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Before the Nov. 29 vote, Brian Cox, director of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office Integrity Unit, called the change at odds with the progressive values the city historically represents, urging the Board of Supervisors to reject the San Francisco Police proposal: “It is a false choice, based on fear and the desire to make the rules themselves“, wrote Cox in a letter to the Council.
Cox said the use of killing robots on the streets of San Francisco could cause serious harm, compounded by the “long history of excessive use of force by the San Francisco Police, particularly against people of colorThe American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights have also expressed their opposition to the rule.
The San Francisco Police Department has reported that it has 17 robots, 12 of which are operational. Among these are search and rescue machines designed to be used after a natural disaster such as an earthquake, but also models that can be equipped with guns, explosives or pepper spray.
Controversial precedents and little coherence
Board of Supervisors member Aaron Peskin hinted at the possibles damage resulting from the use of explosives by the police during the debate that preceded the vote on the law. In 1985, during an operation in Philadelphia, police dropped explosives from a helicopter on a house, starting a fire that killed 11 and destroyed 61 homes.
Peskin defined the episode as one of the most atrocious and illegal in the history of US law enforcement, adding, however, that he was comforted by the fact that similar incidents have never occurred in San Francisco. In the end Peskin voted in favor of the standard, inserting a constraint allowing only the Chief of Police, Assistant Chief of Operations, or Deputy Chief of Special Operations to authorize the use of lethal force with a robotas well as wording to consider options for crisis de-escalation.
The approval of robots with a license to kill is the latest twist in a series of laws relating to the use of technology by the police enacted by the city of San Francisco. After passing a law banning the use of tasers by the police in 2018 e prevented the use of facial recognition in 2019, the city government granted the police theAccess to private security camera footage.
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