Police use of Lego heads violated law
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A California police department that had been using minifigure Lego heads to obscure suspects’ faces in social media posts will no longer engage in the practice after The Lego Group contacted it citing an infringement of intellectual property rights, The Hill reported.
“The Lego Group reached out to me on March 19th and respectfully asked us to refrain from using their intellectual property in our social media content,” a Murrieta Police Department official said in a statement.
The practice of using digitally altered images, including of the trademarked Lego head, has been in effect for several years — especially since 2021, when California passed a law prohibiting law enforcement from releasing photos of suspects for nonviolent crimes, “unless specific circumstances exist,” the department official told the news outlet.
A spokesperson for the Lego Group declined to comment.
