Are Police Allowed to Robot-Bomb Suspects?
Are Police Allowed to Robot-Bomb Suspects?
Experts say yes, and that Dallas is just the beginning.
By Steven Nelson | Staff Writer July 8, 2016, at 1:54 p.m.
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Police attempt to calm the crowd as someone is arrested following the Dallas sniper shootings. LAURA BUCKMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A cop-killing suspect died Friday when Dallas police detonated a “bomb robot” at his parking garage hideout, using a possibly unprecedented policing tactic after 5 officers were shot dead.
But are American police actually allowed to blow up a suspect?
Legal experts says under certain circumstances, the answer probably is yes, though special considerations differentiate killings using robotics and explosives from more common defensive shootings.
The precise details of the robot-bombing are unclear, and experts say facts are essential to the legal analysis, even if existing principles governing use of lethal force apply.
Dallas police chief David Brown said Friday that authorities used the bomb hours after the chaotic mass shooting during an anti-police violence protest. Ultimately, he said, negotiations failed and the bomb was dispatched.
“We cornered one suspect and we tried to negotiate for several hours,” Brown said. “Negotiations broke down, we had an exchange of gunfire with the suspect [and] we saw no other option than to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate where the suspect was.”
Brown said “other options would have exposed our officers to grave danger” and that police confirmed the man, later identified as Micah Johnson, 25, died from injuries caused by the bomb.
The novel use of deadly technology elicited immediate comparisons to targeted drone strikes overseas. But experts say it could well fit within existing legal frameworks for domestic law enforcement killings.
“One of the questions that inevitably will arise is the immediacy of the threat,” says David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore. “Obviously the more remote the suspect is and the less immediate the danger, the more difficult lethal force is to justify.”
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Jaros says it’s wise to avoid rushing to judgment, but that “the question that would have to be asked is, what’s the danger in waiting a little longer?”
Though he suspects many existing use-of-force principles apply, Jaros says the matter is sure to spur more in-depth legal analysis, though perhaps when a robotic bomb is used against a suspect viewed with greater public sympathy.
University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris says the robotic killing appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S., and agrees the “bomb robot” is “clearly a lethal weapon and its legality would be governed by the current use of force rules, just as would a high-powered sniper rifle.”
But Richard Murphy, a law professor at Texas Tech University, says it’s possible the mobility of a robot-delivered bomb presents another factor that must be considered.
“It does, by creating more possibilities for action, change the factual circumstances in which the legal question must be asked and answered,” Murphy says.
Jordan Paust, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, says details such as the size of the bomb also are necessary context to consider when applying current rules.
“The main legal issue would involve inquiry whether there was excessive use of force, an inquiry tied to features of context and principles of necessity and proportionality,” he says. “For example, were there equally effective means of neutralizing a target?”
Paust says lethal force is justified if a murder suspect is firing at police, meaning they would not be constrained to use of tear gas, stun grenades or other non-lethal means that potentially could be delivered by robot.
The deadly shooting of police officers may not lend itself to sympathy with the explosives-killed suspect. But hundreds of people die annually in confrontations with police, many heavily debated by the public, including two cases this week that reportedly inspired Johnson to shoot police.
Paust says use of robotic weaponry will inevitably increase and that more officer training and new rules of engagement will be needed.
“Military research regarding the size of drones will likely impact on domestic production of very small lethal drones that can fly through doors and windows in search of targets, leading to more precision in use of force,” he says.
Jaros says the legal analysis is only beginning.
“Whether it’s fully explored in this case or not, it will ultimately be fodder for plenty of law journal articles,” he says. “If it’s not this case, we can expect to see more cases in the future.”
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