Have you ever wondered how police officers and crime-fighting organizations started using police sketch artists to help catch criminals? After watching the video below, I looked it up and did some research on this particular topic. Apparently, in the 1880s, a French criminologist named Alphonse Bertillon developed an obsession with itemizing the physical characteristics of prisoners who were brought into the police station in Paris where he started out as a records clerk. He was so obsessive that he painstakingly measured the arm lengths, head circumferences, ear formations, and more of the prisoners who crossed his path.
He made special note of scars and tattoos and even photographed their facial frontals and profiles. Bertillon basically invented the science behind what modern era crimefighters use to identify inmates, and now it’s known as criminal anthropometry. Bertillon’s success led to officers being able to nab 241 repeat offenders just in 1884. After this success with the system, other police departments around Europe and even in the United States started using the system. This is where police sketching originated, believe it or not. It’s so successful that the FBI cites an eyewitness sketch of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh with bringing him to justice.
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Regardless of how talented an artist and how finely-tuned the police sketch methodology is, a lot of it depends on the accuracy of the witness’s memory of the suspect. When you’re describing someone’s face from memory in these situations, this person probably fled a crime and even possibly inflicted bodily injury on the witness who is describing the suspect. However, in spite of this, sketch artists are incredibly skilled at recreating an image based on the fleeting memory of a victim. Sometimes, however, you have to wonder at the training of the artist.
This video below is from a news story and the reporter is gobsmacked at how crazy this sketch is, and remarkably, they caught the bad guy. Unbelievable. Enjoy.
