State Troopers 2016 Dinner – Award Recipients

Tony Lo Bianco

His best known film performances are as Sal Boca in the 5 Academy Awards winner The French Connection, with Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider; as Ray Fernandez in cult classic The Honeymoon Killers; as Peter in God Told Me To; Bloodbrothers with Richard Gere; City Heat with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds; Oliver Stone’s Nixon with Anthony Hopkins; The Juror with Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore; and F.I.S.T. with Sylvester Stallone, Kill the Irishman, alongside Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer, and Christopher Walken and The Engagement Ring with Lainie Kazan and Patricia Heaton.

Capt. Donna Roman

She is the owner of Blue Force Films, an independent film production company in New Jersey. Donna has produced and directed several award-winning documentaries, including The Ultimate Betrayal: A Survivor’s Journey that depicts how she survived three decades of domestic violence at the hands of her father, a former peace officer. Also, she is the creator and host of two radio talk shows, Tough Justice and The Jersey Beat.

Captain Donna Roman served 29 years in law enforcement in the Patrol Division of both the Essex County Police and Caldwell Police Departments. Born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, Donna attended Rutgers University-Newark and achieved Phi Beta Kappa honors in Criminal Justice studies and is currently pursuing a master’s degree.

Donna was the first female and minority officer hired by the Caldwell Police Department. As a Captain, she was the second in command of the Caldwell Police Department and in charge of the Patrol Division/Operations, the Domestic Violence/Victim Services Unit, the Domestic Violence Response Team and Dispatch Communications. In 2006, Captain Roman received a National Positive Force Award for heroism in the line of duty, sustaining injuries during the rescue of a victim of domestic violence.

Donna is the founder and President of Women in Blue, a fraternal association that mentors, advocates and honors the role, work and accomplishments of women in law enforcement; and Violence Intervention and Prevention Specialists, a business that offers consulting, training, and workshops on domestic violence, sexual assault, bullying, workplace violence and more.

Dorian Wilson

Now Professor of Surgery, Dr. Wilson joined the faculty of New Jersey Medical School’s Department of Surgery in 1988 as one of the founding members of the Division of Liver Transplantation and Hepatobiliary Surgery. He was an integral part of the team that performed the first liver transplant in the state of New Jersey and has since steadily contributed to the growth of the specialty of liver transplantation on a local and national level.

His faculty appointment at New Jersey Medical School was punctuated by service in the U.S. Air Force (commissioned Major), where he received the meritorious service medal. Dr. Wilson served at the Wilford Hall United States Air Force Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas as an attending physician where he performed liver, kidney and pancreas transplants until he returned to New Jersey Medical School in 1996. Upon his return, he performed renal transplants at St. Barnabas Medical Center, served as Medical Director of the N.J. Organ and Tissue Sharing Network, and served as an attending in the Emergency/Trauma division before rejoining the liver transplant team at New Jersey Medical School in 1999. In 2006, Dr. Wilson was selected as Program Director for the General Surgery Residency Program Director and served in that capacity until 2013.

Prosecutor Joseph D. Coronato graduated from Upsala College in East Orange, New Jersey, receiving his Bachelor of Arts Degree in June 1972; graduated from North Carolina Central University Law School in Durham, North Carolina receiving his Juris Doctor Degree in May 1975; was admitted to the New Jersey Bar and the U. S. District Court in 1975; to the Washington, D.C. Bar in 1979; to the U. S. Court of Appeals Federal Circuit in 1985, and to Practice in U. S. Court Supreme Court in 1991.
In 1976 Prosecutor Coronato was appointed a Deputy Attorney General and assigned to the Division of Criminal Justice; in 1981 he was employed as an Assistant Prosecutor at the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office. In 1984 Prosecutor Coronato established a private practice in Toms River. Once in private practice, he became a Municipal Prosecutor in at least 15 towns in Ocean County and has prosecuted at the local, county, state and federal level. On March 22, 2013 he was sworn in as Prosecutor, the Chief Law Enforcement Officer in Ocean County, New Jersey.

Heather Mac Donald

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize. Mac Donald’s work at City Journal has canvassed a range of topics, including higher education, immigration, policing and “racial” profiling, homelessness and homeless advocacy, criminal-justice reform, and race relations. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, and The New Criterion. Mac Donald’s newest book, The War on Cops (2016), warns that raced-based attacks on the criminal-justice system, from the White House on down, are eroding the authority of law and putting lives at risk.
Other previous works include The Burden of Bad Ideas (2001), a collection of Mac Donald’s City Journal essays, details the effects of the 1960s counterculture’s destructive march through America’s institutions. In The Immigration Solution: A Better Plan than Today’s (2007), coauthored with Victor Davis Hanson and Steven Malanga, she chronicles the effects of broken immigration laws and proposes a practical solution to securing the country’s porous borders. In Are Cops Racist?(2010), another City Journal anthology, Mac Donald investigates the workings of the police, the controversy over so-called racial profiling, and the anti-profiling lobby’s harmful effects on black Americans.
A non-practicing lawyer, Mac Donald clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and was an attorney-advisor in the Office of the General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and a volunteer with the Natural Resources Defense Council. She has testified before numerous U.S. House and Senate Committees. In 1998, Mac Donald was appointed to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s task force on the City University of New York. In 2004, she received the Civilian Valor Award from the New Jersey State Law Enforcement Officers. In 2008, Mac Donald received the Integrity in Journalism Award from the New York State Shields, as well as the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration from the Center for Immigration Studies. In 2012, she received the Quill & Badge Award for Excellence in Communication from the International Union of Police Associations.