California Police Department Is Drawing a Lot of Attention Over Its Photos of Suspects

Leah Barkoukis | March 21, 2024 8:00 AM

A California police department is making headlines for how it has chosen to be in compliance with a new law that protects the privacy of suspects.

AB 994, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2023 and which went into effect Jan. 1, 2024, prohibits police from sharing images of suspects who have been arrested for nonviolent crimes on social media. It also requires, in most cases, mugshots shared on social media be deleted after 14 days.

"The Murrieta Police Department prides itself on its transparency with the community, but also honors everyone’s rights & protections as afforded by law; even suspects," the department said in a Facebook post.

The reason the Murrieta Police Department has made headlines, however, is because they’ve chosen to Photoshop Lego heads on suspects to be in compliance with the law.

But MPD has been creatively concealing identities of suspects long before the law went into effect, using Barbie heads, emojis, and Shrek characters, for example.

“Some of the reasons were the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law, the effects a post could have on an individual or their families outside of the criminal proceedings they may be subject to (public shaming) and some of it came down to workload,” the department previously explained.

“Our goal is to keep our citizens informed on what is occurring in the City in which we all live as well as the work the police department is doing on behalf of the citizens,” it added.