PRO: Bot perfect for hostage situations

ROBOT dog or cop shot? Seems like a no-brainer. But the anti-police mob, including several pandering politicians who would be mayor, somehow have twisted this common-sense approach to policing into a threat to civil liberties.

This week, police responded to a report of a man with a gun holding a child hostage. If that’s not every officer’s worst nightmare, it ranks in the top five.

With any hostage, especially a child, involved, the responding officers must wait critical — perhaps fatal — seconds before they take any action, let alone firing a weapon.

If the hostagetaker really does have a gun, will he exercise the same restraint and hold his fire?

The gunman knows where the door is and where the first police officer will enter. That first officer doesn’t know where the gunman is in the apartment. Is it dark in there?

There’s a child involved, so no flash grenades or tear gas or other nonlethal measures to level the playing field.

Why not send in a robot with a light and video camera so we can get a look at the situation — with no risk to anyone? Using the robot’s two-way communication, the police hostage negotiator can attempt a dialogue with the hostage-taker.

All of this doesn’t guarantee a good outcome, but it increases the chances.

In this instance, the situation was resolved and the robot dog wasn’t needed. But the anti-cop mob sees the drone, no matter how nonlethal, no matter how common sense, as bad optics.

You know what optic is truly terrible? The police-officer funerals these same critics never attend.

The usual suspects are raising the issue of race, when race has nothing to do with it. They are citing fears for our civil liberties but not about the civil liberties of the people who could have been injured, or killed, in this encounter.

No one is commending the police for bringing this potentially very bad situation to a successful conclusion.

My heartfelt thanks to the officers who were prepared to risk their lives to save a child and to those who figured out how to resolve the situation without injury or loss of life.

And don’t think twice about using any means — even a robot dog — if that’s what it takes to have another such successful outcome in the future.

As a New York Post reporter, Pat Smith wrote stories that led the New York Police Department to form a Canine Unit as a way to better protect our police and our citizens.