Law & Order: SVU: Velasco Earns Benson’s Praise in Complex Case

Law & Order: SVU is giving Det. Joe Velasco (Octavio Pisano) his time to shine this week as the somewhat mysterious detective has to keep his own neighborhood from turning on itself when he takes on a case that’s a little too close to home for comfort. Spoiler-filled recap ahead for Law & Order: SVU – Season 26, Episode 12 “Extinguished”.

We kick off this episode with a terrifying attack in a Washington Heights park, in which a girl named Anna (Mariana Garzón Toro) was raped and her friend Moses (Andres Rodriguez) was beaten up. While they’re both cooperating with police by agreeing to a rape kit and giving a description of their attacker, they’re about the only ones who are willing to help, as the neighborhood isn’t exactly keen on cops.

It also happens to be Velasco’s neighborhood, so the pressure is on him to find the rapist quickly before his own neighbors turn on him. He’s finding the case hits closer to home than he expected too, as his noisy downstairs neighbor Danny (Ethan Jones Romero) ends up getting arrested for beating up a guy he thought matched the suspect’s description.

Danny’s a security guard and he always wanted to be a cop, so he was trying his hand at a little vigilante justice, but he beat up the wrong guy, so that’s not very helpful. Especially because when the police release the wrong guy, it sparks protests in the neighborhood from people who think the cops aren’t doing their jobs right.

With that kind of sentiment in the air, Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) advises Velasco to lean on his neighbors. So he puts in a good word to have Danny’s assault charges plead down to a misdemeanor — and Danny is so grateful he helps the SVU get the word out about the false ID.

The big break in the case then comes when another teenage girl is attacked in the same neighborhood. She fought back and her attacker fled on foot, but not before she spotted a zodiac tattoo on him. Benson calls in a lockdown, and the whole neighborhood comes together to hunt him down. And while they were a little bit overexcited to find him — and beat him up a little — the cops finally got their perp. And Benson is very impressed with Velasco’s ability to connect with his neighborhood, telling him he had “command presence” during the difficult situation.

Velasco seems to feel differently about his neighborhood too — he even connects Danny with the auxiliary police force and calls in a favor with Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T) to get him working the streets in Washington Heights.

I loved getting to see more of Velasco in an episode that really allowed him to shine.

This article was adapted from the latest episode of PopCulture Social Call, streaming weekdays on PopCulture.com’s YouTube channel. You can now watch this episode, which is embedded in the above article.