The maker of Lego toys has requested the Murrieta Police Division of Riverside County to cease utilizing digitally added Lego heads to cover the identities of suspects in mug pictures.
The request comes after the division posted a photograph on social media earlier this week of suspects with their faces hidden by the yellow heads, writing that they did so to adjust to a brand new state regulation.
“The Murrieta Police Division prides itself in its transparency with the group, but in addition honors everybody’s rights & protections as afforded by regulation; even suspects,” the put up stated.
The California Legislature handed Meeting Invoice 1475 in 2021, prohibiting native regulation enforcement from publishing mug pictures of suspects in nonviolent crimes. The Murrieta Police Division has as a substitute used photoshopped Lego heads as a manner across the regulation.
The state additionally handed AB 994 final 12 months, which requires mug pictures of any suspect to be faraway from social media inside 14 days except there are particular circumstances.
After the altered mug pictures gained traction on social media, Lego requested the division to cease utilizing the heads of their posts, Murrieta police Lt. Jeremy Durrant confirmed Friday. He emphasised that it was an amicable dialog and the division cooperated absolutely.
Durrant beforehand informed The Occasions in an e-mail that the division has been obscuring faces in mug pictures in numerous methods for the previous couple of years, and the observe was commonplace.
Durrant informed Fox Information they’re exploring different methods to publish content material that pursuits and engages the general public now that the Lego heads are off the desk.
“The Lego Group reached out to us and respectfully requested us to chorus from utilizing their mental property in our social media content material which in fact we perceive and can adjust to,” the Murrieta Police Division stated in a press release, in keeping with Fox Information.
