Quick on the draw when chasing suspects
Written by Writer on Monday, October 27th, 2008
CRIME
Quick on the draw when chasing suspects
WASSAYOS NGAMKHAM
Chumpon Gongthong is flipping through photos of Korean-pop hairdos, but not because he is looking for inspiration for a new style - he is updating the software used by police officers to draw suspects’ likenesses.
Pol Maj Chumpon Gongthong, centre, helps an officer at the Criminal Record Division sketch a computer image of a suspect from details supplied by a crime victim, left. SOMCHAI POOMLARD
“Korean fashion is hot at the moment and I think I’ve got hold of all the trendy hairdos,” said the policeman, referring to more than 100,000 pictures of hairstyles and faces he has gathered to add to the selection.
Sometimes Pol Maj Chumpon walks the streets and remembers any distinctive faces he sees. He then returns to his office at the Criminal Record Division and asks his staff to draw what he saw, keeping their skills sharp.
The 58-year-old inspector has spent 32 years drawing tens of thousands of faces. He is widely considered the best in the business at the police headquarters.
He abandoned pencil and paper in 1993 with the introduction of the computer programme Picasso (Police Identikit: Computer Assisted Suspect Sketching Outfit).
This technology helps him draft a suspect’s picture in as little as 15 minutes, compared to an entire day or more that would have been required before.
Once an image has been decided on, it is passed on to police investigators pursuing the case.
Pol Maj Chumpon oversees the suspect-sketching team, which comprises five officers.
Each officer typically works on five cases a day, but this does not necessarily mean five faces, he noted.
Pol Maj Chumpon said the scope of his job covered not just drawing faces, but also any other aspects which caught the attention of a victim or witness. He gave one example of a suspect being caught thanks to a picture of his motorcycle helmet.
The key to memorising suspects’ appearances is to concentrate and to train your mind to better remember a person’s face, figure and clothes, he added.
“It’s not easy to translate your memory into a picture. Some get dizzy or frustrated from staring and trying to choose the right facial parts [from so many]. That’s where the officer’s art of guiding and quizzing comes into play,” he said.
He presented the example of Jitrlada Tantiwanitchasuk, 36, who stabbed four students at St Joseph’s Convent School on Sept 9, 2005. Two motorcycle taxi drivers and 10 students were invited for suspect drawing.
The drivers’ images proved the closest matches to the mentally-ill culprit, because they saw her walk past their stand almost every day. These drawings led to Jitrlada’s arrest.
But Pol Maj Chumpon maintained that any picture could not hope to capture more than a 60% likeness to a suspect. The quality of the work, he argued, depended on the information provided by victims or witnesses.
“I don’t call myself an artist, because I cannot draw according to my own will. I work according to the directives given by victims or witnesses,” he said.
Bangkok Post
Monday October 27, 2008
