Sketch Artist Versus Computer
The Philadelphia Police Department views a composite-drawing computer program as being the answer to its shortage of sketch artists. Retirements and job transfers have left the department with one full-time sketch artist and a part-time sketch artist, compared with five officers a year ago who were skilled in drawing black-and-white pictures of subjects.
In late 2004, the department spent $3,600 on 25 copies of the FACES 4.0 computer program, which will allow officers to assemble facial features using a gallery of 4,400 eyes, noses, wrinkles, lips, ears, and hair. IQ Biometrix in California makes FACES, and says the CIA, FBI, and the police departments of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are among the approximately 2,500 law enforcement agencies that use the program.
In Philadelphia, the department is training detectives on FACES, and they will be counted on to teach their officers how to use the technology.
However, FACES has attracted some criticism from Gary Wells, a psychology professor at Iowa State University who has studied the program.
“We find that witnesses are less able to correctly identify the target from a lineup if they previously build his or her face using the FACES program,” Wells declared in an email interview.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Philadelphia Daily News (03/16/05) P. 3; Weichselbaum, Simone .