by Timothy Rutt
Virginia Cordova likes to call herself "the detective without the badge and the gun."
A civilian employee of the Altadena Sheriff's Station, Cordova has been the station's crime analyst for about two and a half years. She takes the raw data from police reports, create statistics, and tries to spot trends to help the cops on the street to do their job.
One example was the recent wave of thefts of Chevy Silverado tailgates. Cordova said they have been targets of thieves for awhile, but the sudden increase in late 2011-early 2012 was "very odd to have in our area," and suggestive that they were being targeted by a specific thief. Sheriffs deputies identified a Pasadena man as a suspect, and arrested him Feb. 7, reportedly with three of the stolen tailgates in his possession.
"One of my main focuses right now is property crime," Cordova said. "My job involves looking at crime patterns, trends, formulating patterns based on the information I obtain from reports."
Cordova says her day starts by reading the deputies' reports, and then the calls for service, which may not generate a report. From this, "I gather information such as suspect description, the time of the incident, the day of the incident, what was stolen" and puts it into a database to help identify patterns. She also keeps contact with the Pasadena Police Dept., to see if any of their calls may fit identifiable patterns.
She also provides statistical reports, and takes information from the sheriff's department statistical unit, analyzes the numbers, and sees if they correlate to the crimes that occur in Altadena.
"Everything with me is just based on paper," Cordova said. "That's why it's important for the deputy who's taking the report to get the information from the victim, because that's how I do my analysis."
Cordova has been working in law enforcement for ten years. Prior to her position in Altadena, she was a dispatcher for the Glendale Police Department. Law enforcement is a family affair: her fiancee is a Glendale police officer.
Cordova says she likes working with the public: "they see everything before [law enforcement]" She said that, if residents see anything suspicious or out of the ordinary, call the sheriff's station first and foremost, and then send her an email: "I will follow up, make a call, and see what I can get."
For someone who works extensively with computers, she says that's how she got her job: "I got into crime analysis after graduating from college with a bachelor's in sociology," she said. "I got my job at the Sheriff's Department just by looking online."
Cordova's email is: vzcordov@lasd.org
