{"id":327472,"date":"2022-12-02T08:20:25","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T13:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/?p=327472"},"modified":"2022-12-01T23:19:09","modified_gmt":"2022-12-02T04:19:09","slug":"make-way-for-the-killer-robots-the-government-is-expanding-its-power-to-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/2022\/12\/make-way-for-the-killer-robots-the-government-is-expanding-its-power-to-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"Make Way for the Killer Robots: The Government Is Expanding Its Power to Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The purpose of a\u00a0good<\/em>\u00a0government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we have gone so far in the opposite direction from the ideals of a good government that it\u2019s hard to see how this trainwreck can be redeemed.<\/p>\n

It gets worse by the day.<\/p>\n

For instance, despite an\u00a0outcry by civil liberties groups<\/a>\u00a0and concerned citizens alike, in an 8-3 vote on Nov. 29, 2022, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors\u00a0approved a proposal to allow police to arm robots with deadly weapons<\/a>\u00a0for use in emergency situations.<\/p>\n

TRUTH LIVES on at\u00a0https:\/\/sgtreport.tv\/<\/a><\/p>\n

This is how the slippery slope begins.<\/p>\n

According to the San Francisco Police Department\u2019s draft policy, \u201cRobots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet as investigative journalist Sam Biddle points out, this is \u201cwhat nearly every security agency says when it asks the public to trust it with an alarming new power: We\u2019ll only use it in emergencies\u2014but\u00a0we get to decide what\u2019s an emergency<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

A\u00a0last-minute amendment<\/a>\u00a0to the SFPD policy limits the decision-making authority for deploying robots as a deadly force option to high-ranking officers, and only after using alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through those alternative means.<\/p>\n

In other words, police now have the power to kill with immunity using remote-controlled robots.<\/p>\n

These robots, often\u00a0acquired by local police departments through federal grants and military surplus programs<\/a>, signal a tipping point in the final shift from a Mayberry style of community policing to a technologically-driven version of law enforcement dominated by artificial intelligence, surveillance, and militarization.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only a matter of time before these killer robots intended for use as a last resort become\u00a0as common as SWAT teams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Frequently justified as vital tools necessary to combat terrorism and deal with rare but extremely dangerous criminal situations, such as those involving hostages, SWAT teams\u2014which first appeared on the scene in California in the 1960s\u2014have now become intrinsic parts of local law enforcement operations, thanks in large part to substantial federal assistance and the Pentagon\u2019s military surplus recycling program, which allows the transfer of military equipment, weapons and training to local police for free or at sharp discounts.<\/p>\n

Consider this: In 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT team-style raids in the U.S. By 2014, that number had grown to\u00a0more than 80,000 SWAT team raids per year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given the widespread use of these SWAT teams and the eagerness with which police agencies have embraced them, it\u2019s likely those raids number upwards of 120,000 by now.<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0few communities without a SWAT team<\/a>\u00a0today.<\/p>\n

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. In the state of Maryland alone,\u00a092 percent of 8200 SWAT missions were used to execute search or arrest warrants<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For example, police in both Baltimore and Dallas have used\u00a0SWAT teams to bust up poker games<\/a>. A Connecticut SWAT team\u00a0swarmed a bar<\/a>\u00a0suspected of serving alcohol to underage individuals. In Arizona, a\u00a0SWAT team was used to break up an alleged cockfighting ring<\/a>. An Atlanta\u00a0SWAT team raided a music studio<\/a>, allegedly out of a concern that it might have been involved in illegal music piracy.<\/p>\n

A Minnesota SWAT team raided the wrong house in the middle of the night, handcuffed the three young children, held the mother on the floor at gunpoint, shot the family dog, and then \u201cforced the handcuffed children to sit next to the carcass of their dead pet and bloody pet for more than an hour<\/a>\u201d while they searched the home.<\/p>\n

A California SWAT team drove an\u00a0armored Lenco Bearcat into Roger Serrato\u2019s yard<\/a>, surrounded his home with paramilitary troops wearing face masks, threw a fire-starting flashbang grenade into the house, then when Serrato appeared at a window, unarmed and wearing only his shorts, held him at bay with rifles. Serrato died of asphyxiation from being trapped in the flame-filled house. Incredibly, the father of four had done nothing wrong. The SWAT team had misidentified him as someone involved in a shooting.<\/p>\n

These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of nonviolent criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.<\/p>\n

If these raids are becoming increasingly common and widespread, you can chalk it up to the \u201cmake-work\u201d philosophy, by which police justify the acquisition of sophisticated military equipment and weapons and then rationalize their frequent use.<\/p>\n

Mind you, SWAT teams originated as specialized units that were supposed to be dedicated to defusing extremely sensitive, dangerous situations (that language is almost identical to the language being used to rationalize adding armed robots to local police agencies). They were never meant to be used for routine police work such as serving a warrant.<\/p>\n

As the role of paramilitary forces has expanded, however, to include involvement in nondescript police work targeting\u00a0nonviolent<\/em>\u00a0suspects, the mere presence of SWAT units has actually injected a level of danger and violence into police-citizen interactions that was not present as long as these interactions were handled by traditional civilian officers.<\/p>\n

Indeed, a study by Princeton University concludes that militarizing police and SWAT teams \u201cprovide no detectable benefits in terms of officer safety or violent crime reduction<\/a>.\u201d The study, the first systematic analysis on the use and consequences of militarized force, reveals that \u201cpolice militarization\u00a0neither reduces rates of violent crime nor changes the number of officers assaulted or killed<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words,\u00a0warrior cops aren\u2019t making us\u00a0or themselves\u00a0<\/em>any safer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation<\/a>\u00a0than they are to be killed by a terrorist.<\/p>\n

The problem, as one reporter rightly concluded, is \u201cnot that life has gotten that much more dangerous, it\u2019s that\u00a0authorities have chosen to respond to even innocent situations as if they were in a warzone<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now add killer robots into that scenario.<\/p>\n

How long before these armed, militarized robots, authorized to use lethal force against American citizens, become as commonplace as SWAT teams and just as deadly?<\/p>\n

Likewise, how long before mistakes are made, technology gets hacked or goes haywire, robots are deployed based on false or erroneous information, and innocent individuals get killed in the line of fire?<\/p>\n

And who will shoulder the blame and the liability for rogue killer robots? Given the government\u2019s track record when it comes to sidestepping accountability for official misconduct through the use of qualified immunity, it\u2019s completely feasible that they\u2019d get a free pass here, too.<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0absence of any federal regulations or guidelines<\/a>\u00a0to protect Americans against what could eventually become\u00a0autonomous robotic SWAT teams<\/a>\u00a0equipped with artificial intelligence, surveillance and lethal weapons, \u201cwe the people\u201d are left defenseless.<\/p>\n

Read More @ Rutherford.org<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute: The purpose of a\u00a0good\u00a0government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people. Unfortunately, we have gone so far in the opposite direction from the ideals of a good government that it\u2019s hard to see how this trainwreck can be redeemed. It gets worse by the day. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[143410],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sgtreport.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}