Dallas shooting during which five police officers were killed and seven officers were injured died after police deployed a remote-controlled bomb-disposal robot carrying an explosive device.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown explained during a
press conference that police sent the robot in after negotiations with the suspect broke down and he exchanged gunfire with officers.
Robots that are capable of handling or disarming explosives have become a more common sight in police departments in recent years, due to a Defense Department initiative known as the 1033 Program, which redistributes surplus military equipment. Approximately 200 law enforcement agencies — federal, state and local — across the U.S. have at least one so-called "bomb robot" provided by the 1033 Program, according to a 2015
report published by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College.
"We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was," Brown told reporters, adding that police confirmed shortly after the explosion that the suspect had died.
While the U.S. military has used drones internationally as remote bombers, this could be the first instance of a U.S. police force's robot killing a suspect, said Peter W. Singer, a political scientist and strategist for New America, a non-partisan think tank addressing public policy issues.
Singer said in a tweet that he had heard of U.S. troops in Iraq using robots in a manner similar to the Dallas situation — modified to deliver explosives. While conducting an interview for his book "Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century" , he learned of an incident in which soldiers duct-taped an anti-personnel mine to a type of
surveillance robot called a MARCBot, sending the machine into an alley after an insurgent.
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