Their casing is a titanium-iron alloy, their circuit boards are gold and silicon, but their hearts are 100% Old-Fashioned Copper.
"To fight the crimes of the future, they needed a futuristic cop. So they built her."
— Tagline for Mann & Machine
Over the years, robots have been depicted in a variety of tasks, and one that shows up often is that of a law enforcement role, either replacing the entire police force or working alongside them. Some works will depict them as not being Three Laws-Compliant, allowing them to dish out Police Brutality on those they consider scum. Other works may have the laws either partially or completely implemented to give the impression that they actually uphold the law in a peaceful manner, although the second law also has the advantage of preventing these robotic police from turning on their higher-ups.
Why robot cops would be implemented in a setting varies, but usually involves them being tougher and thus able to withstand bullets and other injuries which can either injure and outright cripple a police officer, are capable of thinking quicker and thus able to defuse a life-threatening situation more easily, are less likely to question their higher-ups, are more expendable, easier to program and build, and have the capacity to be installed with a variety of tools to dispense justice such as water hoses, stun sticks, in-built weaponry or, in more dystopian works, surveillance cameras. They also work as a quick and easy way of showing that a setting is either set in The Future or Cyberpunk.
A more negative way that this trope can be played is by using robotic policemen or law enforcement to symbolize the oppressive reach of a society whose enforcers are fully beyond the hesitation, empathy, or ability to dissent that would be present in human police.
Naturally, when robot cops are implemented in a work, they will go haywire for whatever reason, and can provide a more dangerous threat than a Robot Soldier — after all, soldiers are not normally posted on the streets during peacetime.
In some works, such a robot cop may work together with a human, learning together and overcoming their prejudices. Compare with Robot Soldier for when the robot is designed for a war. They tend to be nearly always Mecha-Mooks. May overlap with Super Cop if the robots have greater-than-human abilities.
Examples:
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Audio Plays
- Torchwood (Big Finish): The Law Machines seen in "The Law Machines" were designed as a form of robotic police, being robot tanks designed for everything from jaywalking to parking tickets to even watching on the citizens. They're based on the design of the War Machines used by WOTAN, which unfortunately causes them to go haywire and create carnage in London when WOTAN takes them over.
Comic Books
- Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: The Law Machines are Nigh-Invulnerable robots that enforce the laws of whatever planet they happen to be on, arresting and carting away any lawbreakers they find, even for minor offenses (though at least they apply judgement equally to both government officials and citizens alike). Most of humanity have come to tolerate then, even admire them after they broke up a dictatorship, with those who prefer to live more freely moving to planets like New Hong Kong where there are very few laws to enforce in the first place.
- Darkwing Duck: Law enforcement in St. Canard has been given to the so-called "Crimebots" after Quackwerks effectively took over the city.
- Fantastic Four (1961): While Doctor Doom was indisposed (miniatured by the Puppet Master), Prince Zorba returned from exile to claim the Latverian throne. Sadly, he became a greedy, paranoid dictator, and converted most of Doom's service robots into a ruthless mechanical police force. The Four arrived in Doomstadt just in time to prevent some robot police from executing a child for being out after curfew.
- Green Lantern: The Manhunters predated the Green Lantern Corps, and were designed to enforce the law on a galactic scale. However, they proved too militaristic, not recognizing nuance and shades of grey in the law or in infractions. The Guardians of Oa repurposed them, realizing that machine police were no replacement for a living mind that could judge and balance the law with mercy and compassion.
- Judge Dredd: One recurring plot is robots used as Judges. Dredd is against it from the beginning, since despite being the most By-the-Book Cop in the entire city he doesn't like the robots' rigid and literal interpretation of the law (more than a little ironic, since the robots were programmed using his brain patterns), and is later proven right (repeatedly so) when the robots start attacking non-criminals as well.
- Mega Man (Archie Comics):
- One character is a robot police called Police Man, who resembles Fake Man from Mega Man 9. Unfortunately, Sonic Man defeats him. Doctor Wily also makes his own Police Man to serve as his own law enforcement robot, but the robot turns on the mad doctor. Duo from Mega Man 8 works for a space police force known as the Star Marshalls, and his Evil Counterpart, Trio (who appeared in the same game), worked for the Star Marshalls but betrayed them and killed a third member, who was named Quartet.
- While Proto Man is on the run during the Rock of Ages arc, we see him interacting with a non-sentient police bot which can only ask him if he has a ticket to pay.
