In a move straight out of a sci-fi movie, police have approved the use of killer robots in emergency situations.
Emergency service supervisors in San Francisco voted in support of the motion despite strong objections from police oversight and civil liberties groups.
The San Francisco Police Department said it does not have pre-armed robots and has no plans to arm robots with guns.
But the department has said they could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges “to contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect” when lives are at stake.
SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said: “Robots equipped in this manner would only be used in extreme circumstances to save or prevent further loss of innocent lives."
Police in the US have used robots to kill before. In 2016, Dallas police sent in an armed robot that killed a holed-up sniper who had killed five officers in an ambush.
In San Francisco, the proposal was amended to ensure the robots were only used after exhausting alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect in any other way.
Supervisor Connie Chan, a member of the committee that brought the proposal to the full board, said she understood concerns over use of force but that “according to state law, we are required to approve the use of these equipments. So here we are, and it’s definitely not an easy discussion”.
This is the latest turn in the ongoing conversation about the use of military grade equipment by police.
The authorisation was needed after a new California law came into effect this year requiring police and sheriffs departments to inventory all military-grade equipment and get approval for their use.
For a long time, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms, bayonets, armoured vehicles and other surplus military equipment have been issued from a federal level to help local law enforcement.
In 2017, then-President Donald Trump revived the program after his predecessor, Barack Obama, curtailed it in 2015. Obama's actions were triggered in part by anger over the use of military gear during protests in Ferguson, Missouri, that followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown.
San Francisco police have around a dozen robots which are currently used in bomb disposal or to scout areas. So far they have not been used in a potentially lethal situation, police officials have said. They were bought using federal money but not from military surplus.
Board President Shamann Walton, who voted against the proposal, said it made him not anti-police, but “pro people of colour.”
“We continuously are being asked to do things in the name of increasing weaponry and opportunities for negative interaction between the police department and people of colour,” he said. “This is just one of those things.”
Critics of police militarisation fear the equipment will be used in particular against minorities.
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who voted in favour of the policy authorisation, said he was troubled by the way the police department was being painted as untrustworthy and dangerous.
“I think there’s larger questions raised when progressives and progressive policies start looking to the public like they are anti-police,” he said. “I think that is bad for progressives. I think it’s bad for this Board of Supervisors. I think it’s bad for Democrats nationally.”
After the vote which fell 8-3 in favour of the proposal, the San Francisco Public Defender’s office sent a letter Monday to the board saying that granting police “the ability to kill community members remotely” goes against the city’s progressive values.
The office wants the board to reinstate language barring police from using robots against any person in an act of force.
Nearby Oakland Police Department dropped a similar proposal after public backlash.
