Summary: In this future there are no more human police officers. Is that even possible?<br> <br> <br> <br> The future of policing is a really really complicated topic. And it’s also, and this might be the understatement of the year, a controversial one. On this episode we’re not going to try and give you a full picture of what the future of policing might be. That would take hours. Instead, we’re going to focus on two really specific pieces of this topic.<br> <br> First we talk to Madeline Ashby, futurist and science fiction writer, about robots, and what it might be like if we replaced human law enforcement with robotic law enforcement. Then, we talk to historian and writer Walidah Imarisha, about a future with no cops at all. We also hear from Doug Wyllie, the Editor at Large for PoliceOne, who, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn't like either proposal. <br> <br> Further reading:<br> <br> Disrupt Tha Police by Madeline Ashby<br> Bomb Robots: What Makes Killing In Dallas Different And What Happens Next?<br> Robocop Delivers Pizza, Prevents Suicide<br> 11 Police Robots Patrolling Around the World<br> Machine Bias <br> Hard Truths: Law Enforcement and Race <br> Angels with Dirty Faces <br> Wrestling With Angels: Walidah Imarisha on Harm and Accountability<br> Audre Lord Safe Outside the System Collective<br> <br> Flash Forward is produced by me, Rose Eveleth. The intro music is by Asura and the outtro music is by Hussalonia. Special thanks this week to Brent Rose. The episode art is by Matt Lubchansky. <br> <br> If you want to suggest a future we should take on, send us a note on Twitter, Facebook or by email at info@flashforwardpod.com. We love hearing your ideas! And if you think you’ve spotted one of the little references I’ve hidden in the episode, email us there too. If you’re right, I’ll send you something cool. <br> <br> And if you want to support the show, there are a few ways you can do that too! We have a Patreon page, where you can donate to the show. But if that’s not in the cards for you, you can head to iTunes and leave us a nice review or just tell your friends about us. Those things really do help.<br> ▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹<br> TRANSCRIPT<br> Rose: Hello and welcome to Flash Forward! I’m Rose and I’m your host. Flash Forward is a show about the future. Every episode we take on a specific possible or, not so possible future scenario. We always start with a trip to the future, then we teleport back to today to talk to real experts about how that future might really go down. Got it? Great. This year, we’re starting in the year 2072. <br> <br> <br> <br> Tour Guide Voice: Hello! Come on through, everybody, if everybody could scoot down a little to make room, perfect. Welcome, again to the museum, my name is TK. I’ll be taking you on the tour today. <br> <br> <br> <br> So, as you can see we’re actually in the middle of a long hallway here. The tour begins actually in the middle of our timeline, rather than at the beginning or end. To my right, you’ve got the distant past, reaching all the way back to 1704, when the colony of Carolina developed the nation's first slave patrol. And to my left you’ve got the more recent past, stretching all the way to the present and, in the small wing beyond that, the future. But we start in the year 2037, because this is the year that peace and safety really changed completely. <br> <br> <br> <br> Now, here’s a question for you all. Raise your hand if you are old enough to remember human police officers. Okay, a few of you. So, for the rest of you, you might not actually know this, but in this country we used to have this thing called police, and they were actually human people who would maintain law and order in our communities. But in 2037, that all changed, and law enforcement agencies were shut down throughout th...