- Paperinik New Adventures: In the 23rd century, droids are used extensively for security, and the time police make use of human replica droids for monitoring the timestream (unlike regular officers, droids can monitor centuries of history and can be designed to fit the time period they are assigned to). Lyla Lay, one of Donald's friends, is a 5Y-model droid who monitors the 20 Minutes into the Future period the comic takes place in. In a rare twist, the problem here is the human part of the police, who are full of To Be Lawful or Good jerks who don't respect Lyla's personhood and frequently run afoul of our heroes.
Films — Animation
- Arco: Iris lives in 2075. In Iris' town, police are robots. So are teachers at her schools. Generally speaking, people use robots for most things. The film never shows if the robot cops can harm people.
- Doraemon: Nobita and the Tin Labyrinth: Planet Chamocha is a world inhabited entirely by robots, including in their law enforcement. Gian and Suneo needs to infiltrate their capital, Mechapolis, and narrowly runs into trouble with the local android cops.
- The LEGO Movie: The Super Secret Police, President Business' law enforcement department dedicated to capturing Master Builders, mostly consists of President Business' army of robots, with Good/Bad Cop as the only human member(s).
- Techno Police 21C is a 1982 anime movienote about three police officers in the at the time of creation near future year of 2001 each getting a robot partner made from car parts. The human and robot police officers team up to stop a mercenary group who stole a powerful automated tank.note
- Treasure Planet: Jim is caught solar surfing in a restricted area, and is brought home by a pair of robotic cops designed to look like British bobbies.
- WALL•E: The police aboard the Axiom are all robots with flashing lights and real-time cameras, but oddly, no arms or weapons. A squad of these police 'bots try to corral the escapees from the repair bay, but these suffer a Curb-Stomp Battle against just one massage robot running in haywire mode. Later, Auto dispatches every police 'bot there is to prevent Wall-E from installing the plant into the vegetation recognizer.
Films — Live-Action
- Alita: Battle Angel: The Spider Tank-like and minigun-equipped Centurions are robots who guard the Factory and enforce law and order in the streets of Iron City (notably registering whenever Hunters-Warriors bring them wanted individuals so they don't kill each other).
- Chappie: Johannesburg's crime has grown so out of control that the Tetravaal corporation has developed human-sized robots called Scouts to help with law enforcement. This business decision to mass-produce individual robots who are more efficient in urban environments causes Moore to resent Tetravaal because his MOOSE project gets shelved without being able to prove its capabilities.
- In Code 8, the police use robots to fight superpowered criminals.
- The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): The Gorts are described as a type of robots designed for law enforcement.
Klaatu: For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is, we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more... profitable enterprises.
- Inspector Gadget 2: G2 is the Superior Successor of Inspector Gadget who was build for law enforcement to stop criminals right away. Unlike Gadget, who is a cyborg, G2 is a robot from the ground up.
- The Last Sentinel: The Drone Police were initially meant to be the future of law enforcement, until A.I. Is a Crapshoot kicks in. Then the drones started developing sentience and kickstarted a Robot War lasting for decades.
- Minority Report: Although Washington, DC, still has a human police force, they are supplemented by tiny robots on four articulated legs, and have spy cameras and retina scanners. A squad of police send a legion of these little 'bots into an apartment building, where they're able to scan the retinas of every occupant of the building in mere minutes. One elderly married couple in the midst of a heated argument promptly freeze at the sight of these police 'bots, and let the "spiders" scan them.
- RoboCop: Zig-zagged by Omni Consumer Products, a MegaCorp that has privatized Detroit's police force and intends to develop robot policemen as "the future of law enforcement". Their first attempt, the Chicken Walker mecha ED-209, is a spectacular failure as it's extremely stupid, only effective on level ground, and in the product demo, it kills a junior executive. Their next attempts are not true robots, but Full Conversion Cyborgs. The first is the titular RoboCop, with a mostly robotic body and the face and partial brain of Alex Murphy, a policeman killed in the line of duty, along with a primitive digestive system to keep his organic parts functioning. RoboCop 2 shows OCP attempting multiple times to create a "RoboCop 2", but the first two models kill themselves within seconds of activation and the third is the brain of a drug-addicted madman named Cain in a robotic body that's larger and more heavily armed than RoboCop and who eventually escapes OCP's control.
- Star Trek (2009): The Federation is revealed to have employed the use of robotic police during the 23rd century, as one such officer pulls over a young Jim Kirk for joyriding in his step-father's antique car.
- Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Invoked. The T-1000 mimics an LAPD officer, and most commonly uses this form throughout the film as he pursues John Connor.
