PPOA Board Member
Crime Analyst, LASD
jwalker@ppoa.com
Crime Analyst Danielle Ponce De Leon was exhausted. She had spent most of her Saturday RDO assisting her Homicide team on a murder in Norwalk.
Danielle was jarred awake by her phone ringing. She saw the name of her partner, Crime Analyst Luz Luna, and she was relieved that it wasn’t a spam call. Still, she also knew that since she and Luz’s Homicide team were on call that weekend, it meant that she was going to need to quickly shift from drifting off to a peaceful slumber to full-on Crime Analyst, firing up her laptop and getting every detail over whatever case Luz was calling about.
An unthinkable act of horror had just been perpetuated at a dance hall in Monterey Park. At least 20 people had been shot, and the suspect was on the run.
Danielle reached out to the handling detectives, who confirmed that it was their case and proceeded to provide her with the little information they had. The most important information was that it was a mass casualty event and that the suspect was unknown and still outstanding.
When they were both at the office, they were provided photos of the suspect and the suspect’s vehicle. During this time, a lot of information was coming to them about possible involved vehicles, and they needed to vet out what was good information and what was not. They had to work up leads or tips they were receiving on the incident and make sure that information got relayed to detectives on scene. This required a tremendous effort, but Danielle and Luz were the perfect Crime Analysts to sift through the tons of data coming their way.
They used all their tools to attempt to identify the suspect, but eventually, license plate reader cameras saved the day. As Luz and Danielle were looking at all the white Chevy vans scanned in the area of both shooting locations, they quickly discovered that a lot of white Chevy vans frequented that area. So, they needed to make sure they were looking at the correct vehicle and the correct suspect.
At 3 a.m., just a few hours after they arrived at the office, they located a white Chevy van with a registered owner who looked very similar to the suspect in the surveillance footage. They sent that off to detectives, who agreed that the suspect looked very similar. Then, the usual was done on the suspect: work-ups, six packs, cell phone pings, bulletins, etc. Luz and Danielle worked tirelessly through the night to provide information on the suspect and as much of a background as they could find to the handling detectives. They also assisted with any requests from detectives at the scene, trying to identify victims and their next of kin, providing information to surveillance teams attempting to locate the possible suspect, and creating timelines for the handling detectives.
They noticed there was a license plate scan in the City of Torrance shortly after the mass shooting, so detectives notified police officers in the City of Torrance of the suspect’s vehicle information. After hours of combing through phone records and looking into the background of this suspect to provide detectives with areas to look for the suspect, they were notified that Torrance police officers were detaining a white Chevy van whose license plates were cold-plated. Quick thinking by the Torrance officers to run the plate through their license plate reader system helped them realize that the vehicle was not the same vehicle that was in front of them. They knew that was suspicious, so they ended up detaining the vehicle. Upon the traffic stop, the driver pulled into a parking lot and committed suicide inside the van.
Luz and Danielle worked tirelessly throughout that day, assisting with anything that needed to be done. Just because the suspect was presumably deceased, their jobs did not end there. They finally left the office around 9 p.m. that night. They made a great team and assisted each other seamlessly throughout the entire incident. A lot was happening within a quick period of time, but they worked together and got the job done. They are truly the personification of 621 Strong.