DeKALB | While police work evolves every year, developing leads and gathering evidence never changes.

DeKalb Police Detective Angel Reyes uses a less common method of finding leads — he and the department use “forensic composite drawings,” or suspect face sketches, to show the public what witnesses have already seen first hand.

“This a tool we can use to solve types of crime where the victim has a face-to-face confrontation with the suspect,” Reyes said.

Reyes has been with the DeKalb Police Department since 1997, but has been in law enforcement for the past 17 years. He went to school on an art scholarship before deciding to get into police work.

“Law enforcement was something I could get into that was a steady job with steady pay and good benefits,” Reyes said. “Now I can take my love of drawing and put it into this career I’ve been doing for 17 years.”

Reyes learned the details of forensic art at a training course after he became a police officer.

“You have to have drawing ability of course, but the class teaches more shading techniques and how the face grows,” Reyes said.

Reyes said forensic art requires a combination of drawing skills and an understanding of how to work with victims and witnesses.

“The drawing that I’m drawing is from the victim,” Reyes said. “We don’t draw this just off the top of our head. They pick what that person most likely looks like, and I draw those features together. They’ll tell me if I need to change the hair or eyes, or if the hair is a bit more fuller. We’ll adjust it.”

Reyes said drawings sometimes yield better leads than even something like a fingerprint taken from a scene.

“A lot of times when you draw a composite, you’ll have people who say, ‘I’ve seen that person before,'” Reyes said. “For fingerprints you need a suspect who is in the system. If that person has never been arrested, then they aren’t going to identify that person.”

Besides releasing composites of suspects, forensic artists also provide other services. One other such service is a composite drawing of age progression.

“Let’s say we had somebody who was a missing juvenile from the age of four,” Reyes said. “We could take the picture and age it from four years old to 14. Let’s say you’ve got an older adult suspect who flees and is gone for 20 years. You can take a picture and age it 20 years.”

Besides more serious police work, Reyes does occasionally find time to have fun with his skills, like when he creates caricatures of school district and law enforcement retirees.

“I’ve drawn since I was in the fourth grade, when I realized I could draw a little bit,” Reyes said. “You could say I’ve never stopped drawing. Who knows, maybe when I retire it’s something I can get into.”

Kenneth Lowe is the Police and Fire reporter for the Northern Star.