New York City officials on Tuesday unveiled three new high-tech policing devices, including a robotic dog that critics called creepy when it first joined the police pack two-and-a-half years ago.
The new devices, which also include a GPS tracker for stolen vehicles and a cone-shaped security robot, are to be introduced in a manner that is “transparent, consistent and always done in close collaboration with the people we serve,” said New York City Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who joined New York Mayor Eric Adams and other officials at a Times Square news conference where the security robot and the mechanical canine nicknamed Digidog were displayed.
“Digidog is out of the pound,” said Adams, a Democrat and former police officer. “Digidog is now part of the toolkit that we are using.”
Photo: AFP
The city’s first robot police dog was leased in 2020 by Adams’ predecessor, then-New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, but the city’s contract for the device was cut short after critics derided it as creepy and dystopian.
Adams said he would not bow to anti-robot dog pressure.
“A few loud people were opposed to it and we took a step back,” the mayor said. “That is not how I operate. I operate on looking at what’s best for the city.”
Adams said the remote-controlled, 32kg Digidog would be deployed in risky situations, such as hostage standoffs, starting this summer.
“If you have a barricaded suspect, if you have someone that’s inside a building that is armed, instead of sending police in there, you send Digidog in there,” he said. “So these are smart ways of using good technologies.”
The tracking system called StarChase would allow police to launch a GPS tag that would attach itself to a stolen vehicle so that officers can track the vehicle’s location.
The New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) pilot program for using the system would last 90 days, officials said.
The Autonomous Security Robot, which Adams compared to a Roomba, would be deployed inside the Times Square subway station in a seven-month pilot program starting this summer, police officials said.
The device, used in shopping centers and other locations for several years, would at first be joined by a human partner, police said.
Civil libertarians and police reform advocates questioned the need for the high-tech devices.
“This latest announcement is just the most recent example of how Mayor Adams allows unmitigated overspending of the NYPD’s massively bloated budget,” said Ileana Mendez-Penate, program director of Communities United for Police Reform.
“The NYPD is buying robot dogs and other fancy tech, while New Yorkers can’t access food stamps because city agencies are short-staffed, and New Yorkers are getting evicted because they can’t access their right to counsel,” Mendez-Penate said.
Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said: “The NYPD is turning bad science fiction into terrible policing. New York deserves real safety, not a knockoff RoboCop.”
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