COPS AND IDENTIKITS
Identikits are drawings of facial features that are simplified to fit anyone. They are designed to take advantage of the fact that the brain draws in the details, thus they offer as few details as possible in order for the brain to make up what it will of what little is available. Also, there is little variation among the items that make up a face. In identikits (idiotkits), they've taken a selection of facial ovals, different kinds of eyes, a few ears, hair, eyebrows and mouths, and simplified them so much that they can build almost any face out of them, especially when the brain is used to fill in the blanks. This is the part that makes the things most dangerous; the observer's mind fills in what is missing, at the prompting of the police. Take, for instance, one plate in the police identikit library. It is nothing but a transparent sheet of plastic that has two dark spots on it that are arranged so that they can be easily and automatically mistaken for nostril holes when placed in the right context. PRESTO! You've got a nose that fits every single person on the planet! Hair? That's just a dark smudge that falls over the top and sides of the facial oval; if it covers the ears, that's all the better, because that's less distracting detail they have to bother with! You have about three kinds of full hair; straight, wavy and kinky, and about two kinds of bald hair; short or combed over. There are about three kinds of eyes, too: round, slanted and slitted. Lips? Fat, thin and medium. Eyebrows? Thick or thin. Facial oval? "Round", "egg" or "hatchet:" Ears? They stick out, or they don't. With these few artist's crutches, police can construct a face that looks "like" any normal face ever born, simply by taking advantage of the fact that people's minds tend to fill in the missing parts, smooth over discrepancies and enhance similarities. People do not even know or notice their minds doing this: it's automatic, it's subconscious. And police love it and take full advantage of it. They take the eyewitness to a crime. They toss out an oval. She says Yes, no or maybe. They take the best fit and toss on a smudge of hair. Yes? No? Maybe? Eyes? Y,N,M. Mouth? Eyebrows? Ears? Then throw on some nostril-holes and WOW! You got it! You po-lice sho' do know yo stuff! Police then take it to the next eyewitness and she goes ape over how much it looks "Just like!" the man she saw for an instant as he ran away at top speed. "How'd ja DO that?" she trills. The cops ask if there is anything she can add. She either does or, does not, but police have the equivalent of a facial stick-figure that will fit about 10 to 25 percent of everyone in the US. Good Job! Next the cops peruse all the pictures in their mugshot books and collect the ones of prior-convictees that look similar. The cops then take these pictures to the eyewitnesses and ask them to pick one. (Note for criminals: if you've never been caught before, you're home free! Police only gather up pictures of previously convicted persons to show eyewitnesses, so, if you've never gotten caught and photographed, the odds are that you will not be selected to pay for a crime!) Police have developed a strategy of following the path of least resistance, same as most people. Consequently, they prefer to bet on horses who have already 'won' the conviction sweepstakes because they are so easy to make win it a 2nd, 3rd or 4th time. (Note to criminals: if you've been caught once, police will continue to target you for conviction for the rest of your life, and you will never stop paying your 'debt' to society. No one ever stops paying once they get you convicted, so always be ready to return to prison, because each conviction makes it easier for police to recycle you the next time.) As police induce each eyewitness to pick a selection of 'maybes', they are actively chasing down these selected ex-felons and probing them with subtle questions designed to find out one thing; if they have an alibi that will prevent conviction. (Most alibis are worthless because jurors will not believe them. During the crime, you usually don't even know where you were months ago. Also, many crimes are 'sliders', which is cop-speak that means they could have taken place over the course of a large, uncertain time interval. DAs love sliders because they can and do move the crime to the interval of time in which you or their target have no alibi. Also, alibi witnesses are usually friends and family (who else are you going to pass time with?) Jurors quickly go for the prosecutor's theory that friends and family will lie for you. Even if you had a time-clock punched card showing you were at work, clever police and DAs will dupe the willing jurors into believing your co-workers and boss faked a phony alibi for you. Fact is, alibis do not work. Police narrow down who they can convict as they train the eyewitnesses who they want to convict. Implausible? No. Fact. One of the main unwritten police procedures you will never hear of is the fact that police steer the witnesses to the ones police want convicted almost as much or more than the eyewitlesses steer police toward the actual culprit. What witlesses do not realize is the fact that police want to convict an of these people they have selected for the eyewitnesses to pick. The main problem police have is accidently steering the eyewitlesses to a man who was in jail at the time. Jail is the perfect alibi and almost the only one that actually works. Police have a real problem here in keeping their mugshot collections current and updated. Many times police have steered the eyewitlesses to persons they'd like to convict, but were in some other cop's jail at the time or are already dead. Police never reveal when this happens; they just tell the eyewitlesses to pick somebody else because "We have information that he wasn't in the vicinity at the time." Elsewhere in my writings are the subtle techniques police use to steer eyewitlesses during their so-called 'photo line-ups' in which they trample citizens' rights secretly and wholesale. This is such an extremely dirty and complex cop-enterprise that it must have its own chapter to properly detail the many ways police orchestrate the conviction process.