San Francisco has voted to allow police to use remote-controlled robots armed with explosives, amid increasing scrutiny of the justice system across the United States.
Key points:
- San Francisco police will be allowed to use robots fitted with explosives in limited situations
- Experts say backlash from the community may lead officers to reject using the devices
- Police across the United States face increasing pressure to de-militarise
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 on Tuesday local time to permit police to deploy the devices in limited situations where lives are at stake and no other alternative is available.
Police departments across the US have faced increasing pressure over the use of militarised equipment and force amid a years-long reckoning on criminal justice.
The vote was prompted by a new California law requiring police to inventory military-grade equipment such as flashbang grenades, assault rifles and armoured vehicles, and seek approval from the public for their use.
So far, police in just two California cities — San Francisco and Oakland — have publicly discussed the use of robots as part of that process.
Around the country, police have used robots over the past decade to communicate with barricaded suspects, enter potentially dangerous spaces and, in rare cases, for deadly force.
Dallas police became the first to kill a suspect with a robot in 2016, when they used one to detonate explosives during a stand-off with a sniper who had killed five police officers and injured nine others.
Experts say police could reject robots amid community backlash
The San Francisco vote has renewed a fierce debate sparked years ago over the ethics of using robots to kill a suspect and the doors such policies might open.
Largely, experts say, the use of such robots remains rare even as the technology advances.
Michael White, a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, said even if robotics companies presented deadlier options at trade shows, it did not mean police departments would buy them.
Professor White said companies previously made specialised claymores to end barricades and scrambled to equip body-worn cameras with facial recognition software, but departments didn’t want them.
“Because communities didn’t support that level of surveillance,” he said.
“It’s hard to say what will happen in the future, but I think weaponised robots very well could be the next thing that departments don’t want because communities are saying they don’t want them.”
Robots or otherwise, San Francisco official David Chiu, who authored the California bill, said communities deserved more transparency from law enforcement and to have a say in the use of militarised equipment.
San Francisco “just happened to be the city that tackled a topic that I certainly didn’t contemplate when the law was going through the process, and that dealt with the subject of so-called killer robots,” said Mr Chiu, who is now the city attorney.
‘Spray of doom’ about potentially lethal robots
In 2013, police maintained their distance and used a robot to lift a tarp as part of a manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect , finding him hiding underneath it.
Three years later, Dallas police officials sent a bomb disposal robot packed with explosives into an alcove of El Centro College to end an hours-long stand-off with sniper Micah Xavier Johnson , who had opened fire on officers as a protest against police brutality was ending.
Police detonated the explosives, becoming the first department to use a robot to kill a suspect.
A grand jury declined charges against the officers, and then-Dallas police chief David Brown was widely praised for his handling of the shooting and the stand-off.
“There was this spray of doom about how police departments were going to use robots in the six months after Dallas,” said Mark Lomax, former executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association.
“But since then, I had not heard a lot about that platform being used to neutralise suspects … until the San Francisco policy was in the news.”
The question of potentially lethal robots has not yet cropped up in public discourse in California as more than 500 police and sheriff departments seek approval for their military-grade weapons use policy under the new state law.
Oakland police abandoned the idea of arming robots with shotguns after public backlash, but will outfit them with pepper spray.
‘Most departments are not prepared to use their robots for lethal force’
Many of the use policies already approved are vague as to armed robots, and some departments may presume they have implicit permission to deploy them, said John Lindsay-Poland, who has been monitoring implementation of the new law as part of the American Friends Service Committee.
“I do think most departments are not prepared to use their robots for lethal force,” he said, “but if asked, I suspect there are other departments that would say, ‘we want that authority.'”
San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin first proposed prohibiting police from using robot force against any person.
But the department said while it would not outfit robots with firearms, it wanted the option to attach explosives to breach barricades or disorient a suspect.
The approved policy allowed only a limited number of high-ranking officers to authorise use of robots as a deadly force — and only when lives are at stake and after exhausting alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through alternate means.
San Francisco police said the dozen functioning ground robots the department already has have never been used to deliver an explosive device, but were used to assess bombs or provide eyes in low visibility situations.
“We live in a time when unthinkable mass violence is becoming more commonplace,” San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement.
“We need the option to be able to save lives in the event we have that type of tragedy in our city.”
Los Angeles Police Department does not have any weaponised robots or drones, said SWAT Lieutenant Ruben Lopez.
He declined to say why his department did not seek permission for armed robots, but confirmed they would need authorisation to deploy one.
“It’s a violent world, so we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.
There are often better options than robots if lethal force is needed, because bombs can create collateral damage to buildings and people, said Mr Lomax, the former head of the tactical officers group. “For a lot of departments, especially in populated cities, those factors are going to add too much risk,” he said.
Last year, the New York Police Department returned a leased robotic dog sooner than expected after public backlash , indicating that civilians are not yet comfortable with the idea of machines chasing down humans.
AP
