Police in Riverside, California, are searching for a person who in early December sat for a caricature portrait before allegedly snatching the artist’s money and fleeing with a bag of cash.
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But he left his cartoon likeness at the scene.
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The Riverside Police Department on Tuesday shared details of the Dec. 5 incident hoping the public might recognize the subject of the caricature.
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“[No], we are not kidding,” the department said in a statement posted to Facebook.
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Police say the man approached the artist about 11:50 p.m. during the city’s Festival of Lights outdoor event and asked for a drawing of himself. When the artist was finished, the subject-turned-suspect grabbed the artist’s money bag containing $500 and fled on foot.
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“This caricature is of the suspect, but of course, has exaggerated characteristics and features,” police said, describing the suspect as a man who stands about 5-foot-1 and is in his early 20s. The drawing shows a man wearing a blue jacket, a white shirt, a backward red baseball cap and sporting at least one earring.
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“Crime victims sometimes make their own amateur sketches for police,” said Blaine Kern, a forensic scientist in nearby Highland, California, who specializes in crime scene investigation. “But [the Riverside incident] is the first time I’ve heard of police doing this,” he said of the department’s decision to lean on a caricature drawing to help track down a thief.
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Kern sized up the decision to release a caricature to spur tipsters as “quite ridiculous,” noting that police could likely generate a better description based on eyewitness accounts. He acknowledged that the somewhat silly image might also boil down to resources: In California, theft of property worth less than $950 is usually charged as a misdemeanor, making it a lower priority than felony crimes.
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Riverside police did not immediately respond to requests for comment seeking additional information about the incident.
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An eyewitness identification is never as strong as physical evidence such as fingerprints or DNA, but Kern conceded that at least the police put out something.
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“As a [caricature] artist, since their job is to sketch people, he probably has a pretty good idea of what the guy looks like,” Kern said.
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