I can't possibly imagine how anyone thinks this is a good idea. US police are already over-militarized and under-accountable. We as Americans need to stop worshiping "men in uniform" including all levels of law enforcement and military and hold them to the same standard as any other member of society -- stop giving them everything they want and stop spoiling them when they call us unpatriotic.
> The military is held to a much, much higher standard than regular law enforcement. Their rules of engagement are much stricter.
I respect the military much more than I do the police, but it would still be a good idea to cut down on the fetish made at least of militarism for its own sake (a big, though probably not the main, part of the problem with US police forces).
Sometimes I wonder where military fetishism comes from. Early on it was toys. Then film. The last couple decades, the Call of Duty franchise has represented a kind of militarism fetish brain rot, at societal scale.
What I find funny if not sad is when both law enforcement and militia types follow suit, or at least try to.
There's nothing more pathetic than overweight law enforcement that can't even run a mile decked out in camouflage tactical gear they barely know how to use, with the wrong attitude thinking they're an operator or some such.
It's like institutionalized stolen valor almost, they want the honor and respect without the level of hard work actual Special Forces put into it.
Right, but the military can change the entire planet by invading Iraq (or wherever) based on a lie tomorrow leading to the destabilisation of entire regions and ramifications that will last not just for decades but potentially centuries. And it's arguable that much military abuse is actually 'held' to the higher standard as opposed to ignored covered up, or redefined (e.g. definitions of combatants), but I suppose that's another discussion.
> The military is a tool wielded by the government. They don't go anywhere without being ordered.
I don't see (the United States of) America being referenced at all. Even with the context of the parent comments, it's fairly easy to mistake this typical HN comment as referring to wider in scope at a first reading.
Your sarcasm also isn't in line with the HN commenting guidelines.
It's a story about a US police department. Also check the top comment:
> I can't possibly imagine how anyone thinks this is a good idea. US police are already over-militarized and under-accountable. We as Americans need to stop worshiping "men in uniform" including all levels of law enforcement and military and hold them to the same standard as any other member of society -- stop giving them everything they want and stop spoiling them when they call us unpatriotic.
This is true until it isn’t. Read up on the torture following the Invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, particularly in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. The accountability was really minimal, and a lot of people guilty of the horrible crime of torturing got away scot-free.
See also quite a few murdering of civilians conducted by private military contractors such as Blackwater (now Constellis; in particular the Nisour Square massacre). Some were charged for the crime they committed (or for a lesser crime of manslaughter) but were later pardoned.
Since this is HN it is also obligatory to mention Chelsea Manning who leaked many crimes committed by the military (in particular the murdering of the journalists Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen from an attack helicopter). She was the only person convicted for that incident. Nobody was charged with the murder of the journalists. (But they did [finally] charge Julian Assange for helping Chelsea Manning reveal these crimes to the public).
> Asking a cop to walk into an active shooter situation isn’t great either.
I don't think valuing a cop who doesn't want to do their job, but still demands to keep it, over innocent civilian lives that they were hired to protect is a great situation, either.
Delivery drivers have more dangerous jobs than police officers do, and they're asked to walk into situations where they can be murdered, and are statistically more likely to be than cops, literally everyday, multiple times a day.
Cops are often the highest paid employees on a government's payroll, and it is very common for over 50% of a municipality's total budget to go towards cop salaries and benefits. In my state, cops earn a median salary of over $105,000 a year before overtime, bonuses or benefits, and they can earn over $250,000 a year with overtime. They can retire after only 20 years of working with a full pension that they can draw from for life. In my area, they're also given special mortgage rates of about 2% versus the more common ~6%+ as of late. For comparison, software engineers in my state only have a median salary of $89,000.
Delivery drivers barely make minimum wage, they often have no benefits, and their employers tend either pay them off the books or classify them as independent contractors.
Cops are rewarded even more handsomely than military members are, for the very miniscule risk they take on. This is what they signed up for, often because the rewards are that good.
> Asking a cop to walk into an active shooter situation isn’t great either.
Indeed, cops are just humans, and we correctly think of them as such when asking them to perform duties on behalf of the citizens they are supposed to protect. But somehow, when it comes time to holding them accountable for misdeeds carried out in the course of their professional duties, they are held apart from other humans. At least one side of this imbalance should be rectified.
> > asking them to perform duties on behalf of the citizens they are supposed to protect.
> SCOTUS has ruled that police have no duty to protect citizens. "Protect and serve" is just a marketing slogan, just like "Don't be evil".
Right, I meant "supposed" in the notional sense, like the average citizen supposes that they are going to be protected by the police, though I agree it was very confusing wording. I was referring exactly to decisions like the one you cite as evidence of cops receiving a double standard of treatment.
> SCOTUS has ruled that police have no duty to protect citizens.
