The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 22, 2007

Official News - page 10


REAL LIFE NEWS: ROBOCOB BREAKS UP SIEGE

by Hazed

At the end of last month, the robot police finally got to show what they are capable of, as the human cops were forced to call for mechanised assistance when a tense siege situation got out of control.

The action happened in Hingham, Massachusets, when a man barricaded himself inside an apartment for five hours. David L Donahue Junior returned to the home he shared with his mother and sister, having been out on the lash. He turned nasty, and "allegedly took a knife and threw it against the wall," the reports say. Mum and child ran out and called the police, and Donahue barricaded himself into the unoccupied apartment across the hall.

A police SWAT team and bomb-disposal unit were despatched to the scene and a crisis negotiation unit tried to open talks with the besieged man using loudhailer and telephone, but he refused to respond – not even when the officers hurled a stun grenade into the building's driveway in a bid to attract his attention.

So instead of rushing in and trying to subdue Donahue, or waiting until he got fed up with the situation and surrendered, the police decided to call in the robot police. Well, actually, all that was available was a bomb-disposal robot which local paper the Patriot Ledger described as a battery-powered "go-cart with wheels and treads that moves by remote control from a van". So not Robocop bursting in with guns blazing to serve the public trust, protect the innocent, and uphold the law, then.

Still, this rather unimpressive robot was sent in to see what Donahue was up to, but when it tried to go up the front stairs – like a dalek, it got stuck! A flesh-and-blood cop had to lift it up the steps so it could get into the Donahue apartment. Which was empty.

Rather than sending the bot over the hallway to the one the miscreant had holed up in, police decided to take control themselves. They entered the apartment through the back door and arrested Donahue. Nobody was injured. All's well that ends well. And robots can chalk up another success - well, sort of...


Fed2 Star index Previous issues Fed 2 home page