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

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?

Comments

Re:How good are the visual sensors on cop killbots

[mrchaotica]

If labeling all cops as racist black killers helps your sick world view....you are part of the problem.

All cops are the problem though, because even if they aren't racist killers themselves they're aiding and abetting the ones who are. The few whistleblower cops who are actually innocent get blackballed and quickly cease to be cops.

If the police don't want to be attacked like this, they should stop acting like a criminal gang of thugs and terrorists themselves.

Re:#BlackLivesMatter

[jafiwam]

They want to take away all your guns? Citation please. Most liberals want reasonable gun restrictions, not outright bans.

Lying cunt.

Re:Major Colvin

[smooth wombat]

It's time we started treating addiction, to anything, as a medical problem.

False. No one held these people down and shot them full of heroin to make them an addict, no one shoved cocaine up their nose, no one jammed some unknown pill down their throat. These people chose to use drugs. They are the ones who ignored the overwhelming mountain of evidence that drugs are bad for them and could very well kill them. They are the ones who cry, "It's my body. The government has no right to tell me what to put in it."

That was their choice. I shouldn't be penalized for their bad choices. They didn't want the government telling them how to live, the government should abide by their wish. It's all about choice, isn't it? That's what is said on here every day by the multitudes.

A medical problem is cancer which no one chooses to get. Or spine bifida, or alzheimers, or a whole host of other conditions which no one chooses to get but has no choice in the matter. Addiction is not a medical condition since the solution is very simple: don't do drugs.