Passing of Former NOBLE National President - Police Chief Jimmy L. Wilson

One of four brothers, Wilson was born in 1946 in Durham, North Carolina. He joined the United States Army in 1964, serving for four years and traveling to Turkey as an intelligence officer. Back in the United States in 1968, he was hired as a patrolman by the Washington, D.C., police department. In 1974 he earned a bachelor's degree in administration of justice at Washington's American University, and he later pursued graduate studies there. As an administrator, he would lobby vigorously for educational opportunities to benefit the officers under his charge.

As a Washington police officer, Wilson several times found himself in the line of fire in cases that made newspaper headlines. Rising through the ranks in the city's sixth police precinct and reorganizing the department's homicide investigations unit, Wilson headed investigations into the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, during which he was responsible for the arrest of shooter John Hinckley, and into a 1982 Potomac River airliner crash that killed 79 people. He also led investigations of terrorist activities. 

Career: Washington, DC, police department, patrolman, homicide investigations supervisor, internal affairs investigator, 1968-86; Washington, DC, sixth police precinct deputy chief, 1987-92; Jackson, MS, police department, chief of police, 1992-94; Canton, MS, police department, chief of police, 1994-97; Suffolk, VA, police department, chief of police, 1997-2001; Virginia State University, Petersburg, VA, chief of police, 2003.

National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) National President 2002-2003.

Funeral arrangements are pending.