{"id":21782,"date":"2022-12-07T22:30:24","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T22:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/07\/san-francisco-legislators-greenlight-killing-of-residents-by-police-robots-and-then-kill-it\/"},"modified":"2022-12-07T22:30:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-07T22:30:24","slug":"san-francisco-legislators-greenlight-killing-of-residents-by-police-robots-and-then-kill-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/07\/san-francisco-legislators-greenlight-killing-of-residents-by-police-robots-and-then-kill-it\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco Legislators Greenlight Killing Of Residents By Police Robots\u2026 And Then Kill It\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

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from the Robocop-is-not-something-to-aspire-to<\/i> dept<\/h3>\n

Update: <\/strong>So we had this post about SF supervisors approving the killer robots in their initial vote, and had a note at the end that it still needed one more round of approvals by the Supervisors\u2026 and apparently widespread protests last night convinced the board to drop the proposal<\/a>! The original (mostly obsolete) post is below.<\/em><\/p>\n

For a while, the city of San Francisco appeared to be on the cutting edge of civil rights. It responded to the exponential growth of the facial recognition tech industry by banning use<\/a> of the unproven, often-biased tech<\/a> by government agencies, including the San Francisco Police Department.<\/p>\n

This progressive take on policing was short-lived. The 2019 ban is no longer making headlines. Instead, a move towards a West Coast police state dominates reporting about the city and its legislators, who have apparently decided that because crime exists, freedoms and liberties need to be back-burnered for the time being. <\/p>\n

The first indication that things were sliding extremely off the rails in San Francisco was the city\u2019s decision to give the SFPD on-demand access<\/a> to live feeds from privately owned security cameras. This intrusion on personal property was justified by a blog post from Mayor London Breed<\/a>, who claimed it only made since because crimes were still happening. Apparently, \u201cexigent circumstances\u201d were no longer enough. To \u201cprotect public safety responsibly,\u201d San Francisco cops needed to be able to ride piggyback on private feeds whenever they deemed it necessary to do so.<\/p>\n

Because that just wasn\u2019t totalitarian enough, city legislators proposed another increase in police powers. Killer robots, they said<\/a>, seemingly unaware of the public\u2019s everlasting opposition to government-deployed automatons armed with deadly weapons. Literally every dystopian bit of popular culture says this is a bad idea. <\/p>\n

Everyone else is wrong, said legislators. Let the processor chips fall where they may. And now the proposal was approved, as the Associated Press reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Supervisors in San Francisco voted Tuesday to give city police the ability to use potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations \u2014 following an emotionally charged debate that reflected divisions on the politically liberal board over support for law enforcement<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The vote was 8-3, with the majority agreeing to grant police the option despite strong objections from civil liberties and other police oversight groups<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Those aligning themselves with Terminators 0-1000 had their excuses.<\/p>\n

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Supervisor Connie Chan, a member of the committee that forwarded the proposal to the full board, said she understood concerns over use of force but that \u201caccording to state law, we are required to approve the use of these equipments. So here we are, and it\u2019s definitely not a easy discussion.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Wait a minute. State law says city supervisors must approve non-human deployment of deadly force? That seems\u2026 well, incredibly unlikely. This sounds like someone trying to wash their hands of the whole issue, but with the blood of city residents rather than anything that would actually make their hands less dirty.<\/p>\n

The SFPD also \u201cunderstands\u201d the concerns of citizens. And it promises residents will not be shot to death by its city-approved killer robots. They\u2019ll only be blown the fuck up.<\/p>\n

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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 could deploy robots equipped with explosive charges \u201cto contact, incapacitate, or disorient violent, armed, or dangerous suspect\u201d when lives are at stake, SFPD spokesperson Allison Maxie said in a statement<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Huh. It looks like the SFPD misspelled \u201ckill\u201d at least three times in its statement. I\u2019m not sure how you \u201ccontact\u201d someone with an explosive, but when the Unabomber did it, it was a federal crime. \u201cIncapacitate\u201d is just another way to pronounce \u201ckill.\u201d And \u201cdisorient\u201d only makes sense if it means the explosives will make someone incapable of orienting themselves\u2026 you know, like when they\u2019re reduced to chunks of flesh that require a mop-up team using actual mops.<\/p>\n

This is supposed to make people feel better about allowing armed killers with zero calculable feelings to roll up on crime scenes with a metal fistful of C-4. <\/p>\n

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Supervisors amended the proposal Tuesday to specify that officers could use robots only after using alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through those alternative means. Only a limited number of high-ranking officers could authorize use of robots as a deadly force option.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Oh. OK. So the \u201camendment\u201d shifts almost everything to the discretion of officers who will always claim they tried to de-escalate the hell out of the scene and got the shift commander on the horn before sending in a deadly blend of CPUs and explosives to \u201csubdue\u201d the suspect into a bloody paste incapable of alleging civil rights violations. If it\u2019s found none of the things cops asserted prior to disintegrating a suspect are true, they\u2019ll still be able to ask for immunity. At worst, they\u2019ll be indemnified by the city \u2014 the same city that said killer robots are definitely something that\u2019s needed as the city (despite some recent spikes in certain crime) enjoys historical lows in crime rates.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing: if you don\u2019t want cops to get in trouble by deploying new deadly force methods without clear justification, the best thing you can do is NOT GIVE THEM THAT OPTION. Allowing cops to use remote-controlled bombs to, um, defuse situations will only result in a whole lot of post-facto forgiveness requests \u2014 pleas for mercy after they\u2019ve already rendered someone incapable of being identified by their loved ones. There\u2019s no way any police department in the nation can say it\u2019s earned the trust to use something like this responsibly. Until officers can stop murdering people on the regular, the last thing they should be given access to is more ways to kill.<\/p>\n

That said, this proposal isn\u2019t the law just yet. The Supervisors need to vote on this again before it heads to Mayor Breed\u2019s desk for signature. <\/p>\n

\nFiled Under: autonomous killing<\/a>, london breed<\/a>, police robots<\/a>, san francisco<\/a>, sfpd<\/a>
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