Death by remote control River deaths in Rome may be linked – police
The use of a robot to kill the suspect in the Dallas shootings is believed to be a first for policing.
The standoff between police and one of the suspects in a Dallas shooting spree ended after the suspect was killed when a robot delivered and detonated explosives where he was holed up.
The move represents a potentially unprecedented use of robots to deliberately deliver lethal force in domestic policing, according to experts, raising questions about how American law enforcement officials are deploying the hightech tools that increasingly fill their arsenals.
‘‘We saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the subject was,’’ Dallas Police Chief David Brown said. ‘‘Other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger.’’
Attempts by a hostage negotiator to persuade the suspect to surrender were unsuccessful, and he exchanged fire with the police during the standoff, Brown said. Three other suspects are in custody.
The shootings in Dallas occurred at the end of an otherwise peaceful demonstration spurred by police shootings this week that killed Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana.
The Dallas Police Department did not immediately respond to inquiries about the exact robot used in the standoff.
But bomb disposal robots typically work like advanced remotecontrolled vehicles, featuring camera feeds that are transmitted back to operators so that they can direct the units in potentially dangerous situations from afar.
According to N R Jenzen-Jones, the director of weapons research group Armament Research Services, robots of the likes used to examine explosive devices and manipulate small obstacles have been used frequently to deliver different types of explosives to help breach doors or clear obstacles.
Jenzen-Jones said, however, that he had never heard of a robot delivering a payload that was meant to kill a subject, and was surprised that Dallas police had been so forthcoming about that information.
Peter Singer, a New America senior fellow who specialises in the future of security, also believes this to be the first time such a robot has been used to deliver an offensive explosive in a domestic policing action. However, similar tactics had been used in war zones, he said.
In his book Wired For War, Singer noted incidents when American troops in Iraq juryrigged primitive remote-controlled robots to deliver antipersonnel mines into alleys where they believed insurgents were hiding.
Those situations were ad hoc uses, Singer told The Washington Post, not an established policy per se. But he noted that reliance on robotics is on the rise in the military and by local law enforcement.
‘‘The military has over 12,000 robotic systems today – and police all over the place use robots for bomb disposal and surveillance.’’
The number of fatal shootings by US police officers has increased from 465 in the first six months of last year to 491 for the same period this year, according to an ongoing two-year study by The Washington Post. This year has also seen more officers shot and killed in the line of duty, and more officers prosecuted for questionable shootings.
A database that tracks fatal shootings by police shows a 6 per cent increase in the number of such deaths during the first six months of 2016 compared with the same period last year.
Details so far this year remain strikingly similar to shootings in all of 2015: blacks continued to be shot at 2.5 times the rate of whites. About half of those killed were white, and about half were minorities. Fewer than 10 per cent of those killed were unarmed. Onequarter were mentally ill.
More of the shootings were captured on video, from 76 to 105 in the first half of each year. And the number of fatal shootings of black women has risen. Police in Rome investigating the suspected murder of an American student have found clues to another possible murder on the banks of the River Tiber that took place a year ago.
The body of Beau Solomon, 19, was retrieved from the river on Tuesday, three days after he went missing from the bar-lined streets of the Trastevere neighbourhood.
The former high school quarterback from Wisconsin had gone out to enjoy the city’s nightlife just hours after flying in from the United States to start a five-week foreign study programme at John Cabot University.
He became separated from other students, and was filmed by a bystander getting into a fight next to the Tiber with Massimo Galioto, 40, a homeless man who lives in a tent on the footpath under the Garibaldi bridge.
Alessia Pennacchioli, Galioto’s girlfriend, said: ‘‘He had a scuffle with Massimo, which ended badly.’’ She said that Galioto had pushed the student into the river, where he drowned.
Solomon was studying personal finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and hoped to go into politics.
A 27-year-old man, Federico Carnicci, died after falling into the river at the same spot almost exactly a year before Solomon’s death.
It was believed at the time to have been an accidental death, but police are re-examining the case after it emerged that Carnicci may have argued with Galioto as well.
Galioto, who is reported to be a drug user, told friends that he had served in the Italian army in Somalia but had swapped a military career for life on the streets, preferring to beg and to earn money by selling ties he made from discarded bicycle inner tubes.
He told a reporter before his arrest that he survived by eating food thrown out by supermarkets.
‘‘They are good, you know. Do you want to come to lunch in my tent?’’ he said.
Galioto is one of more than 7000 homeless people in Rome, many of whom live under the bridges that cross the Tiber.
A flight of steps separates the area in which Galioto and others live from the Trastevere, where well-heeled tourists drink.
‘‘Americans arrive there and are amazed to find they can drink freely,’’ Gordon Walker, a 19-yearold student, said. ‘‘Back home they are stuck in a basement until they are 21.’’
What made Solomon head down the steps in the early hours of July 1 is not known. CCTV footage shows him walking with two unidentified men, and police suspect that they may have picked his pockets before telling him that Galioto had stolen his wallet.
In the days after his disappearance, US$1500 was charged to Solomon’s credit card in Milan.
Carnicci, another homeless man, is also reported to have argued with Galioto before he died in July last year. His body was found 10 days later.
‘‘It appears Galioto was with Carnicci when he fell, and we are definitely reopening the case,’’ a police source said.
Messages on Facebook, allegedly between friends of Pennacchioli, were unearthed by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
A poster named Lorenzo said: ‘‘You know your boyfriend threw [Solomon] in. And last year another little fish finished up in the water. Strange isn’t it?’’ Pennacchioli replied: ‘‘It would be good if you started telling the truth.’’
On Friday, as Galioto sat in a jail cell refusing to answer questions, a vigil was held in a Roman church for Solomon.
‘‘We are here tonight to pray together, and we do it with our heart broken,’’ Marco Gnavi, parish priest of Santa Maria in Trastevere, said.