Christina Jedra’s story about the useless robot dog that the Honolulu Police Department bought for $150k was particularly satisfying, right?

Everybody knew it was a dumb idea from the start, like when your neighbor hauls a new Peloton into their garage and you just smile knowing that its quick destiny is to become a pedestal for packages of Costco paper towels.

In 2021, HPD proudly introduced its new robot dog, named Spot, designed and sold by Boston Dynamics. From the overhype tone of that first press conference, it was clear it was just a matter of time before the uselessness of the expensive purchase was going to become painfully obvious.

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For starters, the robot dog looks nothing like a dog. The creepy prancing thing looks like something from a Tim Burton movie, costs more than a Tesla, and its primary use for the Honolulu Police Department was to trot over to homeless people on its motorized backward-bending legs and take their temperature by scanning their eyeballs.  

Couldn’t that be done by a person in a biohazard safe suit like Dustin Hoffman in “Outbreak”? Or a Tyvex jumpsuit with a motorcycle helmet and double mouth masks? Come on.

HPD paid for the impulse buy with Covid money from the federal government. Perhaps at the time the purchase was more understandable. Those were scary times, when every day brought an update on the growing death toll. But it’s been years since anyone wanted to remotely scan a homeless person’s eyeball for fever, so Spot sits idle, just like we knew it would.

HPD is supposedly looking into new ways of using the expensive remote control gadget. Spot only moves at a speed of around 3 to 6 miles per hour, so he’s useless in chasing anyone. A real dog can run about 20 miles per hour or more and chase bad guys and illegal animals should an opossum or skunk sneak into Hawaiʻi. Spot can’t do any of that. Spot can climb stairs — slowly — and right itself if it’s flipped over, which makes it more mobile than a turtle, but that’s nothing to brag about.

Surely there’s something useful this iPad-on-legs can do. 

Maybe Spot can trot among the stacks of Matson containers at the harbor to electronically sniff out fireworks, a job that has flummoxed law enforcement agencies over the years. Can Spot sniff? Maybe there’s an app for that.

Spot could possibly help with the many lost and injured hikers and those who climb past no trespassing signs to access restricted areas. Spot could be like a St. Bernard in the Alps as he scuttles up a trail to save stranded hikers. Wouldn’t that scary spider-dog thing be a bit cuter if it had a little barrel of booze around his neck? Instead of carrying brandy to warm up a frostbitten traveler, Spot’s neck pouch could carry a can of hard seltzer in keeping with the reckless vacation vibe of most of the ankle-twisters and trail-tumblers.

The robot dog could be refashioned with a dustpan and scraper and deployed along downtown sidewalks and planter boxes as a pooper scooper, the twist being that a doggie would be cleaning up human turds and not the other way around. Stop rolling your eyes. You know that kind of filthy work is totally needed, and not just in downtown Honolulu. Spot could scoop poop in a different town every day of the week.

When the Honolulu City Council was initially briefed on the purchase, the only question asked of the police department was whether Spot could eventually be used to help curb Oʻahu’s out-of-control illegal fireworks problem. At the time, HPD Lt. Mike Lambert said “you could send this technology into a neighborhood to detect explosions in the air … that’s not beyond reason. Or to capture people actually lighting the fireworks.” Where was Spot on New Year’s Eve when an Aiea neighborhood needed someone or something to step in before everything exploded? Go, Spot, go.

There are many ways a machine can take the lead in doing something that could be dangerous to a human. Spot can bust in to illegal game rooms and obtain evidence, though HPD seems to enjoy that particular form of recreation.

Spot can make itself useful picking up rubbish along the H-1 freeway and on the makai slopes of Diamond Head, checking receipts at stores downtown, providing security for people going from their cars to Chinatown restaurants and back again, walking kūpuna across the street. Make that dog earn his keep.

The Honolulu Police Department wasn’t the only law enforcement agency in the country that spent federal money on a robot dog. The New York Police Department also had a robot dog, but they were smart enough to lease their Spot rather than buy it outright. When the public outcry in the city rose to the level of “WTF?!!”, NYPD terminated the lease and sent their robot dog back.

HPD probably has theirs in a closet along with a bread machine no one knows how to use, a drone that didn’t land right, and an office-sized Roomba that somebody stepped on.