Early Friday morning, after being attacked by gunmen who had already
killed five police officers and injured several other officers along
with two civilians in the wake of a protest, the Dallas Police
Department deployed a bomb disposal robot. However, the robot was not used to disarm a bomb. This time, it was used to deliver the bomb that killed one of the shooters—likely an unprecedented move in American policing. For now, it remains unknown exactly what type of robot or what kind of explosive was used. Authorities have named the dead shooter as Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old Army veteran from a nearby suburb. Experts believe this is the first time a robot-delivered bomb was
used to take out an active shooter by law enforcement in the United
States. The death of Johnson raises new questions about the appropriate
limits of drone technology outside of the theater of an overseas war. The Pentagon has transferred bomb disposal robots to more than 200 law enforcement agencies
under the 1033 Program, which transfers military surplus equipment to
domestic police agencies, according to the Center for the Study of the
Drone at Bard College. The DPD itself acquired new bomb robots in May 2016, according to its website. “It’s without precedent in the US, but it was not unthought of,” Sid
Heal, a retired commander at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, told
Ars. A Marine veteran with four overseas tours under his belt, Heal is now
the president of the California Association of Tactical Officers. He
added that the LASD had discussed and even practiced similar scenarios
as early as 15 to 20 years ago. In Los Angeles, Heal noted, the decision to deploy a robot as a
weapon was rehearsed but never presented to the sheriff himself and
never adopted. His agency never actually deployed a robotic bomb in a
real-world situation. Plus, these robots aren’t cheap—Sheriff Heal said
they start at about $80,000 each. “We practiced breaching, we practiced lethal force, we practiced
non-lethal, surveillance and reconnaissance,” Heal added. “Here [in
Dallas] it was a worse case scenario, and somebody had the foresight and
courage to recognize that conventional methods were not going to be
successful.” Indeed, Dallas Police Chief David Brown told reporters at a Friday press conference:
We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for
several hours. Negotiations broke down, we had an exchange of gunfire
with the suspect, we saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and
place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect
was. Other options would have exposed our officers to great danger. The
suspect is deceased as a result of detonating the bomb.
The DPD did not immediately respond to Ars' request for comment.
Green-to-blue pipeline
It’s not clear if the DPD has a policy that outlined the use of its explosive ordnance robot as a weapon. The DPD used its robot in June 2015
when a man attacked a police station and was believed to have a bomb.
Ars has filed a public records request to obtain such a policy and other
associated materials. City records dating to October 2015, located by Asher Wolf,
an Australian journalist, show that the DPD has three Northrop Grumman
Remotec bomb disposal robots, including a Mark VI, an Andros V-A1, and
an HD-2. It is not clear which robot was used to kill Johnson—but all
three models are remote-controlled and do not operate autonomously.
Peter Singer, a strategist at the New America Foundation, said on Twitter
that the Marcbot, as it's sometimes called, has been “ad hoc used this
way by troops in Iraq.” In April 2015, Vice Motherboard made a film
showing the American military's experience of outfitting bomb robots as weapons.
It seems plausible, then, that someone in a command position within DPD may have been inspired by military tactics.
A looming specter
The use of machines to kill bad guys still makes many uneasy. For
years, America has wrestled with how its largely secret overseas drone
program has been used to kill terror suspects, often in remote places. But Ryan Calo,
a robotics law professor at the University of Washington, told Ars that
the common philosophical thorns in warfare aren’t applicable here, even
though Dallas may be a harbinger of future scenarios.
“This situation differs pretty dramatically from the
situation that we’re having from using robots to kill—none of them are
present,” he said.
“One thing we worry about is inscrutable kill lists, not so
here. [The police] know that this person needs to be killed or in other
ways neutralized. The second thing is that do we want to live in a world
where robots make decisions to kill? That’s not applicable here. Is a
completely robotic army too little of a disincentive to go to war? No,
because the officer would have killed him anyway. But it’s hard not to
draw the analogy anyway. It’s hard not to think of the militarization of
the police.”
But, as he concluded: “I don’t think any policy would have
recommended against this use—I’m loathe to second guess these officers.”
Indeed, the decision here seems clear, Sheriff Heal noted.
“In this case, I’d give away $80,000 if it would keep my guys out of harm's way,” he said.
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