| Is this really what is passing as journalism these days? Anyone who spends even a modest amount of time looking at incidents of justified use of lethal force can quickly determine that an officer having a reasonable fear of great bodily harm to themselves or others is enough to justify the force. Often times this reasonable fear is justified by actions that take place in under a second. A furtive movement towards a waistband in the right context will almost always qualify. Articles like this that push an unfounded narrative are simply pandering for clicks/views while failing to even attempting to understand/explain the motivations for such a tool are worse than intellectually lazy. I think they quite likely result in needless excess deaths. It really isn't rocket science to imagine a lethal robot like this being deployed in a situation which results in deescalation, where the robot operator doesn't have to take a shot where an officer would have been forced to. And to suggest that an officer is somehow going to feel more inclined to shoot someone because its pushing a button vs pulling a trigger just shows a truly impressive amount of bias. I'd much, much rather send in a lethal robot than an officer to a situation where a use of force is likely, and I really can't fathom any logical argument that putting an officer in there is somehow going to result in less use of force. Unless your world view is that every officer is just trying to execute as many people as they possibly can. Just watch the 10 seconds here. Guy has stolen a car, walking away from officers, yells "shoot me" and "fuck you fuck you!", digging in his pockets, then quickly points at the officer in a drawing motion. If this was a robot POV instead of an officer, zero chance anyone pushes the button to shoot the guy. Why would you and deal with risking your entire career/life? You're still on the hook for all the consequences of unjustified use of force, and you have the time to wait and verify if the suspect has a gun, so you do. The officer on the other hand is put in an impossible situation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SeiCU55e3s&t=104s I'd much rather have a lethal robot be put in that above situation than an officer, and I'd love to hear anyone explain otherwise. (Also, I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be "casual", not "causal": `“legal precedence justifying the causal use of weapons”`, but I ain't no english major) |