The man responsible for sketching North Side mugging suspect
Sun-Times Reporter Mitch Dudek interviews the man who drew the sketch that led to the arrest of a North Side mugging suspect:
They just caught the guy I sketched in one of those Lincoln Park robberies. I learned about it on the news this morning. I was like "Yes!" But no one was there to witness it with me. My wife was out and my kids were in bed. So I just shouted and kind of gave myself a high five.
(Police sketch)
The victim who gave me the details on that sketch was a young college graduate. A real sharp kid. He was definitely on the money, without a doubt. He said that if he saw the guy again that he'd recognize him.
That sketch took about two hours. My sketches average between 90 minutes and two hours.
I . . . sketch people in my head. It's involuntary. And it's annoying at times. I catch myself doing it and say "Why am I sketching this guy?" But I can't help it. Especially when people have certain features that are more pronounced. Noses, chins, eyes, eyebrows.
Drawing was quite an obsession during my childhood years. I drew my favorite comic book heroes when I was a kid. And when I became a police officer I started to do caricatures/cartoons of the guys -- and then I thought maybe I should do something productive with it and got certified in forensic arts at Northwestern University in 2004, then was trained by the FBI in Quantico, Va.
The day I got my certificate, I walked into Area 3 to speak with the detectives, certificate in hand, and talked to one of the sergeants to see if they could use me. I felt like he blew me off. But he called me three weeks later and I drew a picture of a murderer -- some guy who killed a schoolteacher. He got caught and the detectives on the case called me and I was like, "Geez. This stuff really works. This is pretty cool."
Dealing with people who've experienced traumatic events is tough . . . watching them relive it as they describe the perpetrator . . . especially someone who's been sexually assaulted . . . having to describe in complete detail what this person looked like.
The average success rate for hand- drawn composites is about 30 percent -- as opposed to fingerprint recovery, which is 3 to 5 percent.
When someone is arrested because of one of my sketches, I hold my sketch up next to a mug shot of the person and compare the two and often think, "If I would have made his nose a little thinner or thicker or whatever, it would have been right on!" But it's not up to me, I've got to draw what they tell me.
It's totally rewarding. . . . I feel like I locked the guy up.