Robots, drones help North Texas police

Now that a police robot has been used to kill a suspect in Dallas, can drones be far behind?

The idea is a long way from becoming reality, experts say.

The Arlington police department is the only one in the Metroplex that uses drones, and they’re used to protect lives.

A drone can “see” a situation before an officer is sent into danger, and can help with evacuating citizens, said Arlington police Lt. Brook Rollins, commander of the Technical Services Division.

The department used drones to get a bird’s-eye view of heavily damaged buildings after a storm in October 2014 and for tactical surveillance when an armed suspect barricaded himself in a building.

While the military regularly uses drones to kill — the New America Foundation, which tracks drone strikes, estimates that the U.S. has conducted more than 400 drone strikes that killed at least 7,000 people — Arlington police wouldn’t use them that way, Rollins said.

“We would never use them as a weapon — lethal or nonlethal,” he said.

The main priority is developing drones’ surveillance and visual capabilities, to help officers respond faster and protect innocent lives, said Thor Eells, National Tactical Officers Association board chairman.

In any case, drones are seeing limited use in law enforcement because of the lack of guidelines and strict restrictions through the FAA, Eells said.

Arlington police purchased two drones that resembled miniature helicopters for $202,260 in 2013 and have since upgraded at no additional cost to three smaller quadcopters, Rollins said. The drones were purchased with federal money.

The Fort Worth Police Department has a drone but does not use it, and Dallas police do not use drones, officials said. Robots, on the other hand, have been in use for a decade.

Robots on the job

The Dallas Police Department deployed a robot packed with C-4 explosives to kill the man accused of fatally shooting five officers and wounding several others during a July 7 ambush in downtown Dallas.

Police departments have been using them for more than 10 years, according to a study by the Center of the Study of the Drone at Bard College. Arlington, Fort Worth and Dallas all have robots and use them for a variety of situations deemed too dangerous for officers, whether to detonate a suspected bomb or pump tear gas into a suspect’s location.

Fort Worth has had several in its inventory since at least 2011, Officer Tamara Valle said in an email. The robots are assigned to the SWAT team, she said, declining to say how they are used because of security reasons.

A search of Star-Telegram archives shows they have been used regularly, including:

January 2014: The SWAT team used a robot to help end a five-hour standoff with a man who had killed his ex-wife before barricading himself in another woman’s house in north Fort Worth. After John St. Angelo fired several shots at officers, the SWAT team used a robot to pump tear gas into the home he was in. He surrendered, and was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

November 2014: The Fort Worth Fire Department used a robot for the initial search of a home in southwest Fort Worth after a witness reported a man who could have bomb-making materials inside. No materials were found.

April 2013: Fort Worth police used a stair-climbing robot armed with special cameras to locate a man who had barricaded himself inside a house in central Fort Worth. The robot helped find the man in an attic.

January 2011: Arlington police showed off a remote-controlled robot that grabbed a backpack and placed it inside a bomb disposal to demonstrate the department’s readiness before Super Bowl XLV.

Arlington police have used a different camera-only robot to deliver a throw phone or water to a suspect rather than sending an officer, Rollins said.

Decision in Dallas

The most publicized robot deployment came early July 8, when sniper Micah X. Johnson was cornered inside El Centro College.

After hours of negotiations, during which Johnson talked of wanting to kill white people, “especially police officers,” police Chief David Brown made the decision to deploy the 790-pound robot, operated by two officers, to detonate a brick of C-4 explosives to kill the gunman.

“They improvised this whole idea in about 15, 20 minutes — extraordinary,” Brown said in a news conference.

The robot, a Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 purchased for about $151,000 in 2008, sustained partial damage to the extension arm but remains functional, Brown said.

The machine, manufactured by Northrop Grumman, can deploy car bombs, also known as vehicular-borne improvised explosive devices, as well as breaching entryways, according to manufacturer documents.

Brown said he would not hesitate to use the robot as a killing machine again.

“I would use any tool to save officers’ lives,” Brown said. “I’m not ashamed to say it.”

This article contains information from Star-Telegram archives.

This story was originally published July 24, 2016 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Robots, drones help North Texas police."