- THX 1138: The title character works in a factory that makes the android police that keep the populace in check. He's able to elude them for a while because he's aware of a design flaw in the police robots.
Literature
Examples by author:
- Harry Harrison:
- "Arm of the Law
" is about a prototype police robot sent into a small Martian town for testing. It singlehandedly proceeds to Clean Up the Town before the corrupt and apathetic human police can stop it.
- The first published The Stainless Steel Rat book starts with a policeman entering the protagonist's office. Jim promptly drops a safe on him and then informs the reader the policeman is a robot, so the most it could do to him is smash his radio so that he couldn't call for backup.
- The Men from P.I.G. and R.O.B.O.T. is about two Space Police agents. The first is undercover as a farmer, and uses genetically engineered pigs as assistants, the other pretends to be a robot salesman.
- "Arm of the Law
- Ani-Droids: Custodes class ani-droids are intended for emergency response and security, with police being the most visible of the class but they're also used as tow truck drivers. They're larger than Operas and tougher than Labors, and can be easily upgraded with additional armor and concealed weaponry. The FBI Custodes known as "Dimes" is practically a Terminator shaped like a giant bunny.
- The short story "Brillo" by Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova, first published in Analog, in 1970 is about a precinct running a test of the first purpose-built robot police officer nicknamed 'Brillo' because he is metal fuzz. The story concludes with the department deciding not to use Brillo or a line of robots like him due to his overly literal interpretation of the law causing trouble for his human partner Mike Polchak and even leading to the deaths of some teenage joyriders who Polchak would have normally arrested till Brillo stopped him. However, the story strongly implies that the FBI agent who had been silently observing the test was already a much more advanced robot that looked just like a human all along.
Buzzing softly (the sort of sound an electric watch makes), he stood inert in the center of the precinct station's bullpen, his bright blue-anodized metal a gleaming contrast to the paintless worn floorboards. He stood in the middle of momentary activity, and no one who passed him seemed to be able to pay attention to anything but him.
- R. Daneel Olivaw is introduced in The Caves of Steel, assigned to assist Elijah Baley (a human cop) in a murder investigation. Downplayed, in that Olivaw is part of an initially low-run production of humaniform robots, with an eventual goal of using them in situations where sending a person might not be the best idea, but they could still work in human-based environments and with tools designed for us, such as developing new worlds to settle on. It just so happens that Olivaw's first open assignment was to act as a cop.
- Discworld: Following the events of Feet of Clay, Dorfl the Golem joins the City Watch; Golems are the Disc analog of robots, with their 'chem' providing their programming and keeping them alive simultaneously.
- Fahrenheit 451: The mechanical hound is a robot used by the firemen to support their law enforcement operations. It's only loosely dog-like — it's discussed fairly sparingly, although it does have eight legs — and is programmed as a tracker and hunter-killer unit for tracking down and suppress criminals, especially book hoarders, whom it kills using a lethal injection. It's a mechanically emotionless force of death, and utterly relentless once a scent is programmed into it. It's one of the story's chief symbols of oppressive, unfeeling, and all-reaching dystopian society, and Montag fears it deeply.
- Lyttle Lytton Contest: The 2011 entries features a robotic lieutenant paired up with a human partner.
"You just may be the most beautiful perp I've ever laid sensors on," thought the robot lieutenant as his humanoid partner ate donuts unaware.
- In Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe by Robert Asprin and George Takei, a robot company intends to start producing police robots. The problem is, the robots there are Three Laws-Compliant, while a policeman inevitably harms humans during his work, so the program is top secret — so top secret that it makes the mainframe in charge go full A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
- Robodog, written by David Walliams and illustrated by Adam Stower, is about a robotic dog built by the scientist wife of the fictional Bedlam City's chief of police, he's designed to have the strengths of all sorts of different police dogs — so he can track scents as well as a Blood Hound, wrestle criminals like a German Shepherd and more. However he still needs to attend police dog training.
- Thursday Next: Jurisfiction, the police force that operates inside of English literature, has some robotic operatives; Sprockett, a clockwork robot, is a major character in the sixth volume, being deputized by the written version of Thursday in order to help find the real one.
