“We’ve actually never won anything else, so this was the first win,” said Spring Lake Park Police Chief Josh Antoine.
It’s called a Transcend Robotic Mini Vantage. It’s simple to drive, and has video cameras and lights on both ends.
“The joystick on this remote is very similar to a video game. So a lot of people have trained their whole life and how to use it. They just didn’t know they were doing that,” said Sergeant Richard Kramer.
“It’s made to go into situations where we wouldn’t want to necessarily put an officer at risk or even the public at risk. We’ve had it on some burglary calls, and we’ve had it on some alarm calls,” said Chief Antoine.
On one of those burglary calls, Sergeant Richard Kramer was on the scene.
“We got called to a burglar in a house. Upon our arrival at the house, we found that there was a door that was forced open,” said Kramer.
After searching the main floor and the upstairs, they were ready to search the basement, but the layout of the stairs and walls presented some safety challenges.
“We went and got the robot. We came back and we sent the robot all the way down the stairs without a problem. We drove around the entire basement under little crawl spaces with dirt and it didn’t have any issues at all and we were able to check the basement. No one was down there, but we still were able to check without putting ourselves in that risk,” said Kramer.
Every officer in the department is trained to use the robot, and can use it in any situation they want to.
“I think the whole purpose is to keep officers and the community safer. And you’re going to do so with technology,” said Kramer.
“As an administrator for me, it keeps, it keeps a scene safe. It gives us that toolto keep that scene safe and to keep our officers safe,” said Chief Antoine.
