Axon Pauses Plans for Taser Drone as Ethics Board Members Resign

“If a shooter comes into a church, for instance, and a drone is deployed and puts the shooter down, we cannot simply cheer that success,” Mr. Smith said. “We have to examine the video closely and rigorously.”

The board members who resigned said in their statement that the ethics board had warned the company for years against the use of products that can surveil people in real time.

“This type of surveillance undoubtedly will harm communities of color and others who are overpoliced, and likely well beyond that,” they said. “The Taser-equipped drone also has no realistic chance of solving the mass shooting problem Axon now is prescribing it for, only distracting society from real solutions to a tragic problem.”

One of the board members who resigned, Barry Friedman, the director of the Policing Project at the New York University School of Law, said in an interview that he was pleased Axon halted its plans for the drone project, and that he hoped the company would fully…