Killer Robots in the Crosshairs

Recent requests by police in California to arm robots with explosives or firearms to use against suspects have set off a huge debate.

- JACOB CARPENTER

SIX YEARS AGO, in the heat of the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Dallas police chief David Brown made an unprecedented decision.

With a man believed to have shot and killed five officers holed up in a parking garage, threatening to continue his rampage, Brown directed his squad to retrieve the department's Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 bomb disposal robot. He then ordered officers to affix a brick of plastic C-4 to the robot, send it near the suspect, and detonate the explosive. The officers did as told, and the blast killed the 25-year-old assailant, former Army reservist Micah Johnson.

The 2016 incident in Dallas was, and remains, the only known case of U.S. local law enforcement using an officer-controlled robot to end a suspect's life. In the years since, innovation and shifting mores have revived the debate over police using weaponized robots, highlighted by recent showdowns in San Francisco and nearby Oakland.

Amid heightened fears of mass shootings, a smattering of police departments are increasingly looking to weaponized robots as a last resort for subduing suspects and keeping officers out of harm's way. But some civil liberties and criminal justice advocates warn about the potential for law enforcement to misuse and abuse another deadly tool in their arsenal, during a national reckoning on police brutality.

The controversy over robots adds to the long-running nationwide fight over public safety, trust in police, and the militarization of American law enforcement.

"It definitely marks a new level of possible violence meted out by law enforcement, so it's incredibly important that we have this conversation," says Beryl Lipton, an investigative researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on defending civil rights in the digital age.