A New Wrinkle in Forensic Art

Computer Gains More Favor Among Police Sketch Artists

Detective Gary Irwin, an investigator in the Montgomery County police's pedophile section, sheds his badge and gun when he visits the homes of recently abused children to get them to describe their attackers.

Irwin, the department's only forensic artist who does hand-drawn sketches, relies as much on interviewing skills as he does on his steady hands and talent.

"Your sketch is only as good as your witness," Irwin said. "Your sketch is only as good as your artist."

In recent years, however, a new truism has become part of the field of forensic art: Your sketch is only as good as your software.

Montgomery detectives now do most of their work creating likenesses of suspects using computer software that allows them to assemble portraits by pulling together a set of human features and accessories that can be tweaked, trimmed, darkened and softened with a few clicks of a mouse. And because each facial feature is ready-made from a computer database, even the least artistically adept detectives can create an image.

These images, called composites, are an increasingly useful tool in an age in which law enforcement officials can distribute a sketch to the public with the help of the Internet, the Amber Alert system, 24-hour cable news channels and widely watched crime television shows such as "America's Most Wanted."

"Prior to a computer age, you'd have to hand-deliver these," said Deborah Haba, a detective in Montgomery's robbery division, who has been with the department 17 years and started creating computer-generated composites in 2001. "The immediacy of putting out an image of a suspect is extremely important because the longer you delay, the less likely it is people will be interested."

Haba is one of three Montgomery officers who create computer-generated composites regularly. She has always enjoyed drawing but only recently came to think of herself as an artist.

"I'm an artsy-fartsy person who was never allowed to be an artsy-fartsy person because it wasn't cool when I was in high school," Haba said. Now she frequently finds herself prodding victims and witnesses of crimes for detailed descriptions of suspects, often working against tight deadlines.

Last spring, Haba created a composite of a man suspected of killing gas station clerk Syed Rizvi, 55, in March in the Aspen Hill area of Silver Spring. Hours after the homicide, the department released a computer-generated image of the killer, a black man in his mid-twenties who had braided shoulder-length hair and was wearing sunglasses and a black knit cap. He remains at large, and detectives hope the composite will lead to an arrest.

"When it's a serious case like this one we try to do it as quickly as we can," Haba said.

Irwin, 44, generally has to wait a bit longer to conduct interviews because most of his cases involve children who are deeply shaken after being assaulted. He builds rapport by conducting interviews in a non-threatening environment -- often at the kitchen table of the child's home.