I’ve seen my fair share of mugshots back in the day, but this takes the cake.
In wake of recent California laws that restrict the sharing of the images of suspects of nonviolent crimes on social media, the police department in Murrieta has been using a strange method of censoring faces - by covering them with lego emojis.
If that’s not ridiculous enough, the police department has also used other emojis and images of characters from cartoons and children’s media, as seen on the police department’s Instagram page.
One man, who was arrested for trying to sell a random woman meth (no, I’m not kidding), had his face censored with a queasy-looking emoji. Two men who stole nearly $2,000 worth of merchandise from a store had their faces replaced with Shrek and Donkey, as one was wearing a Shrek shirt. One man arrested for breaking and entering was caught climbing in through a window in a position that resembled the Grinch sneaking into Cindy Lou Who’s house, so his face was replaced with the Grinch’s face.
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As funny as this is, this practice could pose serious issues. As possession and even distribution of child sexual abuse material is not a violent crime in California (and neither are many forms of rape), pictures of people with Lego heads are not going to help much for a family seeking to protect their children from harm.
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