Will Deadly Robots Join Police Departments In SoCal? 5 Things To Know

LOS ANGELES, CA — Officials may change course on the decision to adopt weaponized robots in a Bay Area city Tuesday after news of the deadly bots made headlines around the nation last week.

Two liberal cities — Oakland and San Francisco — have become unlikely proponents of the deadly robots, which have ignited a fierce ethical debate in recent days.

Meanwhile, no cities in Southern California have announced plans to add weaponized robots to their law enforcement departments. But it remains to be seen how that could change in the coming months and years.

Here's what you need to know.

1. A New CA Law Spurred The Idea Of Adopting Weaponized Robots

Assembly Bill No. 481 requires police to inventory military-grade equipment such as flashbang grenades, assault rifles and armored vehicles, and seek approval from the public for their use. As part of that process two liberal cities — San Francisco and Oakland — have publicly discussed the use of robots as part of that process.

The cities are unlikely proponents of the weaponized robots, which have ignited a fierce ethical debate in recent days.

The question of potentially lethal robots has rarely cropped up in public discourse in California as more than 500 police and sheriffs departments seek approval for their military-grade weapons use policy.

The law's author, San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, who authored the California bill to inventory militarized equipment when he was in the state legislature, said communities deserve more transparency from law enforcement and to have a say in the equipment's use.

2. SoCal Police Departments Do Not Have "Killer" Robots Or Drones

SWAT Lt. Ruben Lopez declined to detail why the Los Angeles Police Department did not seek permission for armed robots, but confirmed they would need authorization to deploy one.

“It’s a violent world, so we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.

In San Diego, small robots are used nearly every time a SWAT team is called out to a scene, according to a 2017 report from NBC San Diego. But they are used as surveillance and are not meant to cross paths with suspects.

"So instead of deploying an officer inside of the structure, we can deploy a robot and it gives us a lot of intelligence," Officer Dave Speck, with SDPD's SWAT Special Response Team (SRT), told NBC.

The San Diego Sheriff's Department reported in their annual military equipment use documents that they have access to surveillance robots and robots that have the ability to move objects or communicate through with a loudspeaker.

Similar robots are used at many California police departments.

In Riverside County, the sheriff's department uses aerial drones and robots for surveillance and assistance in "high-risk environments."

Across the state in Sacramento, robots have been used six times between Dec. 14, 2o21 and April 20. They are authorized to support SWAT and officers during "high risk" missions, but only to open doors, clear buildings, provide visual assessments, deliver items and disrupting suspicious packages, according to the Sacrament Police Department.

3. SF Is Among The First CA Cities To Consider Deadly Bots

Chiu said San Francisco "just happened to be the city that tackled a topic that I certainly didn’t contemplate when the law was going through the process, and that dealt with the subject of so-called killer robots."

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 last Tuesday to permit police to use robots armed with explosives in extreme situations where lives are at stake and no other alternative is available.

The authorization comes as police departments across the U.S. face increasing scrutiny for the use of militarized equipment and force amid a yearslong reckoning on criminal justice.

Oakland also publicly discussed the use of such robots — but local police quickly abandoned the idea of arming robots with shotguns after public backlash, but will outfit them with pepper spray.

4. Supervisors In SF May Reverse Course As Ethical Debate Festers

District 4 Supervisor Gorden Mar (Sunset-Parkside) said he regrets voting in favor of killer robots and plans to vote again them on Tuesday.

Supervisors are expected to hold a vote at 2 p.m.

Ahead of the vote On Monday, dozens of protestors amassed outside City Hall to decry the notion of killer robots. Three city supervisors also joined in on the protest as demonstrators held a banner that read "We all saw that movie...No Killer Robots."

“There is no way that I am going to sit by silently and allow a policy as dangerous and reckless as this to be adopted and go into effect,” Supervisor Dean Preston told the crowd.

Michael White, a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, said even if robotics companies present deadlier options at tradeshows, it doesn't mean police departments will buy them. White said companies made specialized claymores to end barricades and scrambled to equip body-worn cameras with facial recognition software — but departments didn't want them.

“It's hard to say what will happen in the future, but I think weaponized robots very well could be the next thing that departments don't want because communities are saying they don't want them,” White told the Associated Press.

But some law enforcement officials feel strongly about their potential use.

“We live in a time when unthinkable mass violence is becoming more commonplace. We need the option to be able to save lives in the event we have that type of tragedy in our city," San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement.

5. Dallas Police Were The First To Kill A Suspect With A Robot

The recent San Francisco vote has renewed a fierce debate over the ethics of using robots to kill a suspect — and the doors such policies might open. Largely, experts say, the use of such robots remains rare even as the technology advances.

In 2013, police used a robot to lift a tarp as part of a manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect, finding him hiding underneath it.

In 2016, Dallas police officials sent a bomb disposal robot packed with explosives into an alcove of El Centro College to end an hourslong standoff with sniper Micah Xavier Johnson, who had opened fire on officers while a demonstration against police brutality was ending.

The suspect was killed after police detonated the explosives.

Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown was widely praised for his handling of the shooting and the standoff after a grand jury declined charges against the officers.

“There was this spray of doom about how police departments were going to use robots in the six months after Dallas,” said Mark Lomax, former executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association. “But since then, I had not heard a lot about that platform being used to neutralize suspects ... until the San Francisco policy was in the news.”