Los Angeles

Lawmakers in San Francisco have voted to ban the controversial policy of letting police use robots for deadly force amidst concerns over militarisation and automation of policing. The San Francisco police department (SFPD) has 17 robots in its arsenal that can even kill people during action.

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The city’s board of supervisors have decided to prohibit the use of police robots to be used in such a lethal manner, however, they have called for further review by a committee to later decided whether to allow killer robots to be used in limited cases.

The major U-turn comes a week after the board members voted to allow robots to be armed with explosives “when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD”.

They had also decided that only top officers would be granted permission to authorise the deployment of robots for deadly use.

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The decision to revoke the earlier move comes in the wake of a series of protests by civil society organisations and three members of the board who earlier opposed using killer robots.

On Monday, they staged a protest outside City Hall seeking to reverse the decision, with chants like “We all saw that movie … No Killer Robots.”

One of the members who opposed the move, supervisor Dean Preston, on Tuesday welcomed the decision, saying that there is no place for “killer robots”.

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“The people of San Francisco have spoken loud and clear: There is no place for killer police robots in our city,” he said in a statement after the vote, according to AP news agency.

“We should be working on ways to decrease the use of force by local law enforcement, not giving them new tools to kill people.”

So far, only San Francisco and Oakland have debated on the use of lethal robots. The Oakland police wanted to arm robots with shotguns but did not proceed with the move in the face of fierce public opposition.

(With inputs from agencies)

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