Live-Action TV
- Almost Human: In the year 2048, all human police officers in the New Pittsburgh Police Department are assigned an android partner. At the beginning of the show human detective protagonist John Kennex hates these robotic cops as they left him and a fellow officer to die during a raid two years prior which led to the other officer dying and Kennex falling into a 17-month coma and losing a leg in the ordeal. When Kennex trashes a more advanced MX-43 police android that he was assigned with, the Department recommissions an older DRN unit which is designed to be more emotional and compassionate, which gets nicknamed Dorian. The DRN units were swapped out for the more cold and logical MX-43 as they were prone to irrational behavior, but Kennex prefers Dorian as it was "logic" that caused the previous robot to abandon him.
- In the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode "Cop Con", the Nine-Nine Detective Squad attend a police convention where various upcoming police gadgets are demonstrated / marketed. One of them is a K-13 police surveillance robot. Despite its basic design (it's mostly just a thigh-high mobile security camera that can send alerts to human officers), Jake is still excited by the idea of having a Robot Buddy one day, causing Charles to become jealous. Jake later uses the K-13 to monitor Captain Holt whilst the rest of the squad try to throw a party in their hotel rooms behind his back. It works fine until a drunk Charles throws it out of a window.
- Doctor Who: The Defence Drones seen in "Revolution of the Daleks" were designed as robotic assistance to police and security services, being installed with a gunstick to shoot water and a gas emitter to disperse riots. This goes awry when they are modified by a clone of the Reconnaissance Dalek mutant, turning into an army of regular Daleks that cause havoc on the streets of the UK.
- Eureka: When Jack Carter is temporaly suspended as Eureka's sheriff, he is replaced by A.N.D.Y., a robot designed to fullfill the job of a police. In the end of his original episode, he himself decides that the town is better off with Jack as human sheriff. He reappears from season 4 onwards as recurring character, this time as Jack's deputy.
- Future Cop is about police partners Joe Cleaver and Bill Bundy training up John Haven, a new rookie cop who Cleaver discovers is actually an android programmed to be the "perfect cop". Harland begins to develop human emotions and temporarily moves in with Cleaver to learn more about humans.
- Holmes & Yoyo is about a police detective called Alexander Holmes finding out that his new partner Gregory "Yoyo" Yoyonovich is an android designed to be his police department's top-secret weapon. From that point on, he has to keep this a secret from both civilians and most other police officers, as they don't have the clearance to be in on the secret.
- Kamen Rider Zero-One: The mass-produced Robot Buddy Humagears have been incorporated into nearly every occupation, including law enforcement:
- A Police Officer-type is among those seen in one of the beginning montages. Numerous others occasionally show up in other episodes as background extras.
- In the show's second episode, Aruto befriends a Humagear working as a security guard for Hiden Intelligence and nicknames him Mamoru. Mamoru eventually gains sentience, allowing Jin to hack him. The compromised Mamoru then transforms into the Ekal Magia, forcing Aruto to destroy him as Zero-One. A Replacement Goldfish of Mamoru takes his place at the end of the episode. Said replacement cameos later on during the Workplace Competition Arc, having been told what happened to the last version off-screen. He's one of the many Humagears that contributes his data to the Progrise Hopper Blade; eventually allowing Aruto to override the madness-inducing effects of Metal Cluster Hopper.
- In Mann & Machine, LAPD detective Bobby Mann is assigned to work with the beautiful gynoid detective Eve Edison, the first robot designed to feel emotions. He also had a previous android partner called Werner who was less sophisticated than Eve but who Mann found annoying and who almost got Mann killed; after Warner was destroyed, Mann is reluctant to work with Eve due to her also being a robot, albeit one more complex than Werner.
- Metal Heroes:
- Tokkei Winspector: Two members of the Winspector team are androids Bikel and Walter, who help fight crime.
- Tokkyuu Shirei Solbrain: The third member of the Solbrain team is Sol Dozer. Unlike his human teammates who use Powered Armor, Sol Dozer is an android with a clearly robotic design who serves as The Big Guy of the team.
- Tokusou Robo Janperson: Janperson is an android who serves as a law enforcer. The series is a big Homage to Robot Detective, another Toku show about a robot policeman, with some dashes of RoboCop thrown in.
- Power Rangers Turbo: The Blue Senturion is a robotic intergalactic police officer from the future. Originally sent back in time to the present to deliver a warning message to the Rangers, he sticks around to assist them against Divatox's forces (though he is sometimes seen dealing with minor crimes like parking violations).
- As its title suggests, Robot Detective is about a robot who is also a police detective.
- In Total Recall 2070, the late 21st Century protagonist David Hume is a detective working for the Citizens Protection Bureau (CPB) who is partnered up with an android detective after his previous (human) one is killed during an investigation.
