When police use robots to kill people
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
---
When you only have a SWAT team:
"We have him cornered, with no food or water and limited ammunition. We don't want to lose any more officers. Can we just blockade him and wait him out, then take him to trial?"
When you have a robot that can carry a bomb:
"We can just execute him at no risk to anyone."
---
I don't know many details, and obviously wasn't part of the conversation that took place to arrive at this decision.
I do look at the decision to execute someone who executed people on your side in response to the perception that you were executing people on his side...
Whenever a bad cycle is seen to be developing, it is the responsibility of the leaders in the community to quickly break that cycle.
I worry in the long run that we will come to regret this "quick fix".
The shooter claimed to have explosives elsewhere in the city that he would remotely detonate. In that situation, lethal force is absolutely justified.
What if he had some sort of system where he has a personal transponder hooked to a dead man switch that triggers when the signal stops?
If someone told me they had bombs all over the city yet had not detonated them after being involved in the shootout as they were, I might wonder at the veracity as someone like that would surely have set them off already?
I guess it's easier when there aren't innocent lives on the line to follow the lines of logic I've proposed, but they seem completely natural and realistic.
• Attacker doesn't have bombs, police blow him up: Dead attacker, everyone else OK.
• Attacker has bombs, police blow him up: Dead attacker, everyone else most likely OK. (Only not OK if attacker has a certain kind of dead man's switch.)
• Attacker doesn't have bombs, police try to take him alive: Maybe dead attacker, maybe cops hurt/killed.
• Attacker has bombs, police try to take him alive: Maybe dead attacker, probably cops hurt/killed, probably civilians hurt/killed.
A dead man's switch is very unlikely, because it's hard to make reliable. If not set up to allow for intermittent interruptions, it's guaranteed detonate explosives early. If it's only set up to transmit "detonate" when let go of, its destruction can prevent detonation. Also, the shooter would have mentioned if he actually had a dead man's switch. I'm betting he didn't think of that.
It wasn't likely that the shooter had explosives, but considering the possible outcomes, incapacitating him as quickly as possible was the best of the crappy choices available. I think the cops made the right decision in this case.
Are you so sure that you'd be willing to bet the lives of potentially hundreds of innocent people? The Dallas PD wasn't.
It's easy to be confident now that we have more information. At the time, the guy had already shot a dozen cops. He had body armor. He'd held off SWAT in a firefight. All actions that attested to his preparation and training. His claims about bombs were quite plausible at the time. Likely exaggerated, but still plausible.
Let's say the police thought there was a 1 in 50 chance that he had planted one or more bombs. Would you want them to risk a 2% chance of potentially hundreds injuries and deaths just to take the guy alive? I wouldn't.
> "In the United States, the use of deadly force is often granted to law enforcement officers when the person or people in question are believed to be an immediate danger to people around them. For example, an armed man flaunting a firearm in a shopping mall without regard to the safety of those around him, and refusing or being unwilling to negotiate, would warrant usage of deadly force, as a means to protect others." [1]
At face value of the reading above, I believe the decision to use Lethal Force was justified.
Once agreeing on the above (and not everyone may, just forwarding my own logic), then the fact that in this instance a Robot/Bomb/Robot Bomb is an unimportant implementation detail.
Some people want to argue that "Bomb Bots" make applying lethal force "easier" but I haven't seen convincing evidence to support that claim. As far as I can tell, applying an explosive to a robot and remotely detonating has a niche application but in general is not easier than applying a marksman and a sniper rifle.
But again, if we agree that the why applied to the decision is acceptable, then I am not terribly interested in the how so long as there is no collateral damage (as there wasn't in this case).
That would be like saying that innovations in assembly robotics were just an "unimportant implementation" of industrial production more generally.
This community is usually quick to recognize the potential of robotics in other fields, particularly when coupled with autonomous operation and AI. The idea of using "smart" bullets or drone targeted strikes domestically certainly represents a significant milestone in the projection of police power.
Robotics develop along a certain, now familiar, trajectory. To understand the importance of this event extrapolate from other fields, farther along the curve.
1. http://www.ktxs.com/news/national/dallas-pd-shooting-suspect...
It seems the police found value in this robot as it allowed them to neutralize a threat without risking human life, but what prevents non-police entities from doing the same? If it is simply a high barrier of entry into acquiring and using robotic systems we may need to start pondering how to mitigate malicious uses before they begin to occur.
He was a "bad guy", and we know from the movies that justifies instant death by the good guys.
I would argue the expensive tool might be more appropriate in cases, if it means it will be used more judiciously.
If you trust the police to mostly do the right thing, be responsible, and accountable if they sometimes make mistakes, then it would be a good thing that they can get their job done cheaper, and save some tax money. This would be for the benefit of all of society. In my country in Northern Europe this would be the case.
But maybe there is a real danger that when busting and blowing up places becomes N times cheaper, the police will get trigger-happy and bust and blow up stuff N times more often, irresponsibly, with lots of false positives, and with no accountability. Then the net effect of making attacks cheaper and safer to execute might be a net negative for the society.
> irresponsibly, with lots of false positives, and with no accountability
sounds spot-on to me.
They don't shoot until there is an imminent threat +. A trapped animal in a hole is not a threat so long as it stays in the hole. Blowing him up as an expedient is unprecedented in the civilian realm.
+ Unless you've been trained on the shoot-first-cleanup-the-mess-later tactics that many of our newly minted veterans turned police seem to cling to.
Yesterday, regarding the Falcon Heights MN shooting, there were commenters in Reddit who said that that they were Iraq veterans and that they had tighter rules and discipline about shooting people who are not shooting at them, than the US police has. And that these careless shootings are done by inexperienced policemen who are too scared of the situation to be able to think clearly.
It's curious that some people see the only way to respond to conflict is to meet it with force.
What is impressive is that they would do this in an urban environment. What about possible collateral damage?