New York City Mayor Eric Adams may not exactly have a record during his time in office that screams “success” (unless you’re a big fan of people dying on Rikers) but at least you can trust him to waste money. For example, he spent $155 million on overtime to police the subway last year and also introduced a robot that was supposed to prevent crime somehow. A robot that the New York Times reports is currently no longer in service.
Reading the first two sentences of the NYT article, you almost feel bad for the little robot known as the Knightscope K5:
The New York Police Department robot sat motionless like a sad Wall-E on Friday morning, gathering dust inside an empty storefront within New York City’s busiest subway station.
No longer were its cameras scanning straphangers traversing Times Square. No longer were subway riders pressing its help button, if ever they had.
Standing 5’3″ and weighing in at about 400 pounds, the Knightscope K5 couldn’t go up or down the stairs, and the NYPD officers in charge of it allegedly barely let it do anything if it was allowed to do anything at all. One construction worker told the Times that he regularly saw two police officers standing next to the motionless robot, while another said they “never let it do anything,” before adding, “They could at least walk it down the hallway.”
If you ask Mayor Adams about the Knightscope K5, he’ll probably tell you it’s been a wild success. After all, back when the trial program began last year, he touted the fact that the subway robot only cost about $9 an hour. “This is below minimum wage,” he told reporters. “No bathroom breaks. No meal breaks. This is a good investment.”
Did it ever stop a single crime? Did it ever help a single person who was in trouble? We’ll probably never know, but at least the subway patrol robot that never patrolled anything only cost taxpayers $9 an hour.