I'm going to try to engage you seriously even though your question seems rhetorical and just making an appeal to emotion...
Assuming we are in agreement that our police force must be well trained and operating with good checks and balances it would be great to have a police officer on every corner. It would certainly reduce violent crime and make cities safer.
Of course we don't have the resources to do that. Putting gun turrets instead would only be useful in dangerous situations of last resort. It would be a gross misuse of resources and introduces unnecessary risk. So I'm against it but not for the reasons you might think. It's the same reason we probably don't need the police to have all of the decommissioned military hardware. An effective police department probably only needs a few remote controlled guns to be used in those dire situations and would require strict oversight.
I see a lot of knee jerk reactions in the thread but I actually don't see why you wouldn't be okay with this if you're already okay with police having guns. I believe there is a more nuanced view point here. A few points:
- This is about remote controlled guns. A human is still making the decision and all of the same rules and oversight apply. You can make an argument for existing oversight is insufficient but that is a problem we already have with police walking around with guns.
- You can certainly come up with situations where someone is a danger to the public. Imagine an active shooter scenario. Normally they are also a danger to a responding officer who is fearing for their life. This removes that fear in the decision making process.
- I don't think the slippery slope argument is helpful here. We can be against fully autonomous kill chains while still being okay with this. The importance is that a trained and accountable human is making the decision to take a life and that it's a method of last resort to protect others. This is just a more effective tool for a method of last resort.
I say all of this with the utmost respect for issue of concerning police militarization and abuse of power. I think these are important issues that we need to solve and the presence of them makes everyone fearful and distrusting. A just and highly effective police force shouldn't have these issues. I don't think it's a good idea to get rid of police to solve it though.
Just because something is technically possible doesn't make it legally possible, yet. They still need regulatory approvals where they operate because EM spectrum is a public resource.
Assuming we are in agreement that our police force must be well trained and operating with good checks and balances it would be great to have a police officer on every corner. It would certainly reduce violent crime and make cities safer.
Of course we don't have the resources to do that. Putting gun turrets instead would only be useful in dangerous situations of last resort. It would be a gross misuse of resources and introduces unnecessary risk. So I'm against it but not for the reasons you might think. It's the same reason we probably don't need the police to have all of the decommissioned military hardware. An effective police department probably only needs a few remote controlled guns to be used in those dire situations and would require strict oversight.