刑警手绘画像，30年抓获嫌犯超千人 - 2016年01月15日

Detective Zhang Xin is credited with bringing more than 1,000 criminals to justice in the past three decades, using only a pencil.

Nicknamed the "magic pencil," the 55-year-old Songjiang native is a police sketch artist who recreates the faces of suspects from witness and victim descriptions.

"It all started with a TV set case in 1986, when my drawing helped a police investigation," Zhang said.

In that incident, a man falsely reclaimed a television set from the stored luggage room at the old Shanghai North Railway Station. The clerk recalled the man's facial features.

"I thought maybe I could give it a try after I heard his description," said Zhang, who liked to draw.

From his sketch, police tracked down the thief and recovered the TV set.

Zhang took pencil in hand and began sketching when he was nine. He took classes from masters such as Cheng Shifa (1921-2007) at Songjiang's Cultural Center.

"At the time, Cheng hadn't yet made a name for himself, so I was lucky," Zhang said.

He joined army when he was 17, assigned to the Beijing signal corps. Drawing was his spare-time hobby. He doodled on blackboards and often did sketches of fellow soldiers.

His talent led him to an army painting club and then to courses at the Central Academy of Fine Art.

In 1982, he retired from the military and joined the Songjiang Police Station of the Shanghai Railway Public Security Bureau.

After the success of the TV-thief case, the police department began to take his sketches as a serious adjunct to its work.

"An accurate picture requires the skills of character sketches and portraiture," Zhang said. "To go beyond requires more professional training."

He took weekend art courses in downtown Shanghai. On the bumpy, rumbling train into the central business district from Songjiang, Zhang sketched in his notebook. He would stare at a fellow passenger for a few seconds, then try to sketch the face from memory.

"I forced myself to work from a passing glimpse because in most criminal cases, victims and witnesses don’t see a suspect for more than a few seconds," Zhang explained.

Since he was among China's first police sketch artists, he had no mentors to teach him nor rules to follow. He created a career.

Working in a different mode from standard art students, Zhang practiced sketching single features of a face: eyes, mouths, noses and ears. He practiced each thousands of times.

In the three years of classes, Zhang reckons he sketched almost 200,000 faces — far more than the total usually required for an arts degree.

At first, it took Zhang several days to complete a portrait, but with experience, he shortened that time to as little as half an hour.

His facial composites taught him a lot about human physiognomy. Small mouths almost always are accompanied by pointed chins; small eyes must be round or triangular.

"The result is never 100 percent accurate because that isn't how witness and victim memories work," he said. "The key is to grasp the general shape and structure of a face. It's a bit like looking at an old picture. The facial features may be vague, but you can still recognize a person by general appearance."

The method of tapping into memories requires careful interrogation.

"Almost no one, whether that be a university professor or a construction worker, can correctly describe how a nose, eyes or mouth precisely looks," said Zhang. "You need to ask the right questions and get the right composite information."

Is the suspect taller, older, fatter than you? Zhang said people have more intuition when comparing another person with themselves.

"Even if I am told a suspect looked like a pumpkin or a monkey, that can be useful," he said.

Over the years, he has assisted cases of murder, robbery, rape, theft and explosions.

In the 1990s, a murder-rape case involving a female taxi driver created a sensation in Shanghai. According to a witness description, Zhang sketched a portrait of the perpetrator. When copies of the sketch were posted in area neighborhoods, a woman passer-by cried out, "That looks like my husband!" And sure enough, he was caught.

Zhang also sketches suspects from snippets of surveillance video footage.

In 2013, he was involved in an explosion case investigation in Linfen, north China's Shanxi Province. Local police watching the closed-circuit TV footage concluded only that the suspect looked to be about 30.

When Zhang watched the video, he came to a much different conclusion, telling the local police that the man captured on film was between 60 and 70.

In the video, the man was carrying a bag of explosives and his face was hidden by a hat.

"As people age, their center of gravity shifts from the front of the foot to the heel, and steps get shorter when walking as muscles shrink with age," Zhang said.

His trained, precise eye helped local police soon identify the criminal among their suspects.

One of Zhang's most famous cases was a serial murder in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China in 2005. After a computer-simulated portrait failed to help the investigation, Zhang was invited to assist.

He carefully studied the descriptions provided by witnesses and concluded that the computerized portrait didn’t look like a normal person.

"The suspect's canine teeth were too long, making him look like a wolf," Zhang said.

Computerized facial composite systems require witnesses to select each facial part separately from hundreds of examples, and then piece the face together.

"But that is not how people remember things," Zhang said. "And its easy for witnesses to be misled by the computer's questions. That's one reason by computerized identity kits are being phased out in some countries."

Zhang's approach is different. He questions witnesses about a perpetrator's age, height, weight, facial shape and the general features. “When I held up a sketch in front of the witness in the serial murder case, I could tell from her intense reaction that I was close," he recalled.

In fact, police initially arrested the wrong man. He was executed and exonerated posthumously.

With the help of Zhang’s sketch, local police ultimately apprehended a man named Zhao Zhihong, who confessed to 17 crimes, including rape and murder.

"My job is so important that it might save or destroy a person's life," Zhang said. "I hope I can do my bit for society with my pencil and sketchpad."