Behind the Badge
The Tustin Police Department has crossed another name off its Most Wanted list.
Daniel David Courson was arrested Monday, June 11 in Boise, Idaho following a coordinated search that included multiple agencies, including the Tustin Police Department, the FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force, and the Boise Police Department, which made the arrest.
Tustin’s Most Wanted, displayed on a television as people walk into the Tustin Police Department, includes Daniel Courson, bottom second from left.
Photo by Steven Georges/Behind the Badge OC
Courson, 45, was walking back to a stolen truck he’d been driving since May 2017 when police arrested him in Boise, Idaho, the Tustin Police Department stated. He’s being held at the Ada County Jail and will be extradited to Colorado on bank robbery charges. Eventually he will be extradited to California on burglary and parole violation charges.
He’s been on the run from authorities since June 2015, when he was caught on security camera leaving the scene of a burglary at a Tustin home. Since leaving California, where he was on parole after serving time for a string of 19 bank robberies, police believe Courson has robbed at least seven banks.
The Tustin Police Department, FBI, and California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are among the agencies that were looking for Daniel Courson.
Photos provided by the Tustin Police Department.
Courson has used aliases – several dozen, police said – and has earned money by teaching guitar lessons, filing life insurance paperwork, mowing lawns, and robbing banks. He’s known for assimilating into middle-class communities and developing relationships in those communities.
Police tracked the wanted man from California to Park City, Utah, but Courson was tipped off before an arrest could be made. From there, authorities traced him to Colorado.
Once in the Rocky Mountain state, police believe Courson robbed several Denver-area banks. A teller handed over bait money during a Bank of the West robbery on March 16, 2018, which ended in a dangerous chase during which the driver tossed a backpack containing stolen cash and a black pellet gun out of the vehicle, police said.
A Tustin Police Department detective has been searching for Daniel Courson for the past three years.
Photo provided by the Tustin Police Department
The authorities searching for Courson included the California Department of Corrections, police departments in Tustin and Carlsbad, California; Park City, Utah; Boulder, Colorado; Boise, Idaho; and the FBI Rocky Mountain Safe Streets Task Force. A $1,000,000 warrant was issued for Courson for burglary and for absconding from parole, the Tustin Police Department stated.
