Murrieta Police Department has been using Lego heads in social media photos to protect the suspects’ identities (Picture: MurrietaPD/Instagram)
Lego has told a police department to stop using their toy heads to protect the identity of suspects on social media.
Murrieta Police Department in California had been posting photos on Instagram of captured suspects with their faces covered by a Lego head.
But Lego wasn’t too pleased and have put a stop to it.
The police department said in a statement: ‘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.’
Murrieta PD had photoshopped the Lego heads onto various suspects in both mug shots and photos of them while they were being arrested or shortly after.
The images often came with a humorous caption. In one, the force says officers had won a game of ‘hide and seek’ with the thief.
‘Fortunately for the officers, they were able to use GPS to locate the suspect,’ they added, saying the suspect – pictured with a sad bearded Lego for a head – was tracked down using the victims’ stolen iPhone that he forgot to turn off.
Lego have told the department to stop using images of their toys (Picture: MurrietaPD/Instagram)
In another photo, a suspect has the face of Shrek because he had apparently been ‘acting like an Ogre’ in a branch of Target, trying to steal almost $2,000 worth of goods.
Some social media users saw the funny side of the new faces, but several questioned the reasoning behind the move, prompting the police department to post an explainer last week.
‘Why the covered faces?’ it wrote.
Last week Murrieta PD explained why they used the Lego faces (Picture: MurrietaPD/Instagram)
A new law was introduced this year banning police from revealing the identity of non-violent crime suspects (Picture: MurrietaPD/Instagram)
‘On January 1st, a new law went into effect that restricts the how and when law enforcement agencies in California share suspect photos & mugshots.’
The department said that the new law, Assembly Bill 994 & Penal Code 13665, prevents them from sharing suspect images for nonviolent crimes – unless specified circumstances exist.
In response several people supported the humorous faces, with one writing ‘Lego faces are better anyways,’ and another posting, ‘Not everyone who is arrested is guilty, and someday it might be you.’
But a few hit out at the new law.
The man in this picture was given a Shrek head because he was acting like an Ogre (Picture: MurrietaPD/Instagram)
‘Who makes up these laws?’ one wrote, adding, ‘Jeez, seems there are more laws protecting the criminals than law abiding citizens.’
Another, meanwhile, said: ‘Why does our legislation spend so much time and effort protecting criminals? It’s so backwards.’
Although the law came into effect this year, Murrieta PD has actually been covering the faces of their suspects with Lego heads for much longer.
It’s not clear what Murrieta PD will use to cover faces from now on (Picture: MurrietaPD/Instagram)
In November they wrote on Instagram: ‘The department had an internal discussion about posting the faces of arrestees in general. After weighing a lot of factors the department ultimately decided to generally not post the faces of arrestees.
‘There are circumstances that arise that do necessitate or warrant the posting of an arrestees face but the dept decided those would be the exceptions and not the rule.’
They also said they wanted to avoid potential humiliation of the suspects’ families.
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