Police Artist Bones Up on Skills at FBI Class

Ventura Police Cpl. Greg Parrish, one of the county’s few law enforcement sketch artists, recently returned from an elite academy where he was taught facial reconstruction--on human skulls.

Eerie but cool.

Parrish was one of 14 officers from across the nation who went to the FBI’s massive compound in Quantico, Va. The place is so popular with cops that Parrish was on a waiting list for five years.

“It’s the No. 1 place for law enforcement training,” Parrish said.

In class, the corporal practiced using clay on a skull to mold a likeness of the dead person.

Parrish was also taught to sketch with his non-writing hand, his left, and how to redraw faces from pictures that were displayed at various angles and upside down. The practices hone skills needed to draw a good likeness, he said.

When he’s at work in Ventura, Parrish is occasionally pulled from detective duty and asked to use his paper and black pencils to sketch a rendering of a crime suspect.

Before actually drawing, he first asks a witness to describe the suspect and then has him or her look through mug shots for similar noses, ears and other facial features.

So far, no big cases have been broken with one of Parrish’s sketches, but he said it’s only a matter of time.

“When you have nothing to go on, it gives you something,” Parrish said. “Officers want someone or something to look for, and this gives them a direction. It’s just another tool.”

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Back in July, this column noted that when an inmate in the county gets the chair--the Pro-Straint restraining chair, that is--it doesn’t mean the end. Well, it turns out that may not be true--the chair itself may not survive.

A federal judge last week issued a temporary restraining order barring sheriff’s deputies from strapping inmates into the hard, narrow recliner.

With the order, the judge was siding with four former inmates who are suing the county over their claim that the chair is torture.

So nowadays when an inmate gets out of control, often because he or she is drunk or whacked out on speed, deputies will use “belly chains,” Sheriff’s Capt. Randy Pentis said.

Belly chains go around the waist and include shackles for the ankles and handcuffs for the wrists. An inmate can walk in belly chains by taking small steps.

After the restraints are on, a belligerent inmate is placed into an empty cell and chained to a toilet grate on the floor.

“I’m waiting for someone to get hurt now that they’ve had to go back to what they used to do,” said Alan Wisotsky, the county’s attorney in the lawsuit. “Inmates can hurt themselves in these shackles, and that was what was so nice about the chair--they couldn’t.”

Wisotsky plans to appeal the injunction. If the appeal fails, the injunction will be in effect until the outcome of the civil trial, which likely won’t start until March.

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A set of Simi Valley roommates allegedly got a jump on holiday shopping on their home computer, but authorities say the pair weren’t surfing the Web for bargains.

Johnathan Morey, 30, and Dana McNew, 20, were arrested recently on suspicion of manufacturing checks and fake identification documents, Simi Valley police said.

Morey and McNew, who have since been released from jail on their promises to appear in court, allegedly used the bogus documents to buy $7,000 worth of computers, garden equipment, a shed and barbecue from five local businesses.

Authorities used a search warrant to seize the merchandise from a house the men shared on 3rd Street in Simi Valley. A search for more possible victims is ongoing, authorities said.

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Holly J. Wolcott can be reached at holly.wolcott@latimes.com