Tabletop Games
- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition: Adventure S3, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, features a crashed starship with a variety of robots onboard, including police robots that were intended to control the human passengers. They have tentacles that can restrain or batter criminals and a built-in laser pistol, grenade launcher and Tractor Beam.
Toys
- BIONICLE: The Vahki were robotic law enforcement used on Metru Nui to maintain order on the island, ensuring Matoran were working on their jobs, apprehending lawbreakers, and Rahi control. They carried weapons that inflicted various flavors of Mind Control on troublemakers rather than physical injury. Most of the Vahki were destroyed when the Visorak invaded Metru Nui; the remainder turned into Murderous Malfunctioning Machines after getting fried by a power surge when the city's generator blew out.
- Transformers: Generally averted, as a lot of Transformers who have police alternate modes aren't actually members of any sort of police force (Prowl from Generation One had a highway patrol alternate mode but was the Autobot strategist, Barricade from the live action movies explicitly adopted his police cruiser mode to aid in his infiltration tactics). However...
- The mass-production Sharkticons and Allicons of the Quintessons act as a combination of cannon fodder army and police force, and have only limited intelligence to reduce the chance of them turning on their masters.
- Some media has the generic Seekers (i.e. Transformers that resemble recoloured versions of the Decepticon Starscream) act as this. In the comics by Dreamwave Productions, for example, Megatron retakes Cybertron with an army of mindless Seeker drones and puts them to work policing the populace, partially because he doesn't trust his usual followers Starscream, Shockwave and Soundwave due to their various schemes in his absence.
- G1 Protectabot Streetwise is one of the few examples of a character who has a police car altmode and actually is a cop, specifically he's a Cowboy Cop.
Video Games
- ARMS: Byte and Barq are a pair of clockwork robots who serve as a police officer and his police dog in their day to day life, with their career as ARMS fighters being their second job.
- In Borderlands 2, Gaige the Mecromancer's D34THTR4P Robot Buddy is as far from this trope as you can get (Gaige being a teenaged anarchist), but in her backstory, her high school rival stole the plans and used it to make the "Crime Buster Bot", the fallout of which escalated to an Accidental Murder and her fleeing to Pandora to become a Vault Hunter.
- Fallout:
- One model of Protectron was often used in police work before the bombs dropped. As seen in Fallout 4, they can be distinguished from their regular counterparts by their stun guns and electric attacks.
- The Securitrons are robots that serve as law enforcement on the New Vegas Strip alongside NCR MPs, and their most basic version has the image of a police officer's face on their screens.
- In Fallout 4, Nick Valentine is an older-model Synth whose degradation makes him obvious that he's a Synth, and therefore not trying to infiltrate Diamond City incognito; he styles himself as a Noir detective, taking up cases around the settlement in an effort to earn his keep. His mind is also a replication of a pre-war police officer, also named Nick Valentine.
- Heart&Slash: Amongst the enemy types you fight your way in the city are robot cops that have been controlled by QuAsSy. During the Robolution, many of them such as Lt. Copgore tried to defend the humans from the revolting robots but in the end QuAsSy hacked into them and made them turn against their human allies.
- Loopmancer is set in Dragon City (supposedly Hong Kong in 2046) and robots serves as law enforcement officers and security guards, with the only human members of the police force being detectives (including the player character, Xiang Zixu). They turn out to be quite unreliable — the final stage has Dr. Song Boyong hijacking into their systems and turning them into his Mecha-Mooks.
- Machine Hunter: In the future, there are nine different types of robots programmed by humans for daily tasks. Type-7 robots are specified to be used for "law enforcement", complete with a police badge on their chests.
- Mario Power Tennis: During the opening cutscene, after Wario and Waluigi vandalize a picture of Mario and Luigi after losing to them in a tennis match, a series of robotic police officers come after the duo, only managing to lose them after they escape into a side room.
- Some of the Mega Man games have robot cops.
- Examples from the classic series:
- Duo from Mega Man 8 works for a space police force.
- In Mega Man 9, Doctor Light is arrested by police droids when his robots attack humanity. Mega Man himself can fight one of them, named Fake Man.
- The Mega Man X games have Maverick Hunters, who hunt down robot criminals that serve as the series' major enemy force.
- Examples from the classic series:
- Mighty Switch Force!': Technically a Cyborg but ambiguous due to the pre-existing dissonance between written info and the in-game art but the main protagonist of the game, Patricia Wagon is a police officer who is after the Hooligan Sisters when they escape from prison and unleash all manners of monsters across Planet Land.