That is not remotely true. What SCOTUS has ruled is that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens, i.e. the Constitution doesn't say anything about it one way or another. The actual duty of police to protect citizens arises from state law, departmental policies, and/or employment contracts. If you are so unfortunate as to live in a municipality that imposes no duties on their employees, perhaps you should vote for someone who will.
> The actual duty of police to protect citizens arises from state law...
No, SCOTUS explicitly ruled otherwise. Colorado law said the cops had a duty to act in a certain scenario; SCOTUS said Colorado can't override police discretion.
"Although the protective order did mandate an arrest, or an arrest warrant, in so many words, Justice Scalia said, 'a well-established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.'"
> That is not remotely true. What SCOTUS has ruled is that police have no constitutional duty to protect citizens, i.e. the Constitution doesn't say anything about it one way or another.
No, you are misinformed. That is, in fact, what SCOTUS ruled, not that "the Constitution doesn't say anything about it one way or the other."
> The actual duty of police to protect citizens arises from state law, departmental policies, and/or employment contracts. If you are so unfortunate as to live in a municipality that imposes no duties on their employees, perhaps you should vote for someone who will.
This is incorrect, and in fact directly backwards. SCOTUS used the premise that police don't have a Constitutional duty to protect citizens as the basis of their decision to overturn such a state law.
It's also a moot point, because state courts - including in California, which is what's relevant here - have treated the Castle ruling as binding precedent that police do not have a duty to protect citizens.
> Asking a cop to walk into an active shooter situation isn’t great either.
That’s quite literally the job.
There’s a bunch of other stuff cops do, but at the end of the day, they exist to risk violence so the rest of us don’t have to - without that, there’s no point to a group of state-sanctioned violence dealers.
Mixed feelings about involvement of robots at all, but ABSOLUTELY YES the use of NON-LETHAL FORCE is outrageously under-utilized in every kind of policing IRL and as depicted in popular media. Set em on stun, FFS.
I wonder if what is really happening, whether by design or a misaligned universe, is that firms that build these devices are really building for the military, and the thoughtless trend of militarizing police forces is intensifying. Why do I say this? Because the idea to use non-lethal force is frankly obvious and various think tanks were looking at this stuff for years. Ditto concerns over lethal robots.
Just as they will change healthcare, manufacturing, and the military, robots have the potential to produce big changes in policing. We can expect that at least some robots used by the police in the future will be artificially intelligent machines capable of using legitimate coercive force against human beings. Police robots may decrease dangers to police officers by removing them from potentially volatile situations. Those suspected of crimes may also risk less injury if robots can assist the police in conducting safer detentions, arrests, and searches. At the same time, however, the use of robots introduces new questions about how the law and democratic norms should guide policing decisions—questions which have yet to be addressed in any systematic way. How we design, regulate, or even prohibit some uses of police robots requires a regulatory agenda now to address foreseeable problems of the future.
"The future of robotic policing can now be found in developments within the military.(54) The military has used remote controlled robots for more than a decade.(55) The Department of Defense is preparing for a future in which nearly autonomous robots will play a central role in warfare.(56) Consequently, the military is spending the most money and attention on robotics."
(54). [P.W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century (2009)], supra note 20, at 78 (observing that the “military sets the agenda in AI”).
Perhaps it can ask the shooter to "please put down your weapon, you have 40 seconds to comply", giving them an opportunity to surrender before unloading a machine gun into them[1].
Or a drone which dives bombs with a tazer. That's the worst thing about this: robotics should mean that we have options because robots are replaceable and should be expendable.
But this tells you the real story: an expensive robot is more valuable then a human life.
That's a cops job. If they cant do it they shouldn't be a cop.
Case and point, uvalde.
What's to point of arming some fragile white guy who peaked in high-school to the teeth if he's just gonna stand outside and watch kids get shot anyway.
You're telling me that even in an armored car, while wearing bullet proof plates, next to a whole squad of armed and armored dudes, cops still are soooo weak and scared to do their jobs we have to pay for them to have new gun robots?
People like you can never answer: what do you do when a 6'3 gangster high off PCP runs at you with a knife? What about a 300lb robot doing circles on the highway so you can't safely grab it?
Cops have hands, less lethal, and lethal, because they should deal with different situations properly.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I've heard this term a lot, but it's not clear which aspect is the issue. For example, bullet proof vests: how is this bad? Similar with rifles such as the AR-15 - police already had pistols, nobody called them militarized for that. A riffle is just a more accurate pistol. I'd rather a cop have a riffle than a pistol for that reason: it's more safe. Beyond these two new things, I don't know what is new that should be called "over-militarized".
For the record, I'm not in favor of these robots and actualy I think this is an example of real militarization as it allows greater control by higher ups essentially turning cities into war games run by police generals. Police are meant to generally keep peace; a murder robot has a specific objective like a solder on the battlefield. I just mean this term as it has been used generally.
To be pedantic, that is not a tank. That is an armored personnel carrier.
