San Francisco Police Department (SFPD)

History

2022: Police allow robots to be used to eliminate criminals

On November 24, 2022, it became known that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) announced that the robots it used would be able to eliminate criminals. The corresponding permission has been issued.

Robots will be able to be used as lethal weapons when the risk of death for members of the public or officers is inevitable and outweighs any other use of force, the documents say. That is, we are talking about the fact that cars will be able to destroy especially dangerous criminals when there are no other options for countering or unacceptable.

As of November 2022, the San Francisco Police Department had 17 remotely controlled robots, but only 12 of them were fully functioning. Typically, such machines are used to destroy ammunition, surveillance, reconnaissance or work with potentially dangerous objects. At the same time, some models can be modified to install certain weapons, for example, 12-caliber guns.

To eliminate criminals, robots will be used that are controlled by the operator. In other words, machines will not be able to independently decide on the destruction of a person. The proposal also identifies a number of other possible scenarios for the use of police robots: this assistance in the detention of suspects, training and modeling of combat operations, examination of suspicious objects, as well as critical situations with a threat to human life.

Previously, robots have already been used in the United States to destroy criminals. So, back in 2016, the Dallas Police Department used the SFPD-armed Remotec F5A with an explosive device to eliminate a suspect who killed five police officers and wounded several others.^[1]

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