In case you missed this morning's edition of The Ledger, the newspaper featured a story in its Lifestyle section on LPD's forensic artist, Darlene Melius. Darlene is a Public Safety Aide as well as an artist who is called upon to use her talents to help create forensic drawings of suspects. She is the only forensic artist in Polk County who produces suspect drawings by hand rather than using kits or computer software. Creating a drawing by hand allows for subtle modifications to the rendering that make them very life-like.
Though she was a very accomplished artist when she joined LPD in 2002, Darlene has been creating forensic drawings for two years now. Here is a recent drawing Darlene did of a subject who robbed the Bob Evans Restaurant on March 7, 2007. We featured this drawing as a BOLO in a posting a couple of days later.
By the way, we are still looking for this robbery suspect if anyone recognizes him or has information about this crime. Call the Lakeland Police Department at 863-834-6900 or Detective Nicole Cain at 863-834-8955.
We are fortunate to have a talented individual like Darlene on our team. Her ability to transform descriptive information from a victim or witness to a life-like drawing has helped identify suspects and led to arrests. We look forward to many more similar success stories thanks to Darlene's skills as an artist.
-Asst Chief Bill LePere
Comments