- Silicon Valley-based security robot developer Knightscope manufactures a variety of autonomous models steeped in technological tools to patrol and monitor client properties on a 24/7 basis
- Knightscope’s clientele have provided testimonials to local government officials at times, noting the robots’ effectiveness in helping to reduce crime rates
- The company’s robots primarily provide a presence in at-risk sites to offer safety through surveillance, but they have also delivered useful data to law enforcement officers investigating a variety of crimes
- The need for autonomous security robot sentries is apparent in the increase in violent crimes during the past couple years, which included a 30 percent jump in the murder rate between 2019 and 2020
Reports of increasing crime rates during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic the past two years have led officials to question the trend’s causes and search for potential solutions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) reported that the murder rate in the U.S. rose by 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, for example, marking the largest single year increase since at least 1905 but possibly ever, as noted this month by The Hill (https://nnw.fm/HSe4A).
In a report by the Associated Press, criminologist James Alan Fox described the spike in violence as a “unique” situation engendered by the novel, global pandemic (https://nnw.fm/vXilm), while National Center for Health Statistics chief of mortality statistics Robert Anderson challenged the idea that the violence might be caused by pandemic stress.
“You really have to look at other patterns and there certainly seems to be a correlation between the two but as we know correlation is not causation,” Anderson stated in a CDC interview (https://nnw.fm/Y0cJW).
Autonomous security robot (“ASR”) developer Knightscope (NASDAQ: KSCP) has devoted years and over $100 million in funding to building a cadre of ASR robot sentries designed to help discourage such crime, and as Knightscope’s corporate client list grows, so too do reports of clients’ satisfaction with the robots.
The ASRs establish a continuous presence at their assigned locations, recording a large variety of data and relaying it electronically to an operations center according to the clients’ select needs. Some of the models are mobile, while another is stationary — again, providing options to clients as they deem best suits their purposes.
“The K5 robot (outdoor model) is having a positive impact on crime and nuisance activity at Salt Lake Park, which is reducing the instances of police activity at the park,” Huntington Park (Los Angeles County) City Manager, Ricardo Reyes, and Police Chief Cosme Lozano wrote to their city council in 2020, as noted in Knightscope’s description of its ASR models’ interdiction effects (https://nnw.fm/pQzm6).
Those effects include deterring crime and vandalism in a Las Vegas residential parking garage, providing high-definition video and license plate detections over a four-month period in response to a law enforcement agency’s investigation, providing evidence of two burglaries and felony property damage that led suspects to confess their involvement to a law enforcement agency, establishing improvements in feelings of security for nurses and doctors accompanied by the ASRs as they walked from work to their parked cars after dark, and identifying a heat anomaly in a hair styling kiosk that helped officers prevent a major fire — as well as several other incidents cited by the company.
Some media outlets have questioned the effectiveness of the ASR patrols since Knightscope began trading publicly on the NASDAQ exchange in January (https://nnw.fm/IABTI).
One report last year, citing the difficulty in quantifying how much of a difference the security robots have made, nonetheless noted that Knightscope co-founder and Executive Vice President Stacy Stephens said that the company has experienced client renewals from 2, to 3, to 4, and even 5 years. By a unanimous 5 to 0 vote, the City Council of Huntington Park approved the renewal of the Knightscope Autonomous Security Robot contract for an additional two-year term. Chief Lozano stated at the July 6, 2021, Council meeting, “the reality is that a patrol officer cannot do what modern technology can do through the use of this robot.”
The NBC report quoted Robert Krauss, the vice president of public safety at the Pechanga Resort Casino north of San Diego, who said the casino had been using six ASRs for three years and wasn’t sure “how useful they have been in terms of stopping crime, but … that the robots have been able to identify panhandlers and other people that the casino wants to exclude,” as well as helping to resolve a costly lawsuit by providing video footage of a woman who fell and claimed the casino was at fault.
“You never know how many [bad actors] you’ve prevented by placing [the robots] there, so I don’t know what we’ve prevented. But I can tell you we’ve never had anything serious. … Going forward, I will probably add one or two more,” Krauss told the NBC reporter (https://nnw.fm/9IOnh).
For more information about Knightscope (NASDAQ: KSCP), visit the company’s website at www.Knightscope.com and if you have a need for subscription service you may request a private demonstration of the technology at www.Knightscope.com/demo.
NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to KSCP are available in the company’s newsroom at https://nnw.fm/KSCP
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