The article is also wrong about the military restraining from using .50 caliber machine guns on infantry... but it's very clear the person that wrote the article really doesn't know much about these things anyway.
I agree the uses for a .50 caliber machine gun for policing is very, very few if any. However, .50 caliber firearms are indeed used quite often, just not automatic ones.
A great deal of the following text focuses on this exact issue. Dig in.
Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism
by Stephen Graham
“ Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism”
Maybe I lack imagination, but it seems like if you have enough control over a situation that you can deploy a police robot instead of charging in, then you have enough control to make non-lethal force a viable option.
They used a bomb disposal robot with a pound of C4 attached to stop the Dallas gunman in 2016. People did not like talking about whether it was necessary or not at the time.
> Sr. Cpl. Banes said they considered using a .50 caliber rifle to fire at the shooter, which had been successful in a similar attack on police 14 months earlier. However, in that case, the suspect had driven an armored truck into police headquarters and remained inside the armored vehicle. Johnson was holed up inside a populated college with thin sheetrock walls, so the tactical team deemed that approach too dangerous. They also considered rappelling down the building or attacking Johnson through the ceiling after opening it with explosives. Both options were ruled out due to the risks they might pose to the officers who would carry it out.
> Senior Corporal Jeremy Borchardt and others ultimately arrived at the idea to use a bomb disposal remote control vehicle armed with about 1 pound (0.45 kilograms) of C-4 explosive. The plan was to move the robot to a point against a wall facing Johnson and then detonate the explosives. The device exploded as intended at approximately 2:30 a.m., killing Johnson immediately. It was the first time that explosives strapped to a robot had been used in American domestic law enforcement. Although its arm sustained damage in the blast, the robot was still functional.
There was a decent amount of conversation about it at the time[1]. Looking back, the decision to kill a man (even a violent one with a gun) remotely, using a robot, is stunning. Particularly in light of the fact that the gunman wasn't targeting members of the public; instead, the police seem to have concluded that the most expedient way to handle him was to explode him.
Americans don't understand that their police forces are gangs. Yes, they have to follow the law and protocol. But the immediate second code they follow is brotherhood. When multiple officers are hurt or killed in action, they escalate the violence to the maximum extent possible, law be damned, as the AG and media is on their side and moves the spotlight away. Thankfully they usually consider public safety when they crack open the can of whoopass.
I think BLM demonstrates many do in fact realize this. I would blame qualified immunity and civil asset seizure and hence our courts, before anyone else. If you give impunity to any group they’ll turn into thugs.
Haven’t we been killing people with drones for quite some time?
The robot in question wasn’t autonomous. That’s where a line should be drawn IMO. But basically an RC car with a bomb on it doesn’t seem like a rubicon of any sort.
We've been doing it in other countries for quite some time. But the domestic, civil setting of the 2016 bombing was somewhat unique: the police do not have the procedures, rules of engagement, etc. that the military is supposed to have.
Is the 2016 bombing unique in a moral sense? I don't think so. But I do think it sets a concerning precedent in domestic law enforcement: if you're sufficiently difficult for the police to retrieve, they can simply blow you up instead of waiting to capture you.
The scenario of the Texas cop shooter in 2016 was one such scenario, and involved lethal use of a robot.
I'm not sure I want this to be policy, though, because it opens the door to "drone with a glock" kinds of things, which would be terrifying if deployed in any mass quantity.
That qualification hasn't meant much, going by the rate at which police hurt themselves (and innocent members of the public) with their own service weapons.
At least where I live, giving the police more funding hasn't meaningfully improved their ability to comport themselves. If anything, it's markedly declined over the last 30 years (while their funding hasn't).
I think an easier way to make the police more careful with their guns is to limit which cops can carry guns, and to require cops to live in the neighborhoods they police. People tend to be a little more careful with firearms when the stray bullet might hit their friends or family.
> You will have to fund them more if you want that.
I think nowhere else on Hacker News would the idea that "you're doing so badly at this job that we ought to pay you more to motivate you to do it well" get serious traction.
People do not in fact immediately fall over just because you shoot them. The idea of shooting someone with a pistol or rifle caliber to stop them from doing something in a split second is firmly a movie trope.
If I recall correctly there is some interesting discussion of that in the delightful book "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" [1]. One it describes (unless I'm mixing it up with another book) involved someone getting shot at close range through the heart, destroying their heart. They still had time to draw their own gun, aim, and fatally shoot the first shooter.
Another dramatic example, which I read about in the wonderful "Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present" [2] is the death of the 1930s bank robber Baby Face Nelson.
He got in a shootout with two FBI agents. They shot him in the abdomen. He then advanced on their position while they continued shooting at him, hitting 8 more times in the legs. Still he managed to keep going and killed one of the agents and seriously wounded the other (who would later die of his wounds, as would Nelson).
