“Just the facts,
ma’am,” Jack Webb, “Dragnet”
You’ve
seen this scene on television a thousand times: A victim, or a witness, sits
down with a “police artist.” They nervously describe some perpetrator to the
artist, while the detective watches intently, waiting for the final flourish as
the artist rips a drawing from a sketchpad and shows it to the victim. “That’s
it,” they always cry. “That’s him.”
Less
than an hour later, justice is served.
OK,
enough TV-fueled fantasy. The truth is “police artist” is not the career choice
you’d pick for your kids, because that artist isn’t really an artist anymore.
Thanks to the power of today’s technology, facial composite software has become
easy enough to use that the person the victim or witness will sit down with is
the detective himself or herself. The process isn’t the agonizing experience
you see on the tube either: It’s fast, it’s accurate, it’s simple and it’s
effective.
Now
meet John Corder, vice president of sales and marketing for Identi-Kit
Solutions, creators of the world’s first web-based composite sketch software.
Invented by a police detective long before computers were available, the
Identi-Kit product has been used by law enforcement agencies worldwide to
identify suspects and to protect and to serve local populations. Today, not
only is the product available for online use, so is its training and support.
Law
enforcement agencies pay a licensing fee for the software, a fee that includes
training and certification available to any sworn police officer. Corder is
able to deliver online training using Citrix GoToTraining, a web-based tool
that enables easy, interactive virtual training from any location.
Corder
oversees ongoing virtual classrooms full of police detectives and officers. “They’re
totally different than a criminal justice student or someone who likes to watch
‘CSI,’ ” Corder said. “They’re pretty straightforward individuals. They’re
great to watch.”
Once
upon a time that training took place in person, over the course of two days.
Naturally, that meant officers needed to be available whenever the trainer was
passing through the region. Now, the product is taught and supported by
two-hour training sessions on GoToTraining, which is also used for quarterly
refresher classes.
The
online platform certainly supports the faster learning, as does the
professional nature of the typical student. In the course of preparing the
composite image of the face, experienced detectives often draw out other
information, like body size and type.
“We’re
not working with someone who has zero detective skills,” Corder said. “The
hardest thing we have to do is teach them to apply their interview skills, what
they already know. Detectives are trained on a lot of different aspects of
interviews. It’s just applying those habits they already have to the Identi-Kit
process.”
Coming
from a training background himself, Corder is pleased to contribute to the
mission of law enforcement. He’s set up immediate meetings with detectives,
interfaced with witnesses directly and modified sketches in real time.
“Most
of the time, the main comment I get is they’re very surprised by how well it
works,” Corder said. “One image we use for training is a sketch that has a
strong resemblance to Bill Clinton. Maybe a cross between a Bill Clinton and a
young Rodney Dangerfield. Then we start picking it apart: The nose is too big,
that sort of thing. But there’s an amazing ability for a human to see a
likeness, especially with a sketch.”
