OAN’s James Meyers
1:48 PM -Wednesday, March 27, 2024
A Southern California police department has been ordered by the Lego toy brand to stop digitally photoshopping Lego heads on arrested suspects’ faces, which the department has been doing recently in order to comply with a state law that requires providing anonymity, citing “offenders’ rights.”
The Murrieta Police Department began using Lego heads to cover suspects’ faces back in November 2022.
The altered photos received attention last week after the department posted a statement that was titled “Why the covered faces?” on Facebook (Meta).
The Golden State’s legislature previously passed a bill that prohibits the release of mugshots and booking photos of those accused of nonviolent crimes.
However, Lego has now requested that the police department stop using images of Lego heads. Soon after, the department responded in a statement and agreed to comply with the toy brand.
“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 told Fox News Digital.
“We are currently exploring other methods to continue publishing our content in a way that is engaging and interesting to our followers,” he added.
Additionally, images of the police department’s Instagram page showed the lego heads with different facial expressions, including crying, frowning, smirking or raging.
“The Murrieta Police Department prides itself in its transparency with the community, but also honors everyone’s rights & protections as afforded by law; even suspects,” the police agency said.
“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,” they added.
According to the LA Times, in 2023, the state also passed Bill AB994, which requires mugshots of any suspect to be removed from police departments’ social media accounts within 14 days, unless there are special circumstances.
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