Note that under discussion is only remote controlled electromechanical devices. They are not requesting permission for autonomous killer robots. (yet)
Surprisingly, there is already precedent for this in US policing. All the way back in 2016, a gunman in Dallas was killed by police using a bomb defusal robot with remote-control explosives attached to it:
Yes I was hoping someone mentioned this. There's already precedent for this kind of thing, I'm honestly surprised they even need to ask for permission in this case.
If it's remote controlled then there isn't even a self defense justification to shoot. And I've never liked the notion of police shooting someone for threatening another person. The classic example being domestic disputes where they don't know who the aggressor is. A great example last year was that girl being attacked, called 911, but by the time the police arrived, she got the weapon and was threatening her attacker. They shot her.
IMHO they need to shoot less, not feel safer in doing so.
BYW I know the job can be scary AF. Remote control robot should reduce that, so less need to defend.
> she got the weapon and was threatening her attacker
Are you talking about Ma'Khia Bryant?[1] Because in that case both parties grabbed knives, but Bonner was unarmed by the time the police arrived. Also it doesn't matter what happened beforehand. Bryant was about to stab a woman to death who was not a threat. She shouted, "I'm gonna stab the fuck out of you, bitch.", lunged toward Bonner, and ignored police commands to stop. Of course the cops are justified in shooting Bryant.
> If it's remote controlled then there isn't even a self defense justification to shoot.
In the Texas example the attacker had military training and was holed up and armed after sniping 5 cops. Seemed like a reasonable case for using a robot.
Folks - this is not a lethal autonomous robot. This is a remotely controlled bomb disposal robot retrofitted with a gun. A human still has to pull the (digital) trigger to use lethal force.
This is nothing but a good thing.
Nobody cares if a robot is destroyed. A robot will allow everyone time to think and assess the situation before making a snap-judgement we all question later on. This can do nothing but reduce lethal force use.
This opens the door to fitting the same robot with a multitude of options - further reducing the need for lethal force. Pepper balls, stun guns, blinding lights, etc. (less-lethal does not mean non-lethal, when we discuss things like stun guns, pepper balls, rubber balls, etc)
In the field, lethal force happens because people are forced to make snap judgements. Sometimes they get things wrong... but when people's lives are at risk, lethal force will be employed to protect innocents and police alike. This robot removes half of the equation that leads to lethal force. This is nothing but a good thing.
> In the field, lethal force happens because people are forced to make snap judgements.
There are countless examples of cops killing people in situations that were not potentially harmful nor in situations where they were "forced" to make snap judgments.
Robots aren't going to fix the problem of cops abusing power or killing people with impunity simply because they can.
Turning the killing of real living civilians into a video game for cops isn't going to end well.
For now. Israel has already implemented/tested AI driven non-lethal guns. It is a matter of time before it is normalized.
<< A human still has to pull the (digital) trigger to use lethal force.
Yes. Drones in Afghanistan ( and elsewhere lately ) truly taught us nothing about human nature and how we perceive danger.
<< This can do nothing but reduce lethal force use.
If anything, it will significantly increase it, because:
1) cops will demand more of them
2) they will get them
3) budgets will forever be increased
4) people that are trigger happy will just be pressing different triggers
<< In the field, lethal force happens because people are forced to make snap judgements.
We are in agreement. Is the street a field though? We ask for a human, because the moment some random John is controlling the robot he has no stakes in local community. He might as well be controlling it from India.
<< Sometimes they get things wrong...
Yes, which is the reason for concerns.
<< This robot removes half of the equation that leads to lethal force.
Maybe in theory, but that fails to account for cultural differences, human nature and the fact that is merely a stepping stone away from autonomous robot deciding who lives or dies.
<< This is nothing but a good thing.
Time may prove me wrong, but from where I sit, there is a reason to be concerned.
edit: Crap man, this does not even scratch the surface of how bad an idea that is and most of it is not even based on technical issues, but merely on knowledge of human nature.
> << This robot removes half of the equation that leads to lethal force.
>
> Maybe in theory,
Not even in theory. In the 1970s there was a series of psychological experiments called The Milgram experiment where they tested how far subjects were ready to obey orders. Turns out around 60% of subjects are willing to use lethal force against subject just because a scientist tells them to.
Unlike most experiments in social psychology, this one has been replicated numerous times, and in one variation they introduce an intermediary between the subject and the acting victim. Turns out that even more humans (closer to 90% if I remember correctly) are willing to order a deadly force if there is someone else that actually presses the shock button.
So our current theory is actually the reverse of your parent claims, and we have experimental data to prove it. Drone operators in the Iraq invasion can actually attest to this as well. Humans are more likely, not less, to use deadly force the further they are away from the victim.
> A human still has to pull the (digital) trigger to use lethal force.
