Unplug this electric cop
It was 36 years ago that RoboCop, a silver-screen police cyborg, cleaned up a fictional crime-ridden Detroit. In 2023, former transit cop and current Mayor Eric Adams has enthusiastically rolled out the Knightscope K5 for a two-month test, claiming it’ll help deter crime and assist flesh-and-blood officers in the very real Times Square subway station. And all for the low, low cost of a $9-an-hour lease.
To be sure, RoboCop had his problems. But the K5 is so profoundly limited, we’re left wondering what it’s all for beyond creating a spectacle.
Advanced technology has many valid uses in government, including public safety. Drones, smartly deployed, can help cops or firefighters sniff out dangerous situations before putting people’s lives at risk. DNA can convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. Automated cameras can slow drivers and catch them when they run red lights. Body-worn cameras enhance accountability. And face recognition technology, the bête noire of many privacy advocates, is better at identifying perpetrators of crimes than human memory.
The sloppy or silly use of flashy gizmos makes it tougher to defend those smart applications. Based on the NYPD’s description, the lumbering droid adds little to no value.
Yes, it’s got security cameras that, per the mayor, “will record video that can be viewed in case of an emergency or crime.” How those are better than the mounted cameras that already capture every square inch of the station?
The K5 has a button, per the mayor, “that connects you immediately to a live person…with questions, concerns or to report an incident as needed.” The subway’s “Help Point” kiosks already do that. Live people, like the surge in police on patrol that Adams and Gov. Hochul announced last October, can do that even better — and, unlike the K5, have hands to interrupt an assault in progress or help someone who falls on the track. Plus real cops have legs, so they can move faster than 3 mph, and can climb stairs. The K5 can’t, which means it’ll have to stay in the mezzanine, never descending to the platform.
It reminds us of Adams’ fascination with gun-scanning technology; he has toyed with installing it at subway entrances, an investment that would be absurdly expensive if applied broadly, while slowing what is now the free flow of people. If only at a few station entrances, what would be the point?
Then there were the GPS tracking guns the NYPD announced in April, a temporary subscription with a company called StarChase enabling officers to stick what looks like a giant Nerf bullet to the back of a fast-moving car. Were they in the hands of many hundreds or thousands of cops, they might prove valuable, especially at a time when car thefts are skyrocketing.
Yet, as The City reported in July, high-speed pursuits of stolen vehicles have surged, with more chases in the first six months of this year than in the previous five years combined.
Technology is terrific when, without compromising basic freedoms, it enhances the government’s capabilities, saves money or both. A minimally useful 400-pound. robot rolling around Times Square will generate countless selfies. But its costs go beyond $9 an hour. The gratuitous use of technology will make it harder to make the case for genuinely worthy applications.