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SIX YEARS AGO, in the heat of the deadliest assault on U.S. law enforcement since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Dallas police chief David Brown made an unprecedented decision.
With a man believed to have shot and killed five officers holed up in a parking garage, threatening to continue his rampage, Brown directed his squad to retrieve the department’s Remotec Andros Mark V-A1 bomb disposal robot. He then ordered officers to affix a brick of plastic C-4 to the robot, send it near the suspect, and detonate the explosive. The officers did as told, and the blast killed the 25-year-old assailant, former Army reservist Micah Johnson.
The 2016 incident in Dallas was, and remains, the only known case of U.S. local law enforcement using an officer-controlled robot to end a suspect’s life. In the years since, innovation and shifting mores have revived the