Confidential File

A New Instrument for Crime Detection

A man without a camera took my picture yesterday.

It's not a particularly flattering one, but it wasn't intended to be.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy C. E. MacElroy, who took it, had motives other than flattery in mind.

By
using standard transparent films which he carried in a little gray box
— each bearing a coded facial characteristic — he wanted to produce a
full-face likeness.

He wanted to show me that his revolutionary "Identi-Kit,"
now being put into use by our Sheriff's Department, could soon become
the greatest practical aid to identification of wanted criminals since
the present system of fingerprinting was developed.

MacElroy is currently one of five deputies equipped with the kit. In 40 hours a deputy can master it.

And I'm more than slightly convinced, after watching the ease with which MacElroy operated it, that Identi-Kit may someday become as integral to law enforcement as fingerprinting, ballistics tests and shiny badges.

 I hope so. For a lot of reasons, I do. But that, I'll get to later.

Basically, this is what the kit consists of:

It
has 500 4 1/2 X 5 1/2-in. transparent slides. Each slide bears a facial
characteristic, or accessory. Each is coded by letter and number.

Among
the 12 categories of characteristics are ears, eyes, mouth, nose, chin
lines, eyebrows, lips, age lines. I, for example, have a C-28 chin and
an N-14 nose.

When a deputy arrives at the scene of a crime with his Identi-Kit he could begin immediately interrogating a witness about the suspect's description.

From
the witness' recollection of the criminal's facial appearance the
deputy can quickly create a picture of the suspect, merely by stacking
the right chin, hairline, eyes, etc. into place.

 Then, with the
aid of the witness, he tackles the overall face, changing
characteristics as the witness recommends. Average time for the
procedure is 20 minutes.

Right away, when the witness is
satisfied with the likeness, the deputy can radio in the letters and
numbers of the 12 overlaying transparencies to his station, and
immediately these can be broadcast to every patrol car with an Identi-Kit.

With fantastic savings of both money and time, each car has a "mug shot" to work with.

The
possibilities of establishing a central file of facial characteristics
similar to today's fingerprint files are equally fantastic.

But
what also appeals to me about the new system — which, incidentally,
was originated by Hugh C. McDonald, chief of L.A. County's sheriff's
civil division, and developed with McDonald's technical assistant by
Townsend Engineered Products, Ind., of Santa Ana — is that it permits
a witness to put down in a picture his visual memory of a suspect
without being influenced by mug books.

Man Who Should Be Free

Too
often a witness' judgment is colored by studying mug shot after mug
shot of persons he knows to have criminal records. Too often he
confuses features and faces he's just seen in the mug books with the
face of an actual criminal.

It scares me to think of how many people are doing time today because of faulty eyewitness identification.

But
it encourages me to know that the Sheriff's Department is doing
something to increase the odds in favor of the innocent suspect.