Technology to the Rescue

[Jerry Moran]

Maybe better than cameras:

ATLANTA
Bar owner uses robot to clear streets
He says he takes on criminals; critic say he's not helping
RICHARD FAUSSET
Los Angeles Times

ATLANTA --Hollywood might have had RoboCop, but the real world now has a robot more attuned to the prosaic realities of the street.

The Bum Bot.

That is what Rufus Terrill calls the rolling, remote-controlled invention he says he uses to flush out the prostitutes and pushers who gather near his downtown Atlanta bar, which is two blocks from the city's largest and most controversial homeless shelter.

"This is actually the Bum Bot 2000," Terrill gently corrected on a recent evening as he switched on the device.

The Bum Bot, like the homeless people it polices, is a creature of hand-me-downs. The wheels are from one of those scooters for the elderly; the PA system is a walkie-talkie wired to a home-alarm speaker. The rotating turret is an old Cajun meat smoker.

Its black armor -- made of exercise mats -- and the stenciled letters spelling out SECURITY lend it a menacing air.

An infrared camera and a 2-million-candlepower spotlight are mounted on the turret under a homemade cannon that squirts jets of cold water at up to 200 pounds per square inch.

Terrill usually sends his robot up the street to the parking lot of a daycare center, where he says a sketchy, drug-dealing crowd congregates after dark. The police sometimes round them up, Terrill says, but soon, it seems, they are back on the street.

So Terrill speaks to them through the Bum Bot, transmitting his voice via walkie-talkie: Move along, he tells the loiterers, or get wet.

Sometimes he tells them that he's capturing them on video: the Bum Bot's camera feeds into a big-screen TV back at his pub, giving patrons a hyper-local dose of reality TV. The street people tend to run away.

His strategy for making the neighborhood safer is the latest manifestation of a lingering controversy that has engulfed this patch of real estate.

The perpetrators, he says, are the residents of the massive emergency homeless shelter nearby at Peachtree and Pine streets. Terrill says the shelter attracts the kind of people who have broken into his bar, O'Terrill's, and harassed and mugged his neighbors and clients.

Known as Peachtree and Pine, the shelter has amassed other critics, including the administration of Mayor Shirley Franklin, a Democrat whose father was temporarily homeless.

Debi Starnes, the mayor's adviser on homelessness, said the shelter, which can accommodate 1,000, is too big to be managed properly. She also said it fails to adequately help the homeless make the transition to a better life.

Anita Beaty, executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, said the Bum Bot doesn't help: "Not everybody outside our building is a drug dealer, and when they are, we want them arrested as much as (Terrill). A robot is not the way to solve anything."

Terrill, an engineer who has designed weapons systems for the military, says he is targeting the people who are causing trouble, not the ones trying to get ahead. He says he has employed about 70 men from the shelter at his bar over the years.

He said he consulted the police before rolling out his robot about six months ago.

Meanwhile, back at home, Terrill has worked up plans for a Bum Bot 3000.

This model, he said, would used compressed air to shoot netting at people who refused to move on. But he's afraid that, too, could land him in trouble.

"I'd be in jail faster than the bums would," he said.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MosAfpC_G0

[thelakelander]

Interesting invention.  Are you looking into getting Jacksonville's first Bum Bot 2000?

[Jerry Moran]

Unfortunately, the use of BumBot, like an ATV or dirt bike, is limited to private property. Only live police officers can replicate the BumBot's function on public property. Alas, City Hall refuses to adequately fund the JSO.

[Midway ®]

I think you should hold off till BumBot4000^tm hits the market. I hear it's going to be equipped with an EnergyMizer^tm electronic ignition flame thrower and a 50 litre high pressure napalm reservoir.