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| At the OSBI Fusion Centre |
But first we met the forensic artist, Harvey Pratt. He was amazing at what he does. He has worked on certain cases such as the Green River killer, BTK killer and Ted Bundy cases. He does many things in facial recognition when given description of the suspect and he draws said suspect. When viewing the sketches of the suspect and the photo of the caught suspect, it can be seen that there is a very close similarity between them both. With missing persons, when he put scans the sketches into the database to try and find people, it does come up similar looking people. It was useful in trying to find different people and when trying to identify suspects to see if they have previous convictions. It was the first time that a sketch was used to try and identify someone!
Another aspect of forensic art that he does, is age progression. This is when he takes the photo of either a fugutuive/missing person and tries to draw them so they know what the person look likes like after a few years. For the missing person, he gathers photos of close family and tries to establish what the person may look like when observing certain facial features at a particular age. For example for a missing person at the age of 12 years and it has been 4 years, he would gather photos of the mother, father and grandparents, look at features that would remain prominent through the teen years and other facial features that would appear. For fugitives, he would age the persons face trying to use any available family photos or trying to age the person using a common traits such as more wrinkles, receding hairline etc. So someone on the run for 20 years he would be able to draw what they looked like if they gained more weight, grown a beard/moustache etc. 
He also conducts skull reconstruction, by taking photos of the skull from various angles then sketching out the design and then creating the skull. With either creating the skull or using the original he is able to see what the face of the victim would have looked like. He would use 12 markers on the skull to plot the soft tissue of the face. There were other parts of the skull which could identify the facial features of the face. For example the spine of the nose (that small bone at the bottom of the nose), if you times the length of that, its the measurement of the length of the nose. Or measuring the teeth can indicate the fullness of the victims lips. Also when given the body, and the body has deteriorated, he can restore any tattoos which could potentially help identify the victim.
As well as that he is famous for his many paintings, murals and crests for the organisation. He has submitted a lot of paintings to the Red Earth festival. And he is the head of a native American tribe.
Next we were told a bit more about the OSBI fusion centre. This was set up two years ago and there are approximately 74 in the USA. The centre collects all the information and gather up resources themselves, then to collate the information then let other people know. They want to collect and analysis of terrorism intelligence and other criminal activity information relating to the state of Oklahoma. They gather information from police, sheriffs, judges, CSI etc. but also teachers, workers, ambulance etc. As they try and look for weird information.
A fairly short day and finished in the early afternoon. In the evening we had the chance to go to the cinema to watch Bridesmaids. It was a very funny film and was glad to see it (even though I would rather watch X-Men first class). The favourite part of the day was to meet Harvey Pratt as I have never learned anything about forensic art. And the print that he had given us was excellent, such a well drawn picture, I will need to get a frame for it when I am back home.
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