NEW YORK — New York City officers unveiled three new high-tech policing gadgets Tuesday, together with a robotic canine that critics known as creepy when it first joined the police pack 2 1/2 years in the past.
The new gadgets, which additionally embody a GPS tracker for stolen vehicles and a cone-shaped safety robotic, will probably be rolled out in a fashion that’s “transparent, consistent and always done in close collaboration with the people we serve,” mentioned police Commissioner Keechant Sewell, who joined Mayor Eric Adams and different officers at a Times Square press convention the place the safety robotic and the mechanical canine nicknamed Digidog had been displayed.
“Digidog is out of the pound,” mentioned Adams, a Democrat and former police officer. “Digidog is now part of the toolkit that we are using.”
The metropolis’s first robotic police canine was leased in 2020 by Adams’ predecessor, former Mayor Bill de Blasio, however the metropolis’s contract for the machine was minimize brief after critics derided it as creepy and dystopian.
Adams mentioned he received’t bow to anti-robot canine stress.
“A few loud people were opposed to it and we took a step back,” the mayor mentioned. “That is not how I operate. I operate on looking at what’s best for the city.”
Adams mentioned the remote-controlled, 70-pound Digidog will probably be deployed in dangerous conditions like hostage standoffs beginning this summer season.
“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 mentioned. “So these are smart ways of using good technologies.”
The monitoring system known as StarChase will enable police to launch a GPS tag that can connect itself to a stolen automobile in order that officers can observe the car’s location. The New York Police Department’s pilot program for utilizing the system will final 90 days, officers mentioned.
The Autonomous Security Robot, which Adams in comparison with a Roomba, will probably be deployed contained in the Times Square subway station in a seven-month pilot program beginning this summer season, police officers mentioned.
The machine, utilized in procuring facilities and different places for a number of years, will at first be joined by a human companion, police mentioned.
Civil libertarians and police reform advocates questioned the necessity for the high-tech gadgets.
“This latest announcement is just the most recent example of how Mayor Adams allows unmitigated overspending of the NYPD’s massively bloated budget,” mentioned 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.”
Albert Fox Cahn, govt director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, mentioned: “The NYPD is turning bad science fiction into terrible policing. New York deserves real safety, not a knockoff RoboCop.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”