Technology Puts New Face on Police Work : Innovation: Computer enhancement of photos, which figured in the capture of Mark Richard Hilbun, is a valuable but prohibitively costly tool.

As soon as KABC Channel 7’s news studios received a police mug of a man suspected of fatally shooting a mail carrier at the Dana Point post office earlier this month, Bruce Alexander knew he had to work fast.

Alexander, 41, a graphic artist with 21 years in the business, had heard that the suspect, Mark Richard Hilbun--a man with a wide-eyed stare, long hair and a dark mustache--may have altered his appearance. Alexander’s assignment was to electronically shave off Hilbun’s mustache and trim his hair.

“I tried matching his skin tone the best I could when I removed the mustache,” Alexander said. “On the hair, the guy I work with had just gotten a haircut and I was looking over at him. I figured (Hilbun’s hair) would look kind of choppy because he would have done it by himself, so I kind of blurred the back of his head too.”

Within minutes, the new, “computer-enhanced Hilbun” was aired on the show’s 11:30 a.m. May 7 newscast. Hours later, two men said they recognized Hilbun from newscasts while he sat in a Huntington Beach bar. One of the men credited KABC’s computer-enhanced picture. Police arrested Hilbun after they were notified by the bar patrons.

Only television, with its fast-paced competitive tempo and high-end video production equipment that would bankrupt most police agencies, has the ability to beam in a raw photo, enhance and then air it, all within 10 minutes.

“We do this all the time,” said Richard Swanson, KABC’s creative services director. “Graphics people do this with faces by the hundreds every day in TV news.”

Law enforcement would love to be able to electronically alter the photographic features of suspects on the run. But while the technology is certainly available, a bigger question for law enforcement is whether it’s affordable. Many television news programs use Quantel Paintbox, a computer-software combination that, when introduced, cost about $400,000.

“For the average local law enforcement agency, these high-end computers would represent a pretty good amount out of their budget,” said Jim Majors, director of the state Department of Justice’s Hawkins Data Center and chairman of the California Police Officers Assn.’s Law Enforcement Technology Committee. “If you asked me whether they could afford it, even at a cost of, say, $200,000, I would say no.”

“We’re under such terrific budgetary constraints that it’s also difficult to have someone specialize, say, with only computer work,” Majors said. “Technology has such a great ability to assist police departments, so you can have someone in the streets. But it costs more to get it.”

KABC was not the only news station to air a modified likeness of Hilbun. Most Southern California news programs assigned the task to their graphic artists. At KCAL Channel 9, news producers put their artist on screen.

“At the 9 o’clock news (the night before Hilbun was caught), we had our computer make-over specialist demonstrate the process of what we’re doing,” said Kerry Oslund, a KCAL news executive producer. “Basically, you saw the Hilbun picture first. Then they were shaving off the mustache hair, and then removing his hair, right there on the TV screen.”

KCAL and KABC use Quantel Paintbox. During the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, KABC acquired the initial $400,000 version of Paintbox. Better and faster versions have since been marketed, Alexander said, at roughly half that cost.

“It’s a real ongoing process just to keep up with it all,” Alexander said. “My current machine is twice as fast as the classic was.”

Prime-time television programs like “Missing Persons” and “America’s Most Wanted” have incorporated computer-enhanced photographs to show how missing children may have aged or to alter facial characteristics of criminal suspects.

But major television programs can rely on hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising revenue to help produce a show. Police departments rely on tax-supported budgets, which are very tight, Majors said.

Not only is the equipment expensive, but also computer or forensic technicians need training to run these new systems. “It takes time for the forensic artist to effectively learn to use the tools,” Majors said, and having that artist detached from normal duties is also of budgetary concern.

Majors, who is chairman of the National Foundation for Law and Technology, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing high technology into law enforcement, said that the answer may lie in spreading the expense of computers across a network.

“You can have one organization creating images that could be distributed to everybody,” he said. “And the software can be distributed this way too.”

In Huntington Beach, where Hilbun was finally arrested, the Police Department has no computer enhancement capability, said Lt. Chuck Poe.

“When it works, it’s really good, and it certainly helped on this one,” Poe said, “because it was that picture on TV that helped this guy get caught.”

Last November, the Santa Ana Police Department became the first police force on the West Coast selected to test a private Santa Ana firm’s new art imaging software. Developed by Infotec Development Inc. and marketed as FaceKit and PhotoSketch, it is being used in the department’s missing persons and assault section, said Lt. Bob Helton.

“It allows you to go in and actually modify and change . . . facial features, with more than 500 different faces that you can put together,” he said.

In addition, the user can add scars and change hairstyles, Helton said, “so that when you’re finished, a victim or witness can feel much more confident that this person committed or was involved in a crime.”

The computer produces something like a Polaroid picture that can be distributed to police investigators or to the media, Helton said.

Newport Beach Police Lt. Paul Henisey, who has been on the force 17 years, recalls the old system of using plastic overlays.

“I came into the police force when they were using the little plastic sheets, where you fit the hair on top of the head, and then a nose on the face, and you paper-clipped it all together,” Henisey said.

Today, television news artists like Alexander can do a better, faster job, all with the stroke of a pen.

Alexander uses a wireless pen that allows the artist to draw on the computer screen. Most software packages have features to eliminate busy backgrounds or highlight the image, he said.

When told that one of the Huntington Beach bar patrons recognized Hilbun from KABC’s newscast, Alexander replied: “That’s nice. It’s good to hear.”