"Bad" Police Sketches

Police sketches are drawings, but they are not portraits. Each one is meant to be just a likeness, a representation of what the witness can tell the artist. So, rather than a portrait or piece of fine art, it's documentation of what the witness tells the artist. I guess you could think of it as a pictograph of the witness's testimony. The sketch is part of official evidence, therefore the artist cannot take it to a studio to work on it. It can only be drawn while the witness (or witnesses) are present to approve that the drawing is an true (or at least close) representation of what they told the artist.

The police sketch is part of the evidence, because it comes from victim/eyewitness testimony. In some cases the victim can not tolerate any more time for the artist to work the sketch. Perhaps the victim broke down emotionally.

Once the sketch artist has confirmed with the victim that the image is a good representation of the perpetrator, that's good enough. The victim is helping the police - volunteering their time, the police aren't going to keep the victim in the police department and further traumatize the victim. Or, in this case, the female victim is in the hospital, so that probably figured into it somehow.

You can see from the sketch that the man had a low forehead and widow's peak hairline. He had very round eyes. That may be enough for an identification to be made by someone who knows that individual. The perpetrator is dangerous, and speed is of the essence.

This sketch has enough to identify the man to people who know him, and even if it's considered a "bad" sketch, it gets people talking, and when you get enough people talking, the police get leads.

Here is the news story about this case, from CTV British Columbia.