San Francisco moves to allow police to deploy lethal robots in some emergency situations

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night approved a controversial policy to allow city police to deploy lethal robots in some emergency scenarios. 

The supervisors voted 8-3 to permit police "to use robots to kill people in limited emergency situations," the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Tuesday evening.

The robots would only be used in rare extraordinary instances such as "against violent suspects such as mass shooters or suicide bombers," the Chronicle said.

“There could be an extraordinary circumstance where, in a virtually unimaginable emergency, [police] might want to deploy lethal force to render, in some horrific situation, somebody from being able to cause further harm,” Supervisor Aaron Peskin said during debate of the measure.