Two weeks into running the largest U.S. police force, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch had a crucial decision to make: whether to publicize a photo of the man suspected of killing United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson. Investigators had combed through thousands of hours of surveillance footage and got the break they needed, a video of the suspect off his mask at a Manhattan hostel. A still photo from the feed provided a clear view of the man’s face. Releasing it publicly risked tipping him off that investigators were making progress; sending it out increased the chances someone would recognize him. As concern grew that the suspect was fleeing farther from the scene, Tisch and her chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, made the call to publish it. “We had reason to believe he had left New York City, and I wanted to get that photo out to a national audience,” Tisch tells the Wall Street Journal.
Hundreds of tips rolled in, culminating with Luigi Mangione’s arrest at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pa., after an employee alerted police that he was eating there. Tisch, a Harvard graduate whose family controls the conglomerate Loews Corp., held a series of positions at the police department and was central to modernizing its work. A friend recommended she work for the police department and made a connection for her there.
”It was very random, but one of the luckiest things in my life,” she said. Finding the Mangione photo was a marriage of old-school sleuthing from Kenny’s detectives and advanced technology Tisch had spent years championing. Detectives working in pairs traced the suspect from the Midtown crime scene to the hostel, looking block by block for any and every video camera they could see. Other footage came through the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System, a powerful tool that gives police real-time access to police cameras, license plate readers and private security cameras around the city. Tisch spent much of her time developing the system during her first go-round at the NYPD. When she visited detectives last week, many had the technology up on their computer screens.
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