Robert Brown|Lego moves to stop police from using toy's emojis to cover suspects faces on social media

A California Police Department began using Lego-look-alikes to cover up the faces of nonviolent suspects,Robert Brown but Lego is forcing them to stop.

The Murrieta Police Department has been using Lego heads to cover up the faces of suspects since January 2023. Before that, it used emojis to hide suspects' identities.

But the department's police lieutenant, Jeremy Durrant, told USA TODAY he received a call last week from one of Lego's attorneys who asked the department to stop using the Lego faces on their posts.

"They were obviously flattered that we were using their product, but they respectfully asked us to cease using their intellectual property on our social media," said Durrant.

USA TODAY reached out to Lego, but the toy manufacturer declined to comment.

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Why do police departments hide suspects' faces?

According Durrant, the department began hiding the faces of suspects in 2021 after California's Assembly Bill 1475 made it so police departments could not post booking photos of suspects onto social media.

The law was passed to protect the identities of suspects who were not convicted of any crime, but there are a few exceptions. Durrant said the department is allowed to post photos of individuals when they're suspected of convicting violent felonies.

"We recently had a vehicle pursuit where the [driver] seriously injured his passenger which is technically a violent felony," said Durrant. "And we did post his booking photo."

According to the lieutenant, police are also allowed to post photos of suspects when investigators need the public's help to identify them.

Assembly Bill 994, which was passed in January 2024, made it so that if anything was posted about a suspect, police needed to use their preferred name and pronouns given by the individual.

On the department's post, a lineup of men with Lego faces are holding numbers. Each one has a different expression, from sweating to freaking out to a big smile.

"On January 1st, a new law went into effect that restricts the how and when law enforcement agencies in California share suspect photos & mugshots," states a post from Murrieta Police Department.

Creative solutions

The department found a creative way to get around the new law.

The lieutenant said the agency first used generic emojis, but then began using the Lego heads at the beginning of 2023 to hide faces of suspects.

"We settled on Legos because it seemed to get a lot of engagement," said Durrant.

Photos of individuals who were arrested for theft, drunk driving, drug possession and more are posted on the Instagram account. All of their faces are covered with emojis, Legos or even the head of Shrek.

Why post the photo to begin with?

Before, when the department would post the faces of suspects, the comment section devolved into focusing on the individual and how they looked, said the lieutenant. But the point of these posts isn't to "put people on blast," he said.

The department posts the photos to share what police are doing for the community, states Durrant.

"We're not trying to name people," said Durrant. "I'm trying to show our residents the work the cops are doing."

The lieutenant said he just wants residents to see that police are "out there keeping the streets safe."