I guess you haven’t read up on the Milgram experiment. Humans are more likely, not less, to order deadly force when there is an intermediary between you and the victim. This robot will be another layer for the police to wash away their ethics and “follow orders”. We’ve already seen this with drone operators during the Iraq invation (which still suffer from PTSD despite never going to the frontlines), that they are no less likely—and even more if anything—to use deadly force on the innocent if ordered to do so.
> A human still has to pull the (digital) trigger to use lethal force.
Because cops have such a great track record with those decisions so far?
> In the field, lethal force happens because people are forced to make snap judgements.
This is what cops always claim when these discussions come up, but a look at the actual data proves otherwise. Cops routinely kill civilians - including innocent ones - in situations where there is literally no possible way they could reasonably be fearing for their life or be forced to make a "snap decision".
If you believe officers use excessive lethal force, then removing their lives from the equation can only make it better.
With that said, you grossly overstate this "problem" and the data doesn't tell the story you think it does... but regardless, there is no way to frame this but positive. Unless you just are anti-police in general...
I doubt that will be the case. A lone officer shooting someone while covering their camera is far easier than hauling out this huge machine and deploying it. It literally requires only one person to make that decision all on their own.
I also don't think it's lost on anyone how the public would react if these RC robots started to stack a body count...
The risks seem to be extremely minimal. Accountability can be built into the machine itself. We can even require multiple layers of "sign off" before the digital trigger can be activated.
This is all good stuff to have in the vein of reducing lethal force use.
> I also don't think it's lost on anyone how the public would react if these RC robots started to stack a body count...
Police have already demonstrated publicly that they don’t care about the public reaction to them killing people in their custody. I cant see how their use of robots would change that.
> This is all good stuff to have in the vein of reducing lethal force use.
And I guess this is where we fundamentally disagree. I do not see how reducing the risk of using lethal force will lead to the reduction of the use of lethal force as a whole.
They already do put less-lethal options on these remotely controlled robots. It's even in the article...
This is for when there is a significant probability violence will escalate and harm anyone besides the "bad guy" (ie. hostages, active gunman, etc). Removing officer lives from the equation means folks can keep a level head and not just go guns blazing. This is a good thing.
If you think police commit too much violence, then you should celebrate this. Removing half of the necessary equation that results in lethal force will do nothing but reduce the use of lethal force.
What is the point? They have to have had X number of hostages die in a year before we approve a remotely controlled robot?
Even if the number was zero, being able to remotely assess the situation before risking your own life and/or killing someone is nothing but a good thing.
Officers don't shoot people for funsies, despite the current prevailing narrative. We remove all risk to an officer's life, and we will get more peaceful solutions. In the event violence is required to resolve a situation without harming innocents, this is by far the safest way to do that.
When people say "defund the police" this is the kind of shit they are talking about. There is no reason for a police force to have access to lethal robots. None.
As the article mentions, they are bomb disposal robots. There is absolutely reason to have a tool capable of firing a shotgun shell attached, and an arm capable of placing a charge. You could hobble the bomb squad with legislation, make their job more deadly--or you could ban this particular use.
It’s crazy how defunding the SFPD involves raising their budget every single year. It’s almost as if “the police have been defunded” is a bit of rhetoric to justify more spending and more draconian violence.
Police didn't go inside because they were scared of dying.
Were they cowards? Yes. Does calling them cowards solve the problem? No.
Robots would actually solve the problem.
In tech we have a culture of blaming the process, not people. Now, we should definitely blame the Uvalde officers for their cowardice. But we should also think about how we could improve the process around dealing with active shooters and officers who simply aren't brave enough when push comes to shove. This was not the first time, and nor will it be the last time, when innocent lives die because of afraid law enforcement officers. Let's solve this problem at the process layer.
All you need is something to grab the shooter's attention. If he is distracted by the robot then human officers have a better opportunity to take him down.
Train citizens to drive robot non-lethal surveillance drones, do paperwork, cut funding for rage prone meat bag policing.
Maintain minimum required force of trigger happies for all the shooting scenarios.
Our secular society isn’t anymore sacrosanct than religious based choices. It should be readily reorganize-able as logistics demand.
Optimizing for 24/7 status quo politics, profit margin optimizing and rent extraction “or else the world ends” is not so different from forcing unfalsifiable magic down our throats.
What I am trying to describe is a very different kind of organization of policing agency and your response is to repeat old semantics, and conclude then it’s not that new?
You posted five sentences. Three of them are mostly just vague conglomerations of charged symbology. Did you expect an entire treatise in response...?
Anyways, the point remains: the difference between a police officer and a civilian is a small amount of training and a whole lot of in-group politics. Not sure how hiring different people solves either problem.
I'm not pro gun or even American, but to me it seems a lot of those shootings happen in high stress situations, not in a remotely controlled environment.
Which is why I think I might be on board with this. The “police are professionals trained to keep their cool
even in life threatening situations” boat sailed ages ago. So making it so police aren’t in the life threatening situation at all might be a win.
