NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – The NYPD announced Tuesday it will be deploying three new “innovative policing technologies,” with Mayor Eric Adams vowing it’s “only the beginning” as the city looks to controversial tech to support public safety efforts in the future.
Adams and NYPD officials gathered in Times Square to announce the police department’s adoption of the K5 autonomous security robot, Digidog robot and StarChase GPS attachment system.
K5 and StarChase will first be deployed as pilot programs, while the Digidog will be deployed outright.
“I’m a computer geek,” Adams said. “I believe that technology is here. We can’t be afraid of it.”
The mayor added, “This is the beginning of a series of rollouts that we’re going to do.”
Such tech has provoked the ire of civil rights advocates, who criticized it as dystopian and another tool to aggressively police and surveil New Yorkers, particularly in minority neighborhoods.
Indeed, the Digidog was first rolled out under the Bill de Blasio administration, only for the program to be cut short in 2021 amid a backlash.
“A few loud people were opposed to it, and we took a step back,” Adams said Tuesday. “That is not how I operate. I do what is best for the city.”
Adams said his administration is “scanning the globe” to find even more tech that will “ensure this city is safe.”
NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell called the technologies “significant steps forward” in public safety, while also trying to assure critics that the department will “continuously evaluate their use and impact on our city.”
“We want the public to know that the use of these technologies will be transparent, consistent and always done in collaboration with the people that we serve,” Sewell said.
In a news release, the NYPD said the K5 robot will be used in places like transit facilities to “provide security and deter crime.” The initial seven-month pilot deployment will be inside the Times Square subway station from midnight to 8 a.m. starting in June or July. The K5 will have a “human partner” at first before patrolling on its own.
The Digidog robots, also set to arrive this summer, will to be used in an “array of specific critical incidents,” including “high-risk” investigations and situations involving hostages or hazard spills. ESU and counterterrorism will be among the units to get them. The NYPD said the robots will never carry a weapon or be used for surveillance.
The StarChase system attaches a GPS tag onto a fleeing vehicle using a hand-held or vehicle-mounted launcher. Police are then able to track the vehicle via an app with real-time data instead of pursuing its driver. The NYPD said the system won’t be used to track vehicles over longer periods of time and will only be used when there is probable cause a crime was committed. The StarChase pilot will last 90 days.
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