I wish there was video of my only time giving a description to LE. (I swear I am not haunted by bad luck, I've lived in London for years and years and all my brushes with criminality are the norm where I live!)
Someone on a bicycle snatched my phone, and because it happened while I was on my way to the hospital (I think they might have thought I was injured?) the LE came to take my statement. I had ran after the bike mind you, for quite a while, so I THOUGHT I had a great idea of what that... lovely man looked like.
The actual description I gave? I said the bicycle was orange, and then as I was saying that, I was no longer sure. Orange or actually red? Or maybe it had a stripe of bright orange, because bicycles are not orange, so that would be impossible right? Also the guy looked like my childhood friend. No, I did not see his face, at all. But the back of his hand... had the same kind of hair???
Long story short, I hope no one here ever needs to give a description of a perp/suspect, because in that moment you realise just how floaty memory is. HOEVER: I was 100% sure that if they showed me a photo of the bike I'd know it right away. In fact I kept looking at bikes for months afterwards and I kept thinking nope, not this one, no way.
All these to say: Descriptions from memory are fluid. We observe a couple of elements when looking at ppl and the brain fills in the rest. However our brains are VERY good at identifying things we have seen - that's how we recognise the people and the places we know. That's why I give very low trust in the actual descriptions, and much more in the ability of ppl to match a memory to an image.
All MOO