do something similar. We were the first in Georgia," Officer Hudson told the PSC. "I believe we’re now up to six (cities) now (with similar programs) and I just handled a call from Ellijay and they would like us to come out and help them get started with the program so they’d be number seven."
"It’s exciting to hear that you can have all of those entities pulling together, especially in the summertime," said Truman Whitfield, the PSC chairman. "Sometimes you've got a lot of free time that doesn't get capitalized on by the youth and if you can pull that many resources together for that kind of participation, it sounds like you’ve basically designed a model program for the state... that's pretty impressive."
