Back in December, the city of Detroit unveiled an 11-foot monument to the titular character in “RoboCop” — a 1987 Paul Verhoeven film depicting the motor city as a dystopian hellscape in no uncertain terms. Apparently, someone in city hall was taking notes.
Now, according to local reporting, the Detroit suburb of Dearborn has launched a new “Drone as First Responder” initiative, a first-of-its-kind in the state of Michigan.
Per Dearborn Police Chief Issa Shahin, the new drones are meant to “reduce uncertainty” for police or other first responders heading to investigate calls. Instead of waiting for a squad car to arrive, officers will now be able to dispatch a drone to scope out the scene, hovering over citizens in need like a high-tech vulture.
“This program will enable us to assess situations almost instantly when someone calls for help,” Shahin said. “By supporting our officers in real-time as critical situations develop, it acts as a force multiplier, ensuring we cut down on response time, allocate resources appropriately, and provide robust service every time.”
The drone platform is supplied by Skydio, a company specializing in remote quadcopters and something called “dock hives.” These are exactly what they sound like: futuristic launch pads where police can remotely deploy their flying surveillance toys. Each hive operates in temperatures ranging from -4 degrees Farenheit — which may not be enough to brave Michigan’s notoriously frigid winters — to 122 degrees.
If the design looks familiar, that might be because it’s a suspiciously similar color and shape to the ED-209 in “RoboCop,” an “urban pacification” robot that famously malfunctions and murders a corporate executive during a boardroom demonstration. Skydio isn’t afraid to lean into the dystopian gimmick, either: each time a drone launches, the hives light up the sky with cyberpunk warning strobes that would make “Blade Runner’s” set designers blush.
On the Skydio website, the company claims its drones are already active in over 1,000 police departments across the US. These include smaller towns like Redmond, Washington, as well as metropolitan hubs like Los Angeles and Cincinnati.
“In 22 weeks, we have handled over 1200 calls for service in our deployment area, we have cleared, as of this week, 41 percent of those calls for service with any officers needed,” said Anita Koester, Support Services Division Chief of the Lakewood Police Department in Colorado in a testimony. “We are now at 80 percent [where] the drone is on scene first, and we have made 115 arrests, 100 percent because the drone was on scene and it was the critical component of making that arrest.”
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