Since the industrial revolution it seems as if technology has infiltrated most fields including law enforcement nationally and internationally. Having started out as hand held radios and dispatch centers that send information across a line to squad cars, technology is now laptops and tablets in the cruisers, machines that measure a person’s blood alcohol level and even infrared scanners that are used to fingerprint person and perp alike rather than an ink pad and piece of cardstock. I believe that while there is a minuet use for robots in police work doing things such as bomb diffusion and radar, the position should be held in majority by the flesh and blood police officer. Robots would not be a good replacement for beat cops because empathy and split second decision making, two things they lack, are very important to the job and the cost effectiveness is debatable.
Established in April of 1635, one of the first police forces in the United States stemmed from a night watch group in the thirteen colonies that patrolled Boston, Massachusetts, without pay (Important Dates in Law Enforcement History). Since then the modern version of police offices have expanded throughout the United States and across the remaining continents, progressing slowly with technology and bypassing any previous militias and small patrols. As of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries spun about there were suddenly more options as technical science and the more hands on industrial technology fields boomed. It was an evolution, spreading bits of knowledge and gear to the ends of the earth. The use of robots in law enforcement started with the World War II era military, evolving over the years to aid soldiers before hitting the home front, like most of the current police technology.
When you join the police force there are two expectations about emotional conduct. You are expected to be able to deal with the criminals without allowing your anger to control you and you are expected to interact with the victim without making them feel anymore violated no matter the crime. The majority of officers can easily empathize with the victims of crimes and the people that they interact with on calls. While some departments mandate sensitivity training, others do not. But the problem with using robots in police work is that they lack the ability to empathize with victims in their cases, they cannot make split second decisions and the robots could easily be hacked- something that could be a huge risk if the hacker is also interested in detonating the bomb that the robot is trying to defuse. If the officers are dispatched to a rape or a case of child abuse it is all about being able to communicate a sense of understanding, to convincingly open your soul up so that the victim feels comfortable enough to relate to you their stories. As a piece of non-feeling metal, alloys, and electronics, not only does the appearance of the robot come off as unyieldingly harsh but not reliable and unhuman. People often underestimate the effect that a warm pair of eyes, a quick smile or even an “I’m here if you need me” can have on an emotionally charged person who is so afraid that they jump at the sight of their own shadow.
The concept of your life changing in the blink of an eye is often underestimated until you face the situation. It is in those moments that the blood pumps faster, our adrenaline flows, and our fight or flight instincts kick in. When it comes to reacting appropriately in those situations human police officers are much more accurate in response than robots. Because robots are either preprogrammed or remotely operated, the likeliness of a fast response time or changing the program to react in that split second is nearly impossible. With human police officers, one of the things that they are taught in the Police Academy is to analyze a situation as quickly and accurately as possible while ultimately following your instincts when the situation calls. Timing is everything when it comes to calls like hostage situations or talking down a suicidal citizen and the following quote sums up just how much that split second can mean: “There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in the months of rational analysis” (Gladwell). For thousands, if not millions of dispatches worldwide that have made a turn for the negative those seconds are the difference between literal life and death. If the situation takes a turn for the negative, robots are merely reprogrammed with what could be the best possible solution should it ever happen again while human officers analyze the situation, train for it, and constantly remind themselves of what they could have done better. For some officers, the few the loose in these situations are their motivation to prevent similar crimes from happening again.
While the initial cost of a robotic police officer is pretty high and maintenance costs can accumulate, they can be considered more cost effective than a salaried human officer who requires medical/dental insurance, their salary, uniforms, paid sick time/time off, and holiday/time and a half pay if they pull an extra shift or cover for someone unless you take in the initial purchase price and annual maintenance fees. In the United States, the salaries of human police officers can be as low as $31,060 a year in Mississippi to as high as $81,970 a year in California, making the national average around $47,000 a year in the United States. According to a joint study between the Florida International University’s Discovery Lab and Lieutenant Commander Jeremy Robins of the US Navy, the two are working to combine robots and humans in order to get disabled police officers and military veterans back to work on the force. They would work as patrol officers, operating wheeled telepresence robots and doing everything from responding to 911 calls and writing parking tickets to ensuring the security of nuclear facilities”(Hornyack). These ‘telepresence robot’ patrol officers are about$250,000 per robot (Hornyak). The cost of one of those robots is about equal to the salary of a police officer making $47,000 for five years, or, the cost of five police officers at relatively entry level positions for a full year. If that is the cost, why wouldn’t we remain hiring human police officers- people with families, mortgages, bills and futures all depending on a steady job in times when jobs can be scarce and hard to come by? Another financial benefit of human police officers over robotic police officers is that human officers have provided jobs and jobs mean money, which can influence the person to spend and put the money back into the economy. If the police officers buy their food at grocery stores or farmers markets, their clothes and goods from local small businesses, or take a few extra classes locally, the money that they are being paid to protect the people of their great cities and towns is being put back into the local and national economies, which is helping to slowly build the nation back up following the recession and the fiscal deficit. While the robots may be able to work more consecutive shifts than human offers are allowed according to local mandates, the breakup of shifts allows the employment of more officers which means a rejuvenation of the economy.
Though robots in law enforcement are primarily used for calls that could be dangerous to human officers such as incident containment, search and rescue, and working with explosives, there are other jobs that maybe, just maybe, they could perform. With everything that has happened in Ferguson, Missouri within the last year perhaps a robotic police officer in similar areas may be helpful, or at the last outward facing dash cams in the cruisers. The robots could be used anywhere from crowd control to crime scene analysis to patrolling the streets during riots in order to dissuade rioters from looting and destroying homes and businesses. Even though performing the duties in a town as torn as Ferguson is dangerous, human cops still do it every day, despite the risk and without needing to be plugged in and recharged.
In conclusion, robots have no place in replacing human police officers on the force. Despite the fact that when it comes to handling bombs or search and rescue robots have a purpose, they do not belong walking (or rolling) along the beat. From the beginning the job has been for humans who were looking out for other humans and there should be no reason to change that now. The term “Protect and Serve” that is so often quoted by police departments on their uniforms and crests isn’t just a saying: it is a way of life, a promise, and a signal that if you need them they will be there to help protect you and keep you safe against physical and in some ways mental or emotional threats, both foreign and domestic.
Work Cited:
Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print
Hornyak, Tim. “Your Move, Creep: Researchers Building RoboCop Policeman.” CNET. CNET, 28 Sept. 2012. Web. 29 Oct. 2014.
“Important Dates in Law Enforcement History.” National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund: N.p., 14 Apr. 2014. Web. 30 Nov. 2014.