How the Dallas Police Used an Improvised Killer Robot to Take Down the Gunman

Following the tragic deaths of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, during a rally for Alton Sterling and Philando Castile on Thursday night, the Dallas Police Department deployed a small robot designed to investigate and safely discharge explosives. Officers attached a bomb to the robot ad hoc-style -- detonating it and killing the sniper while keeping the investigators out of harm's way. According to companies that manufacture bomb-disposal robots interviewed by The Intercept, none were aware of their bots ever being turned into lethal weapons, though one company acknowledged the robots could be adapted to hold weapons. A spokesperson from Pedsco, a company in Canada that supplies robots to other jurisdictions in Texas, confirmed that he did not "know of any instances of an explosive used to disable a suspect" attached to a robot owned by law enforcement. Pedsco would not comment on its own robots, citing possible confidentiality conflicts with customers, but pointed to instances where explosive ordnance disposal robots had been used offensively, such as a 1993 case where Prince George's County Police Department deployed a water cannon attached to a robot to disarm a suspect hiding in a closet.