Ask Dr. Phil.... Do police composite sketches Help or Hinder investigations?
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Tragedy struck Mexico, September 15,2008 when drug cartels crossed a sacred line. On that date, in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, Mexico, two grenades were tossed into a crowd of innocent families celebrating our Independence Day. This act of terrorism has left our country grieving, scared, restless, and angered. We live in a country where faces of death bombard us through media every day and every hour, rarely do we hear of a supect.
Federal officials have been stating they had witnesses of the Morelia bomber and a police sketch would soon be released. Imagine my surprise to find the retrato hablado, and realize I know the man suspected in this horrific tragedy; the world knows him. He is the man the universe loves to hate, the one and only, Dr.Phil... I think.
Make no mistake, I commend the men and women who give their time and talent to composite sketching, a nearly non-existant, yet crucial form of judiciary art. Police composite artists have a tough job, working from the imperfect memories of victims and witnesses to create an image that's accurate enough to produce a match with the perpetrator. Most of the time they are artists involved in the creation of sketches for use in an investigation for law enforcement. The artist part is sometimes the variable in the final presentation of the sketch. Very few of these Sketch Artists are trained artists with degrees in fine art, graphic design or illustration.
It is said the most important aspect of any composite sketch is the interview of the victim or witness, not the artist's hand. A sketch artist must be able to communicate on a level with the victim which will allow them to think and see as one; after such trumatic experiences, the task is far from easy.
The sketcher also has to find a way to move the victim or witness along. Scientific studies have found, in a moment of fight or flight, humans register faces as a whole, not specifics. Victims on the other hand, state the contrary; many times they only remember a specific detail. This would leave us to believe much of the art is based upon relativity; we each see differently with our minds eye.
Police investigative composite sketches bring communities into action allowing every citizen to play a part in finding the person in question. Can this same benefit actually hinder an investigation? Police state sketches are not created to identify, but to eliminate. In the following two sketches, I would have immediately eliminated the found criminals from my own personal mental suspect list.
In the first set, by looking at the sketch, I envisioned a lower middle class caucasian. In the second sketch I would have never considered a young, blond haired, fair skinned man. There is the difference, relativity, the beauty in the eye of the beholder clause. Could I have hindered justice?
Their level of proficiency varies from artist to artist.
How many suspects will not be identified, but eliminated with these sketches? I am by no means an artist and found myself very quick to throw stones, until I gave my own try at composite sketching. By borrowing the IB icon photo of my Brazilian friend Celso, I used a computer assisted program to create my own police sketch for our cynical Latino blogger. After roughly four hours and help from my children, I cannot say any of my attempts are worthy of anything more than the trash.
In the end, composite sketches are not a guarentee for the capture and arrest of any subject, but the assistance they offer cannot be denied. I'm sure Dr. Phil would agree.
Note: To view my composite sketch attempts, please follow the above link, go to menue on upper right hand corner and click "load face". Look for IBCELSO,IBCELSO2, AND IBCELSO3, on the menue.
