Dallas police ended a standoff with a gunman on Friday morning by remotely detonating a “bomb robot” – an unprecedented tactic by officers who said they were in danger and one that rekindles concerns about the militarisation of local law enforcement in the US.
We had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect. We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot.Dallas Police Chief David Brown at the City Hall
A robotics expert says Dallas police appear to be the first law enforcement agency to use a robot to kill.
Peter W Singer, of the New America Foundation, says the killing of a suspect in Thursday night’s fatal shooting of five police officers is the first instance of which he’s aware of a robot being used lethally by police.
Singer said in an email on Friday that when he was researching his 2009 book Wired for War, a US soldier told him troops in Iraq sometimes used MARCbot surveillance robots against insurgents.
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