When Provo police want to capture a criminal, they turn to Smith and Wesson.
The Smith and Wesson Identi-Kit, that is: a composite drawing system used to make facial drawings of suspects based on witness descriptions.It's the next best thing to having a photographer on the scene of a crime.
"This fulfills a basic need to come up with a general idea as to a facial description of a suspect," said Provo police detective Don A. Messick. "I would say 50 to 60 percent of the ones I've done we've ultimately captured the suspect, and the composite was pretty accurate."
Identi-Kit consists of a box the size of a lunch pail filled with as many as 575 foils - translucent sheets each imprinted with a single facial feature, which when layered together can create an almost perfect likeness of an individual.
There are 11 general categories of features: hair, eyes, hats, eyebrows, glasses, age lines, noses, chins, facial tones, beards and mustaches.
The most extensive category is hair; there are 230 possible hairstyles to chose from.
"The hair is the hardest to pick," Mes-sick said.
Eyes are another large category - with 109 possibilities including everything from crossed and squinting eyes to two-colored pairs.
Hugh McDonald, a deputy with the Los Angeles County sheriff's office, invented Identi-Kit in 1959, according to Ann Topor, administrator with the Identi-Kit company of Springfield, Mass.Up until then, police departments depended on artists to draw a likeness of suspects, a process that was costly and only used in the most serious of cases.
Today police departments use Identi-Kit in "almost any case where someone sees somebody doing something but doesn't know who it is or have a picture" of the person, Mes-sick said.
Officers bring crime witnesses to the police station and ask them, one at a time, to put together a composite of the suspect. The witness with the greatest likelihood of being able to compile an accurate composite - someone like a bank teller who confronted the suspect - goes first.
Other witnesses are asked if they agree with the composite or think it needs altering, Messick said.
A witness first provides general suspect information: sex, race, approximate age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and whether the suspect wore any identifiable clothing, particularly a hat.
"Of course, when they come in with a ski mask, you're sunk," Mes-sick said.
Then, the witness looks through an Identi-Kit handbook and selects - feature by feature - characteristics of the suspect.
"Generally you can tell in 20 minutes if a witness is going to be able to get an accurate description depending on how quickly they make selections and the number of changes they make," Messick said.
Features in the handbook are numbered and correspond with foils in the Identi-Kit box. Selected foils are placed one on top of each other on a plastic plate, creating an image of the suspect.
The numbers of all foils used in a composite can be given to other agencies who have an Identi-Kit and used to build identical composites.
The average composite takes six foils, Topor said. Ten foils may be needed if the suspect is a person of color or has age lines.
Most of Identi-Kit's foils are made from photographs of actual facial characteristics. Artists drew a few "because we couldn't get what we wanted," Topor said.
In some cases, such as the composite of Utah County Bureau Chief Michael Morris, the foils available aren't a perfect match. The witness or an artist will add markings on a blank foil placed on top of the composite.
Today 3,600 police departments around the country use Identi-Kit, according to Topor.