A Killer police drone took down a US citizen without trial

The Dallas shootings have ushered in a very new world for U.S. citizens. For the very first time, a drone has been used on U.S. soil to kill an American without trial or charges.

The suspected shooter in the July 7 tragic killings, U.S. Army veteran Micah Xavier Johnson, was, according to police and press reports, holed up in a parking garage and would not give himself up.

After hours of what police claimed were fruitless negotiations with Johnson, a weaponized robot was sent to where he was hiding and blown up, taking Johnson with it.

Police claim that continuing the negotiations was pointless and attempting to capture him would have put officers at risk. 

The media and opinion-leaders are presenting  the audience with a false choice: if we question the use of drones to kill Americans — even if we suspect they have done very bad things — we somehow do not care about the lives of police officers. That is not the case. It is perfectly possible to not want police officers to be killed in the line of duty but to wholeheartedly reject the idea of authorities using drones to remotely kill Americans before they are found guilty.

African-American Dallas protester Mark Hughes was wrongly identified by Dallas Police as a suspect in the shootings. Police tweeted photos of Hughes marching with protesters openly carrying a rifle, as is permitted in Texas.

According to Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and editor and contributor to Drones and Targeted Killings: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, it's a sign that U.S. law enforcement is continuing to go in "the wrong direction."

"The fact that the police have a weapon like this, and other weapons like drones and tanks, is an example of the militarization of the police and law enforcement—and goes in the wrong direction," Cohn told Common Dreams. "We should see the police using humane techniques, interacting on a more humane level with the community, and although certainly the police officers did not deserve to die, this is an indication of something much deeper in the society, and that's the racism that permeates the police departments across the country. It's a real tragedy."

Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, told The Atlantic on Friday, "This is sort of a new horizon for police technology. Robots have been around for a while, but using them to deliver lethal force raises some new issues."

As security expert and University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze noted on Twitter on Friday, numerous safety concerns about the robot's protocols—for example, how easily it might be hacked—remain unaddressed.

Security researchers have expressed concern that any technology haphazardly turned into a weapon escalates the concern of it being hacked.

However, companies have been selling drones and robots as multifaceted, sometimes violent tools for law enforcement for years. The Guardian reported in 2013 that one product, the “Switchblade,” had been advertised as “the ultimate assassin bug,” allowing law enforcement to pilot a small drone and then lunge it forward and kill a target.

The Dallas Police Department has refused to confirm which robot was used against the suspect on Friday morning, but several reports have noted that the city’s public records have identified prior purchases from Remotec, a Northrop Grumman subsidiary. Both Dallas police and Northrop declined to comment the incedent to the press.