Next week, the city’s Board of Supervisors will vote on a proposal by SFPD to deploy robots that can kill suspects. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), has asked the Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots that would kill suspects.
A policy draft (Opens in a new tab) states that the SFPD will use its remote-controlled robots to “train and simulate, criminal apprehensions. Critical incidents. exigent circumstances. Execution of a warrant.
The policy proposal is expected to be approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors next week.
If allowed, the SFPD could use robots to kill people “when there is a risk to the lives of officers or members of the public and that outweighs any other force options.”
There are currently 17 remote-controlled robots in the police department, but only 12 of them are operational. The Verge reports that these robots are used primarily for dealing with explosives and defusing bombs. Remotec F5A models from the department and QinetiQ Talon are able to be modified to hold weapons. The US Army currently uses(Opens in new window) a QintetiQ Talon, and equips it to carry grenade launchers as well as machine guns.
The Verge reported (Opens in new window) the original draft didn’t include any mention of deadly force, until a member of city’s board of supervisions said that robots “shall not be used to use as a Use of Force against anyone.”
The SFPD responded by striking out the phrase(Opens in a different window) to insert a statement justifying the use of deadly force robots in cases of imminent danger, according Mission Local.
This request provoked a strong backlash from civil right advocates and organizations. Tifanei Myer, senior staff attorney at Lawyers’ Committee of Civil Rights of San Francisco Bay Area, wrote in an email read to Mission Local, “We live in a dystopian futurity, where we debate whether police can use robots for citizens to execute without trial, jury or judge.
