2008 Inaugural JISP Beacon for Justice Award Winner is Wisconsin Practitioner Gerry Coleman

Gerry Leaves Practitioners with a "Homework Assignment"

Written by Tammy Woodhams, JISP Staff, NCJA

At his retirement in July 2008, Gerry Coleman, was the Director of the Crime Information Bureau, responsible for Wisconsin's law enforcement computer network, state criminal history record repository, stolen vehicle and wanted person files, fingerprint identification and a handgun hotline. For the past 25 years, Gerry was an administrative manager for the Wisconsin Department of Justice. During his career as a national technology leader, Gerry was the FBI/CJIS and NLETS Systems Officer for Wisconsin. He is a past president of Nlets, served as chair of the Joint Task Force for rap sheet standardization, chair of the Global Security Architecture Committee, and member of the FBI's NCIC and Identification Services subcommittees. He chaired Wisconsin's Justice Integration Technical Committee, and chaired the XML workgroup advising the National Institute on Standards and Technology (NIST) on revisions to the fingerprint transmission standard. He is known by many as "the father of XML."

He has been a mentor to many information sharing practitioners over the years. The 1st Annual JISP Beacon Award was presented to Gerry at the 27th Annual NAJIS Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bonnie Locke, Director for Program Management for Nlets and former JISP Board President, shared a story about how Gerry encouraged her during the early days of her career. Receiving the award in front of 150 of his peers, Gerry was recognized for his leadership and contributions to the justice information sharing field, and serving as a "Beacon for Justice" throughout his career.

In his characteristic thoughtful manner and style, Gerry left practitioners with the following homework assignment:

• Ask your staff "how is wireless technology going to change what we do?"
• Read the NIST Standard #10 on Facial Recognition.
  http://fingerprint.nist.gov/standard/ (link to PDF copies of the NIST standard [XML and non-XML, which both have identical information about facial images]. Look at Subject Acquisition Profiles and MPEG4 Feature Point Coding, located on page 88 and 95 of the XML version.)
• Reclaim DNA---it belongs in Justice Information Sharing.

Gerry continues to be a member of JISP and his contact information is in the membership directory. Gerry is enjoying retirement and spending more time with his family. He is also a musician playing in several bands, including the Black Diamond Band.