How accurate would a police sketch based on your description be?

You are the only witness to a crime and there were no security cameras that caught the suspect. You had a good look and saw the person for long enough to remember them. The police ask you to accompany them to the station and they make a facial composite which is broadcast all over the news and the internet. Later, they catch the suspect and the police release a mug shot.

How close would they match? Facial composite software is advanced so the better of the description you give, the more detailed and realistic it can be.

Would it look just like them? Would there be a resemblance? Would it be unrecognizable?

I’m binge-watching the NetFlix series The Money Heist and there is a scene where the police have a witness help while they create a sketch.

I have a condition called aphantasia, something I share with 1% to 3% of the population.

I wouldn’t have them draw a tree, for example, but I suspect that the process would be extremely frustrating for the artist, the police and me.

How would you do? Could the masses identify the bad guy based on your memory?

(Incidentally, I have absolutely no idea how long it would take to make a memory. A few seconds? Instantly?

I knew someone else who also had this. Something came up and someone may have met his wife of 10 years. That person asked my friend to describe his wife and he really wasn’t able to, but the other person who had only seen her once could describe her perfectly. )

I think they had a head. Yes, I distinctively remember getting the strong impression of a head. And an arm, at least one arm. Probably two.

I’ve often wondered exactly that. I have prosopagnosia (face blindness) - fortunately it is mild enough in my case that if I see people repeatedly and/or they have very unusual facial features, plus I’m aware of my deficits so I work at overcoming them, I can recognize them. But it is a struggle, and seeing people one time is not enough for me to overcome it unless they have something weird and highly recognizable going on, like heterochromia.

So I’ve always thought that as a witness to someone doing something criminal, I could be torn apart on the witness stand. I doubt very much that I could help a sketch artist produce a good quality likeness after I saw someone once.

I have that as well, kind of a mild to mediumish level. My wife wouldn’t watch Japanese TV dramas with me because she got tired of having to tell me which actress was which. As a teacher, I can tell the kids apart so I can do my job, but I have problems identifying the parents of my own kids’ classmates. I do language exchange on an app, and often people will have several photos in their profile. I often don’t see the resemblance between front and side shots.

That’s been a huge issue for me - at least you can remember the students, if not the parents. The students are hard for me as well. In the past few years, I’ve taught music classes that were once a week - not often enough for me to familiarize myself with little physical details - to students that included boys of the same ethnicity (usually Korean because of where I was), all about the same age and size, who all had the same haircut. (Girls tend to be easier because there is more variety in hairstyles.)

To cope, I had to tell all the students during the first class, “look, I have this weird brain problem, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care about you as individual people. It means I have trouble processing certain kinds of visual information. But if you all wear name tags to class, I will be able to cope. So now, here are some blank name tags and some colorful pens - please write your names in big letters and decorate them. Wear them each time we meet and we will be fine.”

I have the same condition and have been embarrassed by it on numerous occasions. I would also do poorly on the witness stand with the exception of confirming race, sex and possibly clothing.

I suspect it’s fairly common among message board denizens, and one reason we gravitate toward this kind of interaction. On the internet, we don’t see each others’ faces anyway.

(My bolding)

I could definitely confirm if I had sex with the person. I may not remember their face . . .

I have actual experience of this. :sunglasses:

A while back I was at home whilst a power company was relaying cables in my road outside. (They had politely informed the whole street of this and given a likely time the work would take.)

A man knocked at my door. He said “I work for the power company - would you like your drive resurfaced?”
I was instantly suspicious, because:

  • why would a power company get involved in unnecessary work?
  • he wasn’t wearing a badge (all the other employees were)

So I studied him briefly, politely declined and called the local police.
They turned up swiftly and explained there had been other reports of this conman in the area. The police thought he would either take a deposit and simply never return, or make an excuse to get inside and steal stuff.
They asked me for a description!

I said “he had short brown hair, was clean-shaven, somewhat gaunt faced, about 5’ 10” tall*, was wearing a high-visibility jacket, overalls, quite thin build and had work boots."

*Because I’m 5’ 10" and our eyes were on a level.

Later that day, the police returned and thanked me, saying they had caught the guy (who had a criminal record) and would deal with him.
The officer said “Glee, your description was fine - except for one thing. The suspect was 6’ 1” tall."

At this point I realised that my house has a 3" step up from the ground - so the chap was 3" taller!

I doubt I could give enough info for a sketch. I honestly don’t know if I could give a good enough description of my husband to have someone draw him. I’m not very good at describing people or things. I might remember a brightly colored garment or an unusual hair style, but details like eye color or nose shape? Don’t count on it.

I’m horrible with faces. I’m 100% sure I couldn’t describe my wife enough to make police sketch.

Now the getaway car? Well, that was a red 71 Camaro RS with a badge that said “396” but it sounded more like a small block, it had headers and positraction, four speed, it had a primer spot on the left fender, a later model rear spoiler, no front license plate and the trunk name badge was missing,

My wife’s eye color? I have no idea,

On the flip side, if my hair is really long and they need to make a sketch of me, just say King Arthur in Excalibur and they’ll have my rear in the hoosegow lickety-split.

I’d just tell the cops it was a random black dude, because that’s who they are going to stop and question no matter what my description says. :stuck_out_tongue:

And I’m another one maybe a 15 or 20% deficit on ability to recognize faces. I don’t think that I would be particularly useful to a police sketch artist.

My brain works pretty good for pattern recognition, but not so much photographic memory. And, it takes both a good memory for detail as well as a good vocabulary to properly describe subtle facial features to an artist.

This means I can tell my identical twins apart quite easy when I see them; I spot the little difference in head shape or freckle location despite everything else being identical. Ask to me describe them? The artist would probably end up with a generic Simpson’s-like character… about as distinct as Krusty and Homer where the only differences would be hair and clothes.

Unfortunately, that is true. Without foisting TMI on everyone, I was assaulted by a black fellow, whose description I was able to provide in great detail. Instead of taking me directly to the hospital, officers drove me around the neighborhood where they stopped several guys simply because they were . . .existing while black, apparently. Flash forward to the next day when they had apprehended my attacker whose sketch was remarkably accurate. I have absolutely no sense of direction and cannot visualize the finished product when I put something like a bookcase or whatever together, but faces I’m pretty good at.

Pretty terrible. Frankly, I’d rather the police not do a sketch, because my description is going to be so far off the suspect’s actual appearance that it would have the effect of drawing the cops further away from the suspect than towards him/her.

If I had to tell someone, in words, what I saw, it would be pretty bad. I can rarely come up with descriptive words. “Medium height, medium build… Face shape? Also medium. Eyes? Yes.”

However, I’m decent at drawing, so I could try sketching that portrait myself, but don’t hold me responsible after that.

If I was asked to pick a guy out of a lineup, I would never be 100% sure.

I think I’d do pretty well. I’m good at remembering faces and could probably do a halfway decent sketch for a police artist to refine. I once picked out a suspect from a video that showed him from the rear walking with several other people. His walk was so distinct I can still remember it today, 25 years later. I understand the police brought him in for questioning, told him they had a witness and video tape, so he confessed to an armed robbery.

Another face blind person here–I’d be absolutely useless. On the other hand, I can find my way back to places I haven’t been to since I was a child and have a really hard time getting lost so I guess I know where the ability points were allocated in my case.