LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Southern California police division has been handcuffed by Lego after the toy firm requested the company to cease including Lego heads to cowl the faces of suspects in pictures it shares on social media.
The Murrieta Police Division has been utilizing Lego heads and emojis to cowl folks’s faces in posts on social websites since a minimum of early 2023. However the altered pictures went viral final week after the division posted an announcement about its coverage, prompting a number of information articles and, later, the request from Lego.
“Why the lined faces?” the division wrote March 18 in an Instagram publish that featured 5 folks in a lineup, their faces lined by Lego heads with various expressions. The publish went on to reference a California regulation that took impact Jan. 1, limiting departments in sharing mugshots on social media.
“The Murrieta Police Division prides itself in its transparency with the neighborhood, but in addition honors everybody’s rights & protections as afforded by regulation; even suspects,” the division wrote.
Throughout the U.S., regulation enforcement businesses have typically posted galleries of pictures for “Mugshot Mondays” and “Wished Wednesdays” to social media in efforts to bolster neighborhood engagement. However specialists more and more level to the dangerous results of placing such pictures on-line. For folks awaiting trial, mugshots can carry a presumption of guilt. And for anybody in search of to maneuver previous a legal conviction, the pictures could make it laborious to get a job and hang-out them for the remainder of their lives.
Below California’s new regulation, police departments and sheriff’s workplaces at the moment are required to take away any reserving picture they shared on social media — together with of individuals arrested for violent offenses — inside 14 days until particular circumstances exist, just like the individual stays a fugitive and an imminent risk to public security.
It builds on a previous version that took effect in 2022. The prior regulation prohibited posting mugshots of all non-violent offenders until these circumstances exist. It additionally mentioned departments ought to take away mugshots already posted to social media figuring out any defendant who requests it if they will show their document was sealed, their conviction was expunged or they have been discovered not responsible, amongst a handful of different causes.
Murrieta police had an inner dialogue about posting pictures of arrestees usually and introduced a brand new division coverage on Instagram in January 2023. The neighborhood had requested extra of their “Weekly Roundup” posts, so the division mentioned it began utilizing the Lego heads and emojis to adjust to the regulation whereas nonetheless participating with Murrieta residents.
However on March 19, the toy company reached out and “respectfully requested us to chorus from utilizing their mental property in our social media content material, which, after all, we perceive and can adjust to,” Lt. Jeremy Durrant mentioned in an announcement.
“We’re at the moment exploring different strategies to proceed publishing our content material in a approach that’s participating and fascinating to our followers,” Durrant wrote, declining additional remark.
Lego didn’t reply to a number of emails requesting remark.
The California regulation’s major sponsor, Assemblymember Corey Jackson, mentioned that whereas the Lego heads shield folks’s privateness, he wonders how Murrieta residents see it.
“Do they need folks, who’re being paid with their tax {dollars}, be paid to place Lego faces on folks so it may be proven on social media? Whereas they may very well be doing different issues that may very well be defending them?” Jackson advised The Related Press. “That’s for them to resolve.”
Whereas Murrieta’s use of Lego heads follows the regulation, Jackson mentioned different businesses are looking for loopholes by posting pictures displaying suspects behind police cruisers or handcuffed at crime scenes, arguing that they don’t seem to be the identical as reserving pictures. He mentioned his workers is in search of a authorized opinion from the state Division of Justice.
“If regulation enforcement desires the general public to belief them, and desires to assist them as they are saying they wish to implement regulation and order, how does their energetic gamesmanship on making an attempt to skirt the regulation themselves, assist them in reaching that?” he mentioned.
