LEGO asks US police department to stop using minifigure heads to hide suspects’ identities

The LEGO Group has reportedly asked a US police department to stop using LEGO minifigure heads to mask suspects’ identities.

California’s Murrieta Police Department began digitally adding LEGO minifigure heads to images of suspects on its social media accounts last week, in a bid to comply with a new regulation – Assembly Bill 994 & Penal Code 13665, which came into effect January 1 – that prohibits law enforcement from sharing photos of suspects in nonviolent crimes.

“The Murrieta Police Department prides itself in its transparency with the community, but also honours everyone’s rights and protections as afforded by law; even suspects,” the department shared on Instagram at the time. “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.”

According to Murrieta Police Department Lt. Jeremy Durrant, however, the LEGO Group has now requested that the social media team stop adding digital LEGO minifigure heads to suspects.

“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,” 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.”

Murrieta PD’s social pages have not featured LEGO minifigure heads for the past few days, though the original images are still visible at the time of writing. It’s not especially surprising to see the LEGO Group making this request, though: having its intellectual property associated with real-life suspects is probably not the look it’s going for.

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