Thanks to popular television shows like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”, everyone knows what a police officer’s job entails – but the media rarely recognize another important behind-the-scenes employee: the police sketch artist. But Julie Smith doesn’t need TV shows to know she plays a vital role.
Smith, one of three composite artists who draws renderings of crime suspects for the Eugene Police Department, can say practically nothing negative about her job.
“I love to draw, I’m helping my coworkers, and I feel like I’m able to help the victims,” Smith said. “I think everything about it is my favorite part.”
The job sounds simple: Listen to a crime victim’s or witness’ description, draw a face and give the picture to police detectives. In reality, Smith said, the process is a little longer and more varied.
Before the crime sketching can begin, prospective composite artists have to attend a special school for about two years to get certified, and each class throws a different challenge at students.
In the first class Smith attended at Stuart Parks Forensic Associates, she and her fellow students had to “just specifically do the eyes.” When they were done, “people had to pick out and match which eyes belonged to each other.”
In subsequent classes, Smith had to meld two faces into one, draw a 50-year-old man after seeing a picture of him at age 20, and add glasses and a hat to a picture of a man who wore no accessories.
“Then for the certification class, you’re basically given four pictures of four females and you had to combine it into one person,” Smith said. “We got graded in proportions and shading.”
Smith’s sketching history goes much further back than her July 2007 certification.
“Drawing has always been an interest of mine,” she said. “Even when I was a kid, I loved to draw.”
When Smith attended the University of Oregon, she took a few drawing classes. After she switched her concentration from art education to sociology, however, she “kind of forgot about drawing.”
Then law enforcement fell into her path. Looking to support her family, Smith sought out a full-time job and accepted one with the U.S. Forest Service. Since then, Smith has kept herself busy in the law enforcement field and hasn’t had the opportunity to return to school.
“That’s probably one of my biggest regrets – so finish school,” she said.
Although she loves sketching, Smith first and foremost identifies herself as a detective. She has served as a theft, burglary, criminal mischief and property crimes investigator since 2003.
With the two positions she holds, Smith deals with two very different types of suspects. In the cases she investigates, “there’s not a known suspect because the crime happens when no one’s home. We really rely on DNA and fingerprints to solve those cases.” The suspects she sketches, on the other hand, usually involve victims who interacted with the criminal.
The first phase of the sketching process involves a half-hour interview with the victim during which Smith jots down notes and descriptions. She will usually hand the victim a book of faces so that the victim can point out various features that match the suspect’s.
“I try to do it within the first week after the crime when they have the picture fresh in their mind,” Smith said. “But people who are victims of rape and violent crime often keep those images in their minds for a long time.”
Smith will then take her notes to her office and draw the picture there. She starts her drawing with a rectangle grid that helps her align the features and get the proportions right. After she draws the outline of the face within the rectangle, the first features she draws are the eyes.
“I’m basically putting together a puzzle,” she said. “It’s kind of cool.”
She calls the finished product, which may take between two and four hours to produce, a “rough draft” that isn’t finished until the victim has had time to look it over. The second meeting with the victim is sometimes an emotional one, said Smith.
“Sometimes the victims start crying when they see it,” Smith said. “It brings back that moment to them.”
Although law enforcement bodies have used composite sketches in investigations since the 19th century, Smith believes it is still an vital tool for detectives today.
“There’s a different way to do composites on computers now,” Smith said. “My opinion of that is that it’s really hard to get a computer to look like a human being and not an alien because you’re so restricted to what parameters you can put in there. Our department uses freehand because not one face is exactly like another face.”
Smith is certainly an authority on people. In addition to her property crime investigative work and her sketching, she conducts background investigations on everyone EPD hires and also investigates arsons.
“In police work, you’re in contact with people day in and day out. You’ve got the police radio, you’ve got your coworkers and victims.”
When Smith feels “peopled out” at the end of the day, she finds comfort in the quiet settings of her small farmhouse outside the city.
“I like to be away and relax rather than have this continual aggravation of people all the time,” Smith said.
Still, she admitted, the people are what make her job enjoyable: “They feel a lot of gratitude, and I love that.”