Police being in life threatening situations is a bullshit excuse. None of these killings have the police been in a life threatening situation. They’re just murderous thugs, we should stop buying them expensive toys and start locking them up when they commit crimes
Not an American either. I'd wager it's hard to come up with actual numbers on how many of those happen in high stress situations and how many are triggered by the police themselves.
The main issue to my understanding is that you can't trust police reports as they have no incentive to write their motives plainly, and no peer pressure to expose bad reporting.
A lot of the stress is manifested by the police themselves (which is an issue specifically called out by the "defund the police" movement, e.g., mental health crises when the better path is deescalation by trained mental health workers)
This isn't even remotely true. My city, Portland, etc. Have had great success with these programs. The vast majority of calls they respond to don't require police.
Please cite your sources (or any evidence at all) if you're going to make statements like that.
I did a search on this to see if I could find some source of what you’re referring to. Came up with nothing. Most of the information out there on this topic is in stark contrast to what you’re saying here.
I think these two things are orthogonal. Less gun violence is always good, of course, but it’s not clear to me that introducing a robot would necessarily increase shooting incidents in law enforcement scenarios.
Perhaps military use of drones is a good analogy - although not perfect, since there the goal is often inflicting violence rather than avoiding it. Would be interested to hear from anyone with knowledge.
You're correct, there is no legal basis. In fact, the police have a supreme court ruling which affirms that the police has no legal duty or responsibility to protect anyone. Even when they're given roles that would imply the responsibility (such as serving in a school).
Could we hold police more accountable? Potentially. Will we? Based on historical evidence, no.
And without that accountability, this is just another deadly weapon, one they can and will (again, based on historical evidence) use with impunity.
If you can remotely control a gun, aren't there plenty of less lethal things you can also remotely control to try to diffuse the situation or disarm the person?
It seems like in debates about officer involved shootings, frequently people justify police action with, "but the officer feels so much danger to their life in that situation". But if we're talking about robots, there is no danger to an officer -- so why do they need a gun?
The question is: do we want to allow this? Without going all slippery slope on this debate, I don't think we've had time to think through the consequences of a precision remote-controlled gun. Of course, they didn't give us a say on selling military weaponry to police departments, so I don't think we'll have much to say in this either.
On the other hand, the decision to shoot is going to be based on a lower fidelity information than available if the officer has a gun.
And I think the US should really be going in the direction of fewer guns, i.e. gun control. The US has way more guns per person, gun deaths per 100,000, proportion of homicide/suicide by gun than any other country. Pick one of those "dangerous countries" you are advised not to visit ... they have way less than the US on all these stats.
The police could lead the way by using force that doesn't maime or kill to control situations. That is where the innovation should happen. A robot could be ideal here - send in a robot to disarm, control, resolve, but not to kill.
Yeah, while reflexively I would like to see less of both guns, and robots with guns, I can also see that sending a (human-controlled) robot into a dangerous situation could (not necessarily “would”) lessen the risk of fatal accidents.
I think we've all seen Robocop and know how this works out. I am all for technology making our lives better, but autonomous robots (or even remotely controlled ones) that go around killing people at will isn't the future we should have. Theoretically it's a good idea, until for one reason or another you end up on the kill list. And then it doesn't matter who hacked it or how you go there, you're no longer available to argue. Seems like an awful idea.
"Since 2000, some 58 people have been shot and killed by police in San Francisco"
A dense city of 800k has about 2.5 deaths from police shootings per year. According to the "Officer Down Memorial Page", 3 police officers were killed due to hostile actions in that same time period (but I'm not certain that site is fully up-to-date).
Sounds like an expensive and risky solution in search of a problem.
I see a lot of knee jerk reactions in the thread but I actually don't see why you wouldn't be okay with this if you're already okay with police having guns. I believe there is a more nuanced view point here. A few points:
- This is about remote controlled guns. A human is still making the decision and all of the same rules and oversight apply. You can make an argument for existing oversight is insufficient but that is a problem we already have with police walking around with guns.
- You can certainly come up with situations where someone is a danger to the public. Imagine an active shooter scenario. Normally they are also a danger to a responding officer who is fearing for their life. This removes that fear in the decision making process.
- I don't think the slippery slope argument is helpful here. We can be against fully autonomous kill chains while still being okay with this. The importance is that a trained and accountable human is making the decision to take a life and that it's a method of last resort to protect others. This is just a more effective tool for a method of last resort.
I say all of this with the utmost respect for issue of concerning police militarization and abuse of power. I think these are important issues that we need to solve and the presence of them makes everyone fearful and distrusting. A just and highly effective police force shouldn't have these issues. I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of police to solve it though.
The chief concern that I can think of with a remote-controlled weapon is that it derealizes the person on the other end of the barrel, and derealizes the operation of the weapon. It's easier to kill someone when the action is disconnected from the physics.
