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Using a Bomb Robot to Kill a Suspect Is an Unprecedented Shift in Policing (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the unprecedented-shift dept.

A police standoff with a suspect in the killing of five police officers in Dallas came to an abrupt end on Friday morning in an unusual way. The police said that negotiations broke down, an exchange of gunfire happened, but then they had no option but to use "bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was." Motherboard explains the unprecedented shift in policing. From an article: Peter W. Singer, an expert in military technology and robot warfare at the New America Foundation, tweeted that this is the first known incident of a domestic police force using a robot to kill a suspect. Singer tweeted that in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers have strapped claymore mines to the $8,000 MARCbot using duct tape to turn them into jury-rigged killing devices. Singer says all indications are that the Dallas Police Department did something similar in this case -- it improvised to turn a surveillance robot into a killing machine. Improvised device or not, the concerns here mirror a debate that's been going on for a few years now: Should law enforcement have access to armed drones, or, for that matter, weaponized robots? In 2013 Kentucky Senator Rand Paul staged a 13-hour filibuster that was focused entirely on concerns about the use of armed drones on US soil. Last year, North Dakota became the first state to legalize nonlethal, weaponized drones for its police officers. [...] The ability for police to remotely kill suspects raises due process concerns. If a shooter is holed up and alone, can they be qualified as an imminent threat to life? Are there clear protocols about when a robot can be used to engage a suspect versus when a human needs to engage him or her? When can the use of lethal force be administered remotely?

3 of 983 comments (clear)

  1. #BlackLivesMatter by Kunedog · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Has a hashtag ever inspired this much violence, much less murder?

    1. Re:#BlackLivesMatter by fluffernutter · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      I don't know about racist.. I'm having trouble getting accurate information but I know in the first shooting the person being 'immobilized' definitely fought police and ignored their orders. I'm not sure about the Minnesota one.. the officer involved seems to have told the person NOT to reach for his wallet and he did anyway.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  2. No. This is an unprecedented shit in nothing. by daveschroeder · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    It is a remotely-controlled device, jury rigged for a purpose that is not at all its use.

    I know people will become uncontrollably outraged about this, but it's a standoff weapon. Just like a spear, a bow and arrow, an explosive tossed through a door or window, a gun, or even a vehicle employed as a weapon.

    The legal standard for lethal force is the same. Beware of academics or other commentators who will claim this is some kind of new territory for which there is no legal standard and that we have no idea how to approach.

    But by all means: pretend this is an "Unprecedented Shift in Policing" instead of an improvisation under nightmarish circumstances.