Former cop and self-proclaimed “nerd” Eric Adams held a press conference in Times Square today to let the city know how much he loves police robots. The mayor of New York City co-chaired a press conference with police officials to discuss a pair of pilots designed to increase the city’s surveillance.
“I’ve said this from day one, even when I was on the campaign trail: I’m a computer geek. I believe the technology is here,” the mayor said at the top of his remarks. “We can’t be afraid of it, and all that [NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell] said, transparency is key.”
At the top of the list is Digidog, a pet name the police gave to a Boston Dynamics Spot robot. The system was greeted with a fierce public reaction when it was unveiled in 2021, following its implementation at public housing in Manhattan. “People had come up with the slogan and the language to somehow make this bad,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said at the time.
The pilot was eventually pulled out after a few months for fear of profiling and increased surveillance. “It was something that was introduced before, under a previous administration and some loud people were against it, and we took a step back,” Adams noted at today’s event. “I don’t work like that. I work to see what is best for the city.”
Spot is joined by K5, Knightscope’s egg-shaped robot, which you’ve probably already seen in malls. The well-funded robotics company has aggressively targeted law enforcement with its products, and a nod from New York City is clearly a big vote of confidence (although, again, this is currently a pilot). Also included in the announcement is StarChase’s GPS system, which can be used to track vehicles remotely.
The Spot robots run $75,000 each, while K5 generally rents out between $60,000-70,000 a year. The news comes about a week after Adams announced massive pay increases for officers. The 2.25-4% increases will be applied retroactively to August 1, 2017. A week earlier, the mayor announced sweeping cuts to the New York Public Library system to the tune of $36.2 million.
These moves come amid media criticism of New York City’s crime rate. According to a recent study, NYC is currently the fifth safest city in the US with over 300,000 residents.
Late last year, the San Francisco Police Department drew a national investigation into a clause that allowed their police robots to use “justifiable” deadly force. The section reads, “Robots will only be used as a lethal force option when the risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.” That move was reversed the following week.
As with the robots being rolled out by the NYPD, none of the SFPD’s robots are designed to kill. However, in 2016, Dallas became the first U.S. police department to kill a suspect with a robot by placing an explosive device on a bomb detection system.
A month prior to the first news in San Francisco, Boston Dynamics along with four other leading companies signed a pledge not to allow the weaponization of their general-purpose robots. The open letter stated:
We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously controlled, making them widely available to the public and capable of navigating previously inaccessible locations where humans live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues entails. Weaponized applications of these new robots will also damage public confidence in the technology in a way that hurts the tremendous benefits they will bring to society.
However, the mayor of New York is certainly optimistic about using them as surveillance systems. Adams cited fingerprint reductions, post-9/11 policing, and the CompStat to raise concerns about the implementation of these new robotic policing systems. He explained, “This is the start of a series of deployments we would do to show how public safety has transformed itself,” noting that Spot and K5 are “just the beginning.”
Adams answered a question from the audience, adding, “Digidog is now out of the pound.”