The San Francisco Police Department is considering adding robot dogs to its fleet and plans to bolster its inventory of military equipment, according to a new report the department quietly published earlier this month.
The police department’s first annual military equipment report for 2023, which appeared on the SFPD’s website on June 11, outlined the acquisition of several new semi-automatic rifles, automatic rifles, additional robotic tools, and long-range acoustic devices for use in serving high-risk warrants or “crowd control.”
Among the new tools was Spot, a four-legged “agile mobile robot,” that the police department “intends to explore the use of.” It launched at a base price of $74,500 in 2020.
The canine-like robot can be deployed for manual operations, or be sent on autonomous missions, says its developer, Boston Dynamics, and can do “inspection, research, and hazardous response,” or be equipped for users’ specific needs with cameras, heat or chemical sensors. It can climb stairs, open doors, and right itself when knocked over.
The police department is required to report annually on its military equipment use and acquisition under AB-481, a law passed in 2021 by now-City Attorney David Chiu that encourages transparency among California law-enforcement agencies. The legislation came amid police-civilian tensions during nationwide protests of George Floyd’s murder by a Minnesota police officer.
SFPD’s 2023 report, however, comes months after its January deadline, after Supervisor Dean Preston filed a formal inquiry last month saying he had not received information on the status of the report “despite repeated requests.”
“This law was passed and signed into law with an aim to ensure public view and input into their police departments’ use of military equipment,” Preston’s letter read. “However, the law relies on law-enforcement agencies’ compliance to be effective.”
Preston called the new proposed equipment a “spending spree” that his office estimated would cost some $750,000.
Law-enforcement agencies are required under the law to summarize how and why the equipment was used, the total annual cost for each piece of equipment, and the source of funding for any proposed equipment in the coming year. SFPD’s report left out several of those details, however.
The department said it plans to acquire 16 additional semi-automatic rifles and 12 fully automatic short barrel rifles for its tactical and specialist teams; those cost $1,000 apiece, according to its policy from last year. San Francisco police shot and killed one person in 2023 with a semi-automatic rifle.
SFPD also reported using “ThrowBots,” which are throwable robots that recorded video and audio, 48 times in 2023 during “critical incidents.” It also used them while serving search warrants to locate suspects.
“This military equipment — including two more Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRADs) used against protesters, more machine guns, and now even robot dogs — will not make us safer, and are a waste of taxpayer money,” said a press release from Preston’s office.
Preston requested additional clarification and rationales from the police department for acquiring the new equipment. His office is expected to issue another letter of inquiry this week into the possible acquisition of “robot dogs.”
SFPD did not respond to a request for comment on its annual military equipment report.
In 2022, SFPD proposed a policy for the use of “killer robots,” that would have authorized its use of remote-controlled robots armed with explosives to inflict lethal force. In a rare about-face, the Board of Supervisors tabled that policy after initially approving it, following significant public outcry. Earlier this month, the department got the green light from the Police Commission to begin deploying BolaWrap, a high-tech lasso tool intended to restrain non-compliant subjects.
Boston Dynamics prohibits the weaponization of Spot, but critics still have concerns about the robot dog’s potential for privacy infringements or over-policing of marginalized communities.
SFPD, meanwhile, said it received no complaints last year about its use of military equipment.
Several police jurisdictions have begun using Spot, although Boston Dynamic’s website highlights cases where the robot is used in warehouses or on work sites. The Boston Dynamics website says police in the Netherlands and Australia are using Spot to detect explosives during terrorist threats, or other substances during drug-lab investigations.
Police in Los Angeles, Miami, and Houston have begun using the tool as well. LAPD’s city council accepted a gifted robot dog in a highly controversial vote last year, under the condition that the department provide quarterly reports on its use.
Under AB-481, the annual report will need to be approved by the Board of Supervisors, and law enforcement agencies are also required to hold a public meeting regarding the equipment for citizens to ask questions and provide feedback. It is unclear when this meeting will occur.
I’m not a fan of purchasing and making available military technology, especially in light of whom we may be contending with as president in a few months.
I’m not sure if my comment seems paranoid, but I suppose I was similarly self critical in 2016.
During the 2020 BLM protests especially, the concern that our president was going to use militarized weaponry on our protestors was very real.
For anyone else who reads The NY Times, it seems that should he win again, his people will be far more organized, ready, and eerily excited to crush any opposition using whatever force they feel entitled to.
Pair that with the wrong choice for mayor, and a PD that has shown itself to lean right, and all of these new, locally available and ready weapons will seem far more sinister.
It is hard to say it could never happen, and I guess we might find out soon enough.
Herb Caen and Harvey Milk are rolling over in their graves.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The police and the military serve different purposes. Using military force against your own people is a hallmark of Fascism.
In 10 years this tech will be standard issue. Not having officers directly in the line of fire or using non lethal restraints like Bolawrap is a positive. This will lead to less deaths not more. Preston is clueless as usual.
While some of this equipment sounds scary, in practical terms, the scariest piece of equipment the dept. is inexplicably buying is SUVs. More SUVs on city streets objectively make us all less safe, particularly pedestrians and cyclists, and an SUV definitely cannot safely be a part of a police chase. There’s no justification for the continued purchase of giant SUVs to replace all the police cruisers, and there are loads of reasons not to buy SUVs.