Compare, for example, the US using video game controllers to pilot drones in Afghanistan. One wonders how many botched drone missions wouldn't have been performed in the first place had the operators been physically present in the areas they were attacking.
> One wonders how many botched drone missions wouldn't have been performed in the first place had the operators been physically present in the areas they were attacking.
They wouldn’t be any more connected to the people if they were in a secure US camp in country, I think.
I absolutely believe that, and I think the two are absolutely connected: drone operators aren't stupid, and the dissemblement the drone provides is traumatizing in its own way.
> Normally they are also a danger to a responding officer who is fearing for their life. This removes that fear in the decision making process.
Generally if there's no danger to the responding officer, deadly force shouldn't be used. And literally one of the biggest fucking problems with the police is when they think they're in danger when they're not, and when they go and place themselves in danger in order to use deadly force.
There's this incredibly narrow, almost hypothetical, situation where someone else is in danger but the cops aren't, and where the situation has gone on long enough that something like this could be deployed. In that situation it is almost certainly better to use nonlethal force. And more importantly the cops have proven over and over and over again that if you give them an inch they will take a mile and if its okay for them to kill someone in the 0.1% case that they'll start killing people with it all the time.
And really the police need to figure out how to police with a lot fewer guns and a lot less use of deadly force. Until they figure out how to do that, giving them more ways to kill people, based on an almost hypothetical, is not something that I'm willing to agree to.
US police already use force too often. Presumably, something stopping police from using even more force is that they too are human: they need to look their victims in the face before deciding whether to use force.
I worry what will happen if you take this humanizing, moderating aspect out of the decision for whether to use violence.
It's the opposite. If cops were invulnerable, they'd be far less likely to use lethal force. It's usually because they fear for their lives that they shoot.
That's just the excuse they've been trained to shout so they can get off scot-free should they ever end up in court, just like "stop resisting". Saying that they "feared for their life" makes what would otherwise be murder or manslaughter into a legal application of deadly force.
I'm going to try to engage you seriously even though your question seems rhetorical and just making an appeal to emotion...
Assuming we are in agreement that our police force must be well trained and operating with good checks and balances it would be great to have a police officer on every corner. It would certainly reduce violent crime and make cities safer.
Of course we don't have the resources to do that. Putting gun turrets instead would only be useful in dangerous situations of last resort. It would be a gross misuse of resources and introduces unnecessary risk. So I'm against it but not for the reasons you might think. It's the same reason we probably don't need the police to have all of the decommissioned military hardware. An effective police department probably only needs a few remote controlled guns to be used in those dire situations and would require strict oversight.
> The importance is that a trained and accountable human is making the decision to take a life and that it's a method of last resort to protect others.
There is no evidence that any of this would be true about lethal robot operators or their the use of the robots themselves.
There is zero need for a device which can't be killed to use deadly force. What are they thinking? The justification for police to have and use guns is that their lives could be in danger from so much as a broken bottle. Police have guns to protect themselves. Yes, in reality they use them to threaten, intimidate and "take out the bad guys" before they potentially harm others ("We shot him in the back 40 times as he was running away because he could have been a threat!"), but that's not what they're supposed to have them for.
A remote controlled robot does not have that rationale. There is no reason for it to have anything more powerful than a taser or a flash-bang style explosive. If that doesn't work, send in another, and another. But sending in a robot with a gun or a grenade to take out the bad guys? What's the reasoning? Robots are expensive? That if they didn't use it the bad guy might get away?
> - Greater accountability as all actions could be recorded
I see exactly the opposite. There's no reason for them not to pull the trigger, as it's not as if any police will suffer the repercussions and be shot back at.
And recordings... let's just say I believe they will be as broadly available as police's body camera footage is today. A shocking number of camera failures everywhere, all the time.
My answer to the headline: Request Vehemently Denied
For those who have an issue with this, I have to ask; have you actually thought this through at all? Would it really be preferable to make an officer literally risk their life trying to make the right decision? The will to survive in a situation that's shaping up to be a shootout is going to trump any reprimand or consequence. People generally don't like dying. Removing all risk from the situation for an officer only serves to make them more accountable.
The benefit of officer risking his life is that he/she a literal stake in making a decision. It is not supposed to be an easy job. The moment that officer is plopped down behind a screen, the situation immediately becomes less real. He does not have stakes in the situation, which has benefits ( less officers killed ) and serious drawbacks ( population is policed by unaccountable robots, which does wonders for the population accepting that level of control ). And police already has a LOT of latitude is US, when it comes to policing.
Do I really need to explain the basics of policing? The only reason it even works to begin with is that society allows it to be so ( because you know.. there is only so many officers and so many more non-officers surrounding them ). You do NOT want to further separate them from the society, in which they operate as it will become easier for the populace to believe that they, the police, is, in fact, the enemy. Even despots know this, which is the reason why they absolutely fear any real demonstrations, because they are hard to quell with pure, brute force -- especially these days.
