During a Huntington Park City Council Meeting, Chief of Police Cosme Lozano at Huntington Park Police Department had the following to say when asked on their Knightscope partnership renewal:
“The reality is that a patrol officer cannot do what modern technology can do through the use of this robot. One of the significant features of the robot is that it records activity in high definition 24 hours a day seven days a week. It also provides an alert button feature where patrons of the park can communicate with our police dispatch should they feel they need to.
It provides a license plate reader feature where the robot is actually collecting data of license plates that it can read during its route and it collects this data, it just simply stores it. We can go back and feed a license plate into the system to see if that license plate had a hit in the park and that could help in investigations.
It also has an intruder sensor, if you will, and basically it lets us know somebody is in the park during hours when the robot is programmed to designate the park as being closed. The robot technology is not intended to eliminate or reduce the work of human police officers, simply to enhance our ability to deliver police services.
You can think of it if you will as a patrol vehicle. Meaning, the patrol vehicle creates the presence and that extension of the police department and quite honestly the officer wouldn't be able to do the effective job that he does without the patrol vehicle. So it is not a replacement of, it's simply to enhance the way we deliver police service to the community and to leverage modern technology to engage all of these added features”