— Lt. John Aerts,

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s

Department

rape case going cold. A

media-circulated suspect

composite generating no

leads. A brand-new regional data shar-

ing system that had barely been tested.

Gary, Indiana, Police Chief

Garnett Watson figured he had

nothing to lose. He logged onto the

new system and started searching

addresses near where the rape had

occurred. Before long, the system

returned a hit — the name of a subject

with whom neighboring Hammond

Police Department officers have had

contact. The subject was already

in jail on a different sexual assault

charge.

This conclusion probably wouldn’t

have been reached had the Gary and

Hammond police departments not

been sharing data via the Global

Justice XML Data Model (GJXDM).

A way for law enforcement agencies to

share records and other data without

investing in new systems or paying

their existing vendors to customize

interfaces with each other, the

GJXDM underlies several regional

data sharing initiatives around the

United States. National adoptions

includetheAmberAlertsystemandthe

Regional Information Sharing System

(RISS), but local agencies are sharing

too. Following are just a few examples

of how police are putting GJXDM to

use in their broader communities.

T h e

N o r t h w e s t

I n d i a n a

Criminal Justice Network

The Northwest Indiana Criminal

Justice Network began when two

agencies, already using New World

Systems’ Aegis product, recognized

the resources they could leverage by

implementing New World’s Regional

Data Sharing (RDS) product.

According to Ken Lang, New World’s

vice president of marketing, RDS

extracts data from Aegis and other

disparate public safety systems into

an XML document, then formats

the data using Extensible Stylesheet

Language (XSL). It therefore supports

a subset of the GJXDM Version 3.0,

including cases, offenses, subjects,

property, booking, warrants,

arrests and accidents. The

RDS version featuring

complete

GJXDM

conformance (as far

as the standard has

been written) will

be released later

this year.

R D S

became

By Christa Miller

A

COMMUNICATIONS SPOTLIGHT

The Los Angeles county justice

community had been part of a

data sharing effort for nearly 20

years before being approached to

join RISA in 2004. “We’ve been

using real-time data sharing with

the California Department of

Justice since 2001,” explains retired

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s

Department Lt. John Aerts, now a

consultant with his former agency.

“When our officers make an arrest,

the subject’s entire state criminal

record is pulled into our system

within minutes.” Aerts, who’s

involved with the GJXDM Task

Force, as well as the initiative to

replace the National Incident-Based

Reporting System (NIBRS) with the

National Data Exchange (NDEx), is

well acquainted with the standard.

RISA originated as a local San

Diego Harbor Police Department

(HPD) program to help predict

potential terrorist and criminal

activities. Then-Chief Betty Kelepecz

wanted to integrate pre-incident

indicator data from San Diego’s

Airport Access Control System,

Marine Operations Information

System and Port Activity Data

System, as well as field incident report

(FIR) data stored in HPD’s Records

Management System (RMS). “We

use FIRs when we make contact

with suspicious persons whose

activities, like videotaping bridges,

aren’t enough to arrest them,” Aerts

says. “Every officer writes FIRs, and

every agency’s RMS should handle

them. They’re a compact version of

full incident reports, so everything

— person, vehicle, location and

narrative information — is shown.

We wanted all the officers to see

whether other agencies had come in

contact with the same subjects.”

With all these components

in mind, Kelepecz turned to San

Diego-based Crossflo Systems to

provide a scaleable data sharing

platform for the pre-incident

indicator project. She also wanted to

use the suite of intelligence analysis

and visualization tools developed

by Memex Inc. to turn the collected

data into actionable intelligence,

hoping the network would show

patterns of potential behavior she

wouldn’t otherwise have observed.

Knowing other agencies would

benefit from the same information

collected in San Diego, she asked

Crossflo to regionalize her project.

TheMemexintelligencemanagement

and analysis system had already

been integrated with Crossflo’s

data sharing solution, so Crossflo

needed only to use its middleware

solution, DataExchange, to give the

additional agencies a way to share

their FIR data. Aerts says not every

agency saved FIRs in an RMS, so

the project needed DataExchange

to consolidate all the FIRs with the

other information. “DataExchange

allows information to move among

disparate systems via GJXDM,”

says Aerts. “Without it, we would’ve

had to pay each repository’s vendor

to publish information on their

separate servers, then translate it

into XML for subscribers — the

other departments — to view.

DataExchange bypasses that step

by connecting its DataExchange

Agent to each database to take care

of all translation, publication and

subscription issues. It allows the

agency to do business as it always

has: once an officer hits ‘Send,’ the

agent moves that information to

the DataExchange Server, where it

publishes for the subscriber to see.”

Aerts says this solution respects

agencies’data ownership needs. “The

DataExchange Server maintains

publishing and subscription rules.

Each originating agency decides

what percentages of its data can

be seen by public defenders, courts,

other law enforcement agencies

and other criminal justice entities,”

he says. “The server acts like a

traffic cop, directing the flow of

information.”

The RISA pilot proved the

GJXDM’sabilitytomoveinformation

and that it could work as a functional

solution. “Depending on the number

of agencies wanting to join, you

might need to scale it larger, but

this solution could be implemented

anywhere in the nation,” Aerts says.

CrimeCog’s small-agency

solution

CrimeCog Technologies Inc.’s

solution is unique in that its target

market is composed of small- to

medium-sized agencies. Although

the company prefers not to disclose

its client list or grant media

contacts, chief technology officer

Sam Basilico notes its network is

growing quickly after just two years

of being in business.

CrimeCog’s origins lie in TRW

Inc., which once provided mission-

critical applications to the Centers

for Disease Control and Prevention,

the American Red Cross, and

automobile manufacturers. TRW’s

Criminal

Justice

Information

System (CJIS) had been deployed

to small rural communities when

Northrop Grumman acquired

TRW and shut down all application

service provider (ASP) projects,

including CJIS. At that point,

CrimeCog’s founders, one of whom

is a retired command officer with

the Michigan State Police, began

working with Northrop Grumman

to license its solution, E*Justice

System, to pick up where CJIS had

left off. (Northrop Grumman is

“You can use the

GJXDM to share

anything; in fact,

the more resources

you add ... to an

intelligence-driven

police system, the

better.”

— Lt. John Aerts, Los Angeles County

Sheriff’s Department

COMMUNICATIONS SPOTLIGHT

Christa Miller is a freelance

writer based in southern Maine. She

specializes in public safety issues

and can be contacted through her

Web site www.christammiller.com.

COMMUNICATIONS SPOTLIGHT

Electronically reprinted with permission from Law Enforcement Technology, May 2005

11995 El Camino Real Suite 302

San Diego, California 92130

Telephone: 858.724.2216

Toll-Free: 888.583.0333

Fax: 858.724.2224

www.crossflo.com

So much in this article to enjoy and savor about Crossflo and law enforcement. Page 3 is the most direct. But there is more info as you read along. I am not sure about the date of the article, but it does mention "data exchange " so it is not that old. Also there is a part towards the end that say organizations have to be compliant with the systems to get funding from grants. More incentive to join the system. And there is discussion of cost savings. etc....