Inside Look at Sheriff's Composite Sketch Artist

By just putting pencil to paper, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department’s new sketch artist proves old school police work is still highly effective, even with the high-tech gear, gadgets and computers available to law enforcement.

Sketch artist Deputy Mike Moeller works with little more than someone else’s memory, and if the witness had a quick or traumatic encounter, that memory may be pretty shaky.

But with the right questions and talent, Moeller turns a vague recollection into someone you could recognize.

He begins with a series of questions, for example: Do you remember his eye color? What was his skin complexion? Did you see his hair?

Then Moeller has the witness flip through the FBI’s facial identification catalog, which has page after page of different eyes, ears, cheeks and mouths. The witness will tell Moeller which images most closely resemble the features of the suspect being described.

“When all the features are done, I'm going to go back through and draw the items he picked into one face, which is why it's called a composite sketch,” said Moeller.

On Tuesday, Moeller sat down with witness Mark Almazar, a county employee who saw a man throw a suspicious package over the gate of the Vista Detention Center on Nov. 25.

Almazar told the deputy he got a good look at the suspect for about two to three minutes as he made a delivery to the jail. He spotted the suspect, who appeared to be another delivery person, riding up on a bicycle.

“When they opened the gate, that’s when he threw the bag, hopped on the bike and just bolted out,” said Almazar.

Officials say the suspicious package was full of animal bones, teeth and jaws.

With agonizing detail, Almazar described the suspect to Moeller, who sketched each feature until it became a face.

"Since I started doing this, usually the last question I ask on every sketch is if I were standing in front of the guy you saw and I had this drawing in my hand, would I know it's him? And if they say yes, then I'm done,” said Moeller.

Since he started sketching in July, Moeller has finished ten sketches – one of which led to the arrest of a juvenile suspect.

"And when I looked at the picture of him when they talked to him, his head was shaved. But when I did the drawing he had long hair. And they found a picture of him with long hair, and it looked so much like him. It was bizarre," said Moeller.

He told NBC 7 the juvenile was found guilty after his sketch led officials to the right person.

“It was at least some validation that I’m doing it the right way,” Moeller said.
 

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