Dani Beck

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Law & Order character
Detective Dani Beck
Time on show	2006 (Season 8)
Preceded by	Olivia Benson (returned to active duty with SVU)
Succeeded by	Olivia Benson (as temporary replacement while undercover)
First appearance	Clock
Last appearance	Cage
Portrayed by	Connie Nielsen

Detective Dani Beck is a fictional character on the TV crime drama series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit portrayed by Connie Nielsen.

[edit] Character Biography

Born in Denmark, Beck is a multi-lingual warrants detective who comes from a specialized unit of the New York City Police. She is assigned to the Special Victims Unit as Elliot Stabler's partner after his previous partner, Olivia Benson, is reassigned to a special temporary operation with the FBI. She left the squad after Benson returned several weeks later.

Beck is portrayed as a dedicated cop, to the point of being described as "overzealous" by the precinct's captain, Donald Cragen. Prior to her reassignment in SVU, Beck was averaging over a dozen arrests a month, in a department (warrants) where eight arrests is considered above average. It has been implied that she might have been transferred from her old unit because her eagerness created problems; Cragen mentions that she has at least one case of false arrest on her record. Later in that same episode, Beck leads Stabler to arrest an innocent man. It is later revealed that she knew the man was cleared by fingerprint evidence, but chose to arrest him anyway because she was convinced that he had to be the guilty party.

However overly eager Beck may be in certain cases, her dedication is just as helpful as it may sometimes be harmful. When she admitted her mistake in the case described above, she then stayed at the precinct all night, researching, so that she would not make the same mistake twice.

Beck met her husband, Michael Dooley, while he was in the military, stationed in Germany (where Dani had been studying at university). After they married and came to America, he joined the NYPD; three years prior to Beck's SVU assignment, her husband attempted to arrest two juveniles who had stolen a car, and was killed in the ensuing melee. While one of the youths was himself murdered in a prison fight, Beck has consistently visited the other one at Attica Correctional Facility (and had repeatedly blocked his attempts to be paroled); eventually, she learns to forgive the young man, reasoning that it would destroy her life if she continued to fixate on her husband's killer.

Thus far, Beck is known to be able to speak both English and French; presumably, though she has not yet spoken it on the show, she also speaks Danish.

Shortly before Benson returned to SVU, Beck's professional zeal was shaken when Detective John Munch's mentally ill uncle killed a suspected rapist; she learned later that he was motivated to kill the man after he overheard her telling the victim that she would have liked to kill the man herself.

Recently, Beck and Stabler shared an intimate moment outside a bar (episode "Underbelly"), although they were interrupted by a call from the precinct; it was never revealed whether they followed through on their attraction. However, in the subsequent episode ("'Cage"), following a case involving child abuse in which a traumatized adopted girl, whom Beck had been caring for, attempted to burn down her apartment and kill them both, Beck decided it would be best to leave Special Victims behind, and returned to her old post at the Warrants squad ("'Choreographed").