Police departments are thinking about using drones armed with stun guns

Busi­ness Insid­er, via WSJ

Police offi­cers could soon be adding a new weapon to their arse­nal: stun-gun drones.

The idea of police using drones equipped with stun guns to catch crim­i­nals isn’t all that far-fetched. Stun gun mak­er Taser Inter­na­tion­al has already approached some law enforce­ment offi­cials about poten­tial­ly using weaponized drones dur­ing encoun­ters with civil­ians, The Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed Thursday.

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“The idea for a com­mu­ni­ty to accept an unmanned vehi­cle that’s got some sort of weapon on it might be a hur­dle to over­come,” said Pete Simp­son, a spokesman for the Port­land police department.

Despite this, police use of robot­ic tech­nol­o­gy to deal with sus­pects is not with­out prece­dent. In July, the Dal­las Police Depart­ment used a robot out­fit­ted with explo­sives to kill a gun­man who had shot and killed five police offi­cers. It was the first time a robot was used by police to kill a suspect.