Imagine, if you will, that you’re already in Times Square late at night and miserable. Then, you see a large R2-D2 coming your way, and he’s so big and just filming you for no reason—with a police escort, because he’s pointless. Well, that’s what is happening. Mayor Eric Adams is a cheesy Batman villain where he always has the worst ideas for New York City. This time, it’s a robot that exists in the Times Square subway station that doesn’t seem to serve much of a purpose and is too heavy to push over, but can facilitate a phone call if you get lonely at the worst train station in all of Manhattan.
His name is K5, and he’s a big boy with no arms, despite Eric Adams trying to make heart hands with him during a press conference. Essentially, this big cop R2-D2 (when we all know our sweet R2-D2 would say ACAB) is just built to ride around the station just watching people and sending live video to police for whatever reason, but not on the platforms! Just hanging around, lurking, not completing the heart of Eric Adams.
“It will not record audio, and it will not use facial recognition,” Adams said. “However, the K5 does have a button that connects you immediately to a live person, that New Yorkers can utilize 24-7, with questions, concerns, or to report an incident if needed.” If you’re worried whether or not the NYPD owns K5, don’t be! They’re leasing the robot for $9 an hour because of “budget constraints” even though their current budget is $5.83 billion a year.
That’s an additional $9 on top of the officer that has to guard the robot because the police robot needs someone to protect it. “I know you wanted to write about how we’re wasting money, but I’m taking your thunder away. We’re leasing at $9 an hour,” Adams said. “I’m hoping you’re going to put a line in your story about how cost-efficient I am,” he continued. “This is below minimum wage. No bathroom breaks, no meal breaks. This is a good investment, so please make sure that’s added to the story, okay?”
The current pilot program will only use the robot for two months, between midnight and 6AM, but unless it’s a complete waste that they don’t expect to go anywhere, the eventual cost of employing these robots on a regular basis would be much higher. I’m no economist, but $9 per hour, 6 hours per day, for one year, is $19,710. I don’t know what the going rate is for a Dalek that looks like it got a makeover from Apple (Knightscope, the company that makes them, only offers them through a leasing model), but I’m not sure $19,000 for just one year of using one robot 6 hours per day is a budget option—and that’s not even including the cost of guard officers.
This is the stupidest timeline
Now, as a New Yorker, the current “fear” that is lurking on the depths of TikTok—a lot of people who have come here for school or who are visiting and talking about people attacking them on the subway—isn’t something I’ve experienced. I’m not discounting it; I’m sure it exists in the city, but that fear is what Eric Adams is using for this weird robocop fantasy of his. He has ramped up the police presence everywhere in this city for little to no reason.
I see at least 15 cops just standing at a single station in Brooklyn, all on their phones doing nothing, so that $5.83 billion a year budget is really going to great use for a bunch of cops who are not even paying attention to the stations themselves. I don’t want more police presence in the city, but now it’s all culminated in a robot cop that needs its own police escort. So … what exactly is the point? No one wants a RoboCop to come to life, and it would be worse if it could actually do anything, but it’s still baffling.
Most of us don’t want the cops here in general; they’re not really that helpful. Most of the time, they just sit around and don’t do a lot to help when an actual crime happens. I’d know; I had stuff stolen and they asked me to find the footage and who stole it. So watching as Eric Adams proudly admits to a $19,000/year robot cop that literally just rolls around and sort of films things but doesn’t really do anything every night for 7 hours? Not exactly exciting.
(featured image: Orion Pictures)
