The Murrieta Police Department in Southern California has been told to cease their playfully creative approach to protecting suspects' identities on social media. The Lego Group has reportedly instructed the department to stop the digital addition of Lego heads over the photos of suspects, as per Fox News Digital. The police department had been employing this technique to align with new state legal requirements, balancing transparency with the law's privacy demands.
Lt. Jeremy Durrant of the Murrieta Police stated, "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." The department aims to now explore other methods to continue to swiftly publish their content in a manner that remains engaging for their social media followers. This move comes as a response to Assembly Bill 994 and Penal Code 13665, which restrict when law enforcement can share suspect photos for nonviolent crimes and mandate that such photos be removed from social media after two weeks unless special circumstances demand otherwise.
According to an Instagram post from the department, the new state law led them to start masking suspects' identities to maintain compliance. "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," the department conveyed. The police have been applying this practice even before the law took effect on January 1st of this year, adopting it in various forms over the past couple of years.
Murrieta police had initially implemented posting Lego heads on suspects' photos in late 2023 but had used different imagery, such as a sad-faced emoji as early as April 2022, according to a historical review by CBS News Los Angeles. The change was a direct response to evolving legal constraints and a demonstration of the interplay between law enforcement adaptability and respect for privacy in the digital era—mandates that are always to be delicately balanced with the needs of public safety and transparency.