- Robo Army, befitting the robot theme, has police-themed bots in the police station stage, who uses Lawman Baton as weapons.
- Spacebase Startopia has its police force consisting of various kinds of drones remote-controlled by Leviathans manning a Security Station building.
- X-COM:
- XCOM 2: A couple of months into the campaign, ADVENT Peacekeeping forces will start deploying MEC units, robots with missile launchers and laser cannons that can devastate XCOM forces, making a hacker an indispensable unit on the team.
- XCOM: Chimera Squad allows the player to temporarily deploy robotic units in the field if they run out of usable organic squad members due to injuries. They don't have special abilities and are the only type of unit that can be Killed Off for Real.
- Zenless Zone Zero: Qingyi, as well as a few NPCs such as Sandy and Conrad, are robots who work for New Eridu Public Security.
Web Animation
- Minilife TV: In "Happiness is a Sparked Lake", two robo-guards supervise some members of the X-Team who were sent to jail and sentenced to do community service in the park. The robo-guards demand the prisoners stop talking with each other and keep working, and one takes the red-haired member's locket and throws it into the lake as it identifies it as an item he wasn't supposed to have.
Webcomics
- Freefall: The police force on the planet Jean have set up a division made up of robots, specifically to handle conflict between the planet's non-human population (mostly robots, but also some "organic AIs" — sapient Uplifted Animals with programmed personalities — plus one alien who can technically qualify as a minor crime wave all on his own). Early on, this confuses some humans, as it has never occurred to them to think of AIs as people, with the ability either to commit crimes or to be victims of them. The Chief of Police is human, but forms a unit (and is in a romantic relationship) with his sapient mobility rig, Eleanor.
Police Robot: We are being trained as a police force to help solve conflicts among the planet's non-human population.
Mayor's Assistant: Our non-human population consists of one person. Sam. Do we really need an entire police force for one alien squid?
Police Robot: Sir, I believe if you look past the obvious answer, you'll see one that's even more obvious. - R.A.M. the Robot: Phobe and Millie are recurring characters who are part of the "R-Bots", a robot police and rescue force.
Western Animation
- The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius: In the episode "The Tomorrow Boys", Jimmy, Carl, Sheen, and Goddard travel forward in time to a Bad Future where they are pursued by a robot cop working for the evil dictator Libby.
- C.O.P.S. (1988):
- The titular team has the duo Bowser and Blitz, made up of animal handler and his robotic K-9 companion, as members. Later in the show, it's revealed that Blitz was originally a real dog who was critically wounded saving a little girl from being hit by an out-of-control getaway car, and had to undergo an experimental process to save his life.
- The episode "Cops and Robots" revolves around the mayor pushing to have a line of police robots take over law enforcement duties in the city, who prove too overzealous at their job thanks to Big Boss bribing one of the programmers so they'd always find his people innocent, causing random civilians to be dealt disproportionately harsher sentences.
- Futurama: One of the recurring characters is URL, a robotic police officer who works together with a human called Smitty.
- Mega Man:
- Mega Man (Ruby-Spears) has police droids in addition to human cops, with both often getting taken out by Wily's goons. The episode Future Shock has robot police carry Wily's laws out in the Bad Future.
- In Mega Man: Fully Charged, Mega Man's hometown, Silicon City, has a robot police force called the Good Guild. Sadly, they're not at all effective at dealing with evil Robot Masters.
- Miraculous Ladybug: In "Collusion", as part of an evil scheme, Gabriel and Tomoe offer to replace the Parisian police force with robots. While the mayor is hesitant to agree, Chloé ends up striking a deal with them so she can use the robots to take over Paris.
- In the fourth episode of Police Academy: The Animated Series, "Cops and Robots", Capt. Harris threatens to replace the nine members of the squad with nine robots built by The Professor after the squad lets a criminal called "The Kingpin" escape. The police robots have a wide range of abilities like the ability to spit the bullets fired at them back at anyone who shoots them, super strength and loyalty to the person who holds their remote. This backfires however when The Kingpin gets a hold of said remote and the squad manage to prove their worth by taking the robots down.
- A Pup Named Scooby-Doo has a variation in "Robopup". The titular Robot Dog was built to solve crimes as part of the Blakes' private security team. When the Blakes start being haunted by the Ghost of Chef Pierre Goulash, his owner Mr. Gordon lends Robopup to Mystery Inc to help them solve the case. Robopup constantly shows up Scooby due to his enhanced skills, such as super strength