Do you need proof? Look at BLM protests. Note, that police was literally afraid to touch those for fear that it could really escalate.
<< People generally don't like dying.
I think like with a solider, that person picked a wrong job. The job comes with a risk. It is not in small print either. Them are the breaks.
Killing someone is not supposed to be a simple choice, but this is a step to make police even less accountable.
<< Removing all risk from the situation for an officer only serves to make them more accountable.
Removing all risk means they will be reckless. That is how an average human responds to 'no stakes' situation.
With very few exceptions, anybody in a life threatening (or what they perceive to be a life threatening) situation is going to pick themselves over a person that they don't know and believe is trying to kill them. It is exceedingly hard to train this out of people and the only way to know whether or not you successfully have is to observe them in actual gunfights. I would even go as far to say that the trait is probably concerning from a psychological standpoint and the pool of people you would reliably find it in would raise some eyebrows, too.
Getting an officer's skin in the game doesn't make them think about what they're doing. It results in them deciding in 1-2 seconds that they're in a dangerous situation, and they're going home no matter what. I really don't think you understand what being in a life-or-death situation does to normal, mentally sound people. The idea that officers having time to decide whether or not lethal force is necessary is a bad thing just doesn't make sense.
<<I really don't think you understand what being in a life-or-death situation does to normal, mentally sound people.
I absolutely accept that life or death situations have an immediate and huge impact on anyone ( edit: maybe with exceptions of true psychopaths, but how rare those are is hard to accurately estimate it seems ). There is zero argument about that. However, my argument is not that it does not have an impact. My argument is that their life being threatened and them having to make a decision that happens to involve them physically is better for a society as a whole in an abstract than a remotely controlled AR-15 on wheels, because this is where the this argument is logically headed. My argument is: pick your poison. I am saying: send a human in.
Because, and here is the kicker, the moment cops start using those, you can rest assured it will not stay in those hands exclusively as people adapt to new normal ( edit: I do not want to spell those out on a public forum for fear of giving people ideas, but I am sure you can think of some ways this arms race could escalate further ). Unless this is the goal ( further destabilization of society ), in which case that is a really good approach.
<<Getting an officer's skin in the game doesn't make them think about what they're doing.
Maybe some clarification is needed on my point. The moment an officer is walking on the street, their skin is in the game literally and figuratively. It is their job to be visible arm of the law and confirm to the general population that the rules are, in fact, being enforced. If they are not considering what they are doing, maybe this is not a career for them.
<< I would even go as far to say that the trait is probably concerning from a psychological standpoint and the pool of people you would reliably find it in would raise some eyebrows, too.
I am willing to agree and it goes back to my previous point. It is not a job for everyone.
Note. I am saying all this with cops in my extended family. I do not want them to die. I do not want expansion of police state either. Some balance is required. That balance is not achieved with gun toting robots - whether they are remote controlled or not.
The robots aren't going to get killed. They can't justify using lethal force because the robot feared for its safety.
The whole benefit of a robot is that no lives are put at risk. The robot just rolls up to the suspect while tanking a hail of bullets and subues him. No one has to die.
The robots should not be authorized to kill anything.
Every time a robot is deployed by police and harms someone, even in a non-lethal scenario, the recording ought to be publicly available if someone asks for it.
If someone was shot in malice or incompetence, then they ought to face court and potentially prison time.
Police need to be accountable. They have way too much power in the US.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a gun wielding robot being remotely controlled by a good guy
EDIT: I mean, anything to avoid reducing the total number of highly lethal weapons currently available to both police and criminals in the US, right? Because that would be unconstitutional or something.
Before going full dystopia could we perhaps try a pilot project with tranq darts?
This is insane and shouldn't even be up for debate. Tbh I don't see how it's any different than drone strikes though. Just feels wrong and when something feels wrong...
this is a great idea. Many (most?) killings by police are justified that by the "threat to the officer's life". With robots won't we have opportunity to minimize killings by police. The robot's well being is clearly not as important as that of a suspect.
> The robot's well being is clearly not as important as that of a suspect
Said by no police officer anywhere. You've seen how they react to K9 units being assaulted (at least, how they react when the assault isn't being administered by the police themselves).
I see the opposite. With no risk to the operators, they have no reason to hesitate in shutting the situation down as quickly as possible using the "easy button".
that is not the issue in question here. SFPD wants to deploy remote-controlled weaponry - an officer would still be .
IMHO it's a pretty fine disinction between a remote-operated gun and a gun that needs to be held by a human hand. (to be clear, i think police should have fewer guns regardless of how the trigger gets pulled)
That was kind of my point. When a “robot” with a gun controlled by a human, is it really fundamentally different from an efficient Rube Goldberg machine that fires a gun gun.
Some commentators are saying that by removing the safety of the operator from the equation changes things. Sure, it alters the ethics, but that doesn’t change the nature of machine itself.
