The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to allow the San Francisco Police Department to use deadly robots against suspects, bringing a sci-fi dystopia to life. The robots will be remote-controlled rather than autonomous, and will use explosives to kill or incapacitate suspects when lives are at stake, the AP reports.
The police have always had bomb disposal robots, but Pandora’s box of their weapons was originally opened by the Dallas Police Department. In 2016, after unsuccessful negotiations with a hidden active shooter, the DPD hooked up a disposal robot with explosives, drove it to a suspect, and detonated it, killing the shooter. The SFPD now has the authority to make this a tactic.
For now, however, the SFPD is focused on exploding robots, and SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxey told the AP: “Robots so equipped will only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives.”
The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office sent a letter to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors stating that “the ability to kill members of the community remotely”is “inhumane and militaristic”and that “the streets of San Francisco are neither a battlefield nor a war zone.””. The letter also notes that most other jurisdictions have rejected the idea of police with killer robots – Virginia, Maine and North Dakota have banned armed robots, and Oakland has abandoned the armed robot program after public backlash. New York only got around to robotic observers before there was public outcry and the NYPD shut down the program.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved the new policy by a vote of 8 to 3.