Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at the New York Fire Department’s newest four-legged — not mascots, exactly. We’ll also preview the New York City Half Marathon, back on Sunday for the first time since 2019.
Credit…Mostafa Bassim for The New York Times
The Fire Department’s two new best friends are robots. The department wants to send them where it is too dangerous to send firefighters — into places like buildings that might collapse. Or where deadly carbon monoxide, which cannot be seen or smelled, might be building up.
It is counting on them to change the way the city thinks of robots. Hollywood often casts robots in dystopian movies. Captain Michael Leo of the Fire Department’s robotics unit says that giving movie robots weapons does real-life robots a disservice because “then people think that’s how all robots are.”
“Our whole mission is a lifesaving one,” he said. “That’s the core thing. These robots will save lives.”
They cost $75,000 each and weigh 70 pounds apiece. Some Dalmatians weigh as much, as do some Borzois, German shepherds and Pointers. The robots will not have to be fed, walked or groomed. They will never bite anyone, and after she watched a Fire Department demonstration, my colleague Chelsia Rose Marcius wrote that they were faultlessly obedient. Commanded to lie down, roll over or stay, they did.
But besides helping with firefighting, they will have to fight the negative perception that surrounded a robotic dog the Police Department acquired in 2020. Critics raised concerns about aggressive tactics — as well as privacy and data collection — after officers responding to a home invasion deployed the robot dog to determine whether anyone was still inside an apartment. More criticism followed after the robot was seen with officers in the lobby of a public housing building in Manhattan.
John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, said at the time the department had ended its lease on that robot dog early because the device became a “target” for critics who he said were fueling the debate over race and surveillance.
A Fire Department spokesman said the robots would only collect data on hazardous materials situations and added that department compliance officers had been trained on confidentiality rules. But Albert Fox Cahn, a lawyer who is the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, expressed concerns about what data the Fire Department robots might collect and how that data could be used.
“When agencies buy these new systems, they always point to the best-case scenario for use,” Cahn said, “and I agree, if it actually is used in ways that keeps firefighters safe, that would be great. But the history has always been that even if it’s first brought in for a compelling case, you get this creep where it’s used for more and more scenarios until it’s reaching areas where it just doesn’t feel justifiable.”
In the Bronx, where 17 people died in high-rise fire in January after deadly smoke poured out of a single apartment, deploying robots in hazardous situations could save the lives of firefighters and other people, Borough President Vanessa Gibson said. She said she looked forward to a “forward and productive conversation” with Fire Department officials to see that the robots are used only “on rare, specialized occasions, with a goal of protecting our residents and first responders.”
Weather
It’s a sunny day with temps reaching the low 70s. Expect some showers late this evening, with temps dropping to the 50s.
alternate-side parking
In effect until April 14 (Holy Thursday).
Hochul presses for a tighter bail law
The push for a more restrictive bail law gained an important ally: Gov. Kathy Hochul is privately pressing state lawmakers to make changes. According to an internal memo obtained by The Times, she wants to expand the crimes eligible for bail and give judges more discretion to account for the criminal history of defendants in cases involving serious felonies.
Those changes, if enacted, would roll back some of the changes to the state’s bail law that were enacted by the Democratic-led Legislature in 2019.
Hochul, a Democrat running for her first full term as governor, has come under political pressure from Republicans and moderates in her own party. Her proposals, part of a 10-part public safety plan first reported by The New York Post, include elements that appear aimed at targeting subway crime and the rise of gun violence.
The latest Metro news
The pandemic
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If someone had told you on March 1, 2020, what the next two years held for the city, you would not have believed it. Here’s a timeline of New York’s pandemic experience in the past two years.
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New York and New Jersey will receive additional federal emergency housing aid after the Biden administration redirected unspent funds from other states and counties.
Other big stories
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Chris Cuomo is seeking $125 million from CNN for what his lawyers claim was wrongful termination when the cable news network fired him in December.
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The St. Patrick’s Day Parade returned after a two-year hiatus. Here’s how the parade looked on a gloomy but long-awaited Thursday.
A half-marathon returns with a full-size field
For Sunday’s New York City Half Marathon, returning to the streets for the first time since 2019, the course will be familiar — 13.1 miles from Prospect Park in Brooklyn to Central Park in Manhattan. Around Mile 11, the 25,000 entrants will cruise through Times Square. The New York Half is the only event that Times Square is officially closed for, other than the New Year’s Eve celebration.
It was one of the first races called off as the pandemic tightened its grip on New York City in 2020. It was canceled again last year.
This time around, the field includes 23 Olympians, eight Paralympians and six open-division runners with national records in half-marathons in their home countries. Among them are Desiree Linden, the 2018 Boston Marathon champion; Galen Rupp, a two-time Olympic medalist and the winner of the 2017 Chicago Marathon and the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials marathons; and Sara Hall, who set the American record in the half-marathon in January.
My colleague Matthew Futterman, in our Running newsletter, calls Hall “the Energizer bunny of elite road racing” because she packs her schedule with little downtime between distance races. Just last week, she ran the Tokyo Marathon, finishing eighth with a time of 2 hours 22 minutes 56 seconds.
Hall said the main draw of the New York City Half was “the fun of it.” She said that she is focused more on competing than on the clock — she has no particular time in mind. This, from someone who in January
