Lego blocks police from using toy heads to protect suspects’ IDs in quirky online posts
Oh, snap!
Lego has come down on a California police department like a ton of bricks — albeit politely — asking it to stop adding digital toy heads on suspects’ faces, which it has been doing to comply with a woke state l🌠aw protecting offenders’ rights.
Murrieta police ﷽went viral for posting hilarious images with suspects’ faces replaced by Lego heads after the state Legislature passed a bill prohibiting the release of mugshots and booking photos of those accused of nonviolent crimes.
But the toy giant is not playing around and wants to block the agencওy from using the cute likenesses.
“The Lego Group reached out to us and respectfully asked us to refrain from using their intellectual property in our social media content which of course we understand and will comply with,” police spokesman Lt. Jeremy Durrant .
“We are currently exploring other methods to continue publishing our content in a way that is engaging and interesting to our followers,” he added to the outlet.
Images on the department’s Instagram page showed the digitally superimposed blocks with a variety of facial expressions — crying, frowning, smirking orꦜ raging.
One appeared to show two suspects handcuffed in t🎃he back of a patrol car — with the Lego face on one angrily looking at the other, whose toy head is crying.
Another show꧂ed five people in a lineup who were completely unrecognizable because of the toyℱ heads.
“The Murrieta Police Department prides itself in its transparency with the community, but also honors everyone’s rights & 𝔉protections as afforded 🍒by law; even suspects,” the police agency said on social media last week.
“In order to share what is happening in Murrieta, we chose to cover the faces of suspects to protect their identity while🔯 still aligning with the new law,” it added.
In 2021, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1475, which prohibits localও law enforcement agencies from publishing images of suspects in nonviolent crimes.
Last year, the state also passed AB 994, which requires mugs of any suspect to be removed from social mꦡedia within 14 days unle🔴ss there are special circumstances,
Durrant previously told the news outlꦍet that the department has been obscuring faces i💃n photos in various ways for the past couple of years.
The department has been obscuring suspects’ faces by using emojis, Barbie dolls and even “Shrek”ꦑ ♌characters.
