City

Police Station

The crook's garbage truck steals the whole show, and I mean that literally.

Brick Rated Score

3.9/5

Set 60316 · 2022

Pieces668

Minifigs5

Year2022

Set number60316

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The verdict

This is the LEGO City police station that finally gave the crooks a getaway plan worth building.

The garbage truck with its two battering rams and a jail wall designed to smash open is the single best play idea in the box, and it turns a fairly standard three-level station into an actual chase-and-escape story. It is not a set for quiet adult display, and the walls are thin enough that rough play will pop bricks. But for a kid who wants cops, robbers, a helicopter and a dog all in one afternoon, it delivers.

Best for: 6 to 10 year olds who want a cops-and-robbers playset with real escape drama

The full review

What it is

The garbage truck is what got me. LEGO has been making City police stations for years, and most of them follow the same script: a nice building, a couple of vehicles, a jail cell that opens. What set 60316 does differently is hand the crooks a proper plan. Their customized garbage truck has a container lift and two front rams, and the jail comes with an 'easy escape' wall built specifically to be smashed through. Suddenly the whole set has a point. Someone is breaking out, someone is chasing, and the helicopter is lifting off to cut them off. That is the story a kid actually wants to act out, and this box hands it to them assembled.

The catch

I will be straight with you about the trade-offs. At 668 pieces for a three-level building plus three vehicles, the bricks are spread thin, and the station walls show it. They are largely open-backed and single-thickness, so a rough getaway scene can knock a chunk of the top floor loose. Several parents flagged the same thing: it looks great built, but it does not survive being carried around the house by the roof. The RRP of 69.99 dollars (59.99 pounds) is fair for what is inside, though this set has now retired, so prices have started to climb on the secondary market and finding it new means paying a bit of a premium.

Who it's for

Who should get this one? A child roughly 6 to 10 who lives for cops, robbers and chases will adore it, especially with the TV-show minifigures giving the good guys and bad guys actual names. Just know that the youngest end of that range will likely want a hand with the build, which took longer than a few families expected. Who should skip it? Adult collectors chasing a detailed display facade, and anyone who already owns a recent City station. The vehicles here are a real step up from the older set, sleeker truck, a helicopter instead of the old drone, but the building itself covers familiar ground.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this is a comfortable, breezy afternoon rather than a challenge. The station goes up floor by floor with the kind of clear, single-focus steps LEGO City is known for, and the digital instructions in the free Building Instructions app let a kid zoom and rotate each stage if the paper booklet gets confusing. The vehicles are the fun part to assemble. The garbage truck's ram-and-lift mechanism comes together with a satisfying little bit of engineering, and the helicopter builds fast enough to keep an impatient six-year-old hooked to the end.

Do not come here hunting for rare printed parts or exotic new molds, because this is bread-and-butter City parts done well. The value is in the useful, reusable pieces: road plate, plenty of standard bricks, the vehicle bases, and a stack of accessories (handcuffs, megaphone, walkie-talkies) that feed straight into other City play. At roughly 10 cents a piece it lands right at the normal City rate, and the five minifigures plus the dog carry a lot of that worth, since four of the figures are unique to this set and the TV-show trio is not easy to pick up elsewhere.

Fun facts

01Three of the minifigures, Daisy Kaboom, Chief Wheeler and Allen, are pulled straight from the LEGO City Adventures animated TV series.
02The jail includes an 'easy escape' wall engineered to be knocked down by the crook's garbage truck rams, so the breakout is a designed feature, not a bug.
03The finished station measures about 27 x 28 x 24 cm and connects to other City playsets via an included road plate.
04It replaced the 2020 police station (60246), swapping that set's drone for a proper helicopter and its blocky truck for a much sleeker vehicle lineup.