One portion of the exhibition that did not come from our collection is a video that features Samantha Steinberg, a forensic artist who works for the Miami-Dade Police Department, showing how she creates an age progression. The age progression, which is featured in the “Forensic Art” section of the exhibition, is of Gustavo Falcon, an alleged drug kingpin from the 1980s who was never apprehended.
The video came to be a part of the exhibition because of the television show America’s Most Wanted. AMW featured Gustavo back in 2008. The goal of the show, of course, is to encourage private citizens to help law enforcement locate fugitive criminals. Since the most recent photograph of Gustavo was from 1990, Samantha was enlisted to give viewers a better idea of what he would look like almost twenty years later.
After locating the video on the website of America’s Most Wanted, I contacted them to see if they would provide us with a copy. As with any organization that is unfamiliar, it took me some time to locate the people who were able and willing to help. There were many phone calls and a number of e-mails, but I found people with a passion for what they do in the form of the Miami-based producer and the folks at the D.C. headquarters, including a lawyer who authorized the use of the footage, technicians who located the master file and burned it to a disc, and the administrative assistant who coordinated it all.
When all was said and done, I had the finished product in my hands about a week and a half before the exhibition opened. It was a bit tight, but into Crime in Miami it went. Getting the disc to play the way we wanted in the space we already had was a task, but that’s a story for another time.
If you want to see the footage, check out the Gustavo Falcon fugitive brief on the America’s Most Wanted website: http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=61019 (click on the “Media” tab). Maybe you’ll see something that will help to bring in the last of the Cocaine Cowboys.
-- Robert Harkins
No comments:
Post a Comment