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I've read a lot of crime books in my life, and one of the things that's always interested me is suspect descriptions and how useful they are. I've read about cases where police failed to solve the crime because they seemed to focus on a description that wasn't very good, and others where they didn't solve the crime and dismissed good descriptions as being too vague. I've also seen authors excoriate police departments for not focusing on suspects who matched relatively vague descriptions. So during my time at the DMV I also thought about a rubric that could be used to categorize suspect descriptions.
A Level 1 Description would be one that eliminates 90–99% of the population. This may seem high, but anything less than that isn't really even a description. If the suspect is described as a black female, well, only 12–14% of the population is black, and about half of them are female, so that eliminates 93% of the population right there. If the suspect is described as a young, tall, white male, 40–45% of the population is white males, eliminating children and anyone too old to be reasonably described as young and you cut that in half, and cut it in half again to get rid of anyone shorter than average height, and you're down to 10%. These kinds of descriptions are of little to no use in a police investigation and are completely worthless in a trial.
A Level 2 Description is one that eliminates 99–99.9% of the population. These can be of some use in an investigation but are of little to no use in a trial. Suppose the man running from the scene was described as an African American teenager, short and extremely overweight. Take the 7% who are black men, teenagers being about 20% of them, divide by half again to get people shorter then average, then in half again to get anyone plausibly described as overweight (always use the larger numbers), and we're in that 0.1–1% range. But in most places there are going to be entirely too many short, black, overweight teenage boys for police to identify and question them all.
A Level 3 Description would eliminate 99.9–99.99% of the population, but still include between one person in a thousand and one in ten thousand. To give a few examples:
These kinds of descriptions are of value to police and may play some role in a trial, but no one could be reasonably convicted of a crime based on them. It's also worth noting here that some of the attributes are changeable, and this needs to factor into the analysis as well.
A Level 4 Description would eliminate 99.99–99.999% of the population, but still probably include a few people in any decent sized metro:
If you match a description of this specificity you should expect the police to come to your door, but it still wouldn't be enough to convict absent other information.
A Level 5 description would exclude 99.999% of the population or more, aka 1 person in 100,000 or less. This is the point where you stop combining combinations of independent variables that belong to lots of people and zero in on very specific attributes that are themselves fairly unique: A missing finger, a particular tattoo, one green nipple, etc. At this level you're on the defensive; if you match a Level 5 Description, you're going to need an alibi.
A Level 6 description is a description that applies to only one person: Fingerprints, DNA, being recognized by someone who knows you. A Level 6 Description is an identification.
The above is taken from an award-winning post I did about a year ago when something similar came up. I apologize for the long quote, but I omitted the formatting to make it less annoying. Anyway, it makes the point. If 20% of the population can be reasonably described as juvenile, and another 20% is wearing at least one article of black clothing, that description describes 4% of the population, making it a Level 1 description. If the suspect had simply been described as an Asian male, about 6% of the US population is Asian, about half of them men. Would it be reasonable to round up and detain all Asian men based on this description? Remember that the statistical probability of one of these being the perp are about 25% higher than a random juvenile with an article of black clothing.
And then you have to consider the area. This isn't some rural village. It isn't even some backalley urban ghetto. The robbery took place in Chinatown in Philadelphia, which is just outside of Center City. A one mile radius from here includes an estimated 57,479 people, likely more as it includes some of the most visited parts of Philadelphia on a Saturday night. One can expect there to be approximately 2,300 people within a one-mile radius of the robbery who fit the description. In my estimation, police need to get at least to Level 3 before a court will determine that, in similar circumstances, there is reasonable suspicion sufficient to allow an investigative detention, and at least Level 4 before you can start talking about a custodial interrogation.
What fraction are carrying a (at the time only presumed) gun in their waistband? And at that point, can the cops ditch the description altogether and detain them regardless of any connection with a reported crime?
Unless "An officer steps in front of KC, blocking his path, and asks him what's in his waistband." is hiding a substantial gap between those events, I'd call it a reasonable detention.
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