There’s a vast apartment complex out in Las Vegas named Liberty Village, which unfortunately is in one of the rougher parts of town with higher crime rates. When a real estate developer took it over in 2019, the police identified it as one of the most frequent sources for 911 calls. They had identified all manner of crime going on in the complex and it was an ongoing issue. The developer decided to try something innovative to get the situation under control and they brought in a robotic security officer to continually patrol the complex. The robot, produced by Knightscope and nicknamed “Westy,” was unarmed but was supposed to be monitoring all of the activity in the complex, including collecting video, tracking license plate numbers and other data collection activities. So how did that work out? According to residents and police officials alike, the robot didn’t seem to make much of a difference at all. (NBC News)

But it’s unclear how much Westy has reduced crime at Liberty Village. Knightscope, which is eagerly trying to recruit new clients, told local news outlets that Westy had resulted in a “significant drop in 911 calls,” underscoring “yet another crime-fighting win.” Knightscope included articles about Westy as part of its recent pitch to individual investors and in its plans to take the company public.

Officer Aden Ocampo-Gomez, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said that while the complex is no longer in the agency’s top 10 list for most frequent 911 calls in the northeastern part of the Las Vegas Valley, he doesn’t think all the credit should go to Westy.

“I cannot say it was due to the robot,” he said.

So there has been a slight decrease in the number of 911 calls, but not all that much of a difference. And they’re not sure if even that modest improvement can be credited to the robot. When asked by reporters to cite examples of specific crimes that the robot had either prevented or allowed to be solved, they didn’t offer any.

This robot shouldn’t be confused with the one from the original Robocop movie. It’s not built like a humanoid of any sort. It’s not even cool looking like the dangerous robotic dogs that come from Boston Dynamics. These robots are round and without limbs or discernable features. They look more like five-foot-tall Roombas more than anything else.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered a story involving one of those Knightscope Robocops here. Back in June of 2019, we covered the story of a robotic cop named HP Robocop who was assigned to roam Huntington Park outside of Los Angeles and keep an eye on things. Unfortunately, the one time HP had the chance to actually stop a violent crime in progress, it failed spectacularly. A woman witnessing an assault ran up to the robotic police officer and began frantically pushing the red 911 button on it. All HP did was tell her to get out of the way. It was later learned that the button wasn’t even connected to the 911 system. (HP’s Twitter account hasn’t tweeted anything in almost two years.)

It’s difficult to see how far this technology will end up going. The track record hasn’t been great thus far, and even when they seem to be functioning well, a lot of people don’t like them. (AOC managed to get New York City’s robot dog cop canceled.) If the robot cops don’t have weapons and can’t do much more than record data and transmit it, are they really much more than mobile security cameras? On the other hand, if they do become fully functional and we give them weapons, they may turn into Robocop for real. And we all saw how that worked out.