John Sweetman

It's because everybody's different, everybody writes differently and nobody writes exactly the same way twice.

So there's more kind of leeway in it.

So every case stands on its own kind of strengths or weaknesses and stuff.

Now, my sergeant at the time, like he was very much into the passport and the security documents.

He was, I mean, he was shit hot with that stuff.

What he didn't know wasn't worth knowing.

but he didn't really go in for the handwriting thing.

He used to slag us off and say, oh yeah, the definitely maybe section, you know, because very often I'd end up in court with a handwriting case and you'd only be able to give a kind of watery opinion, but it's not because handwriting as an identification form of evidence was lacking.

It was just that if he didn't have enough material, if he didn't have enough writing to compare, you know, but I found the challenge great and I loved it.

There was still a lot to it, like with the security document thing, that's constantly changing because

You know, you only look at your passport now compared with a passport from 10, 20 years ago.

All the security features are different.

So you have to keep on top of all those things.

And people that are counterfeiting these documents are also keeping on top of what the latest security features are.

And then they're trying to...

replicate them so it was a constant kind of you have to keep one step ahead whereas with the handwriting it was much more of a thing that i could just get a file out and if there was a lot of handwriting in there it'd be great i'd just shut the mind off and just get the head down and it was really just getting down there and sketching stuff out you know repeating the patterns getting the feel for the rhythm of the writing and stuff like that and then coming to your conclusions

Yeah.

Yeah.

That one keeps following me around.

And, you know, it wasn't the case that got any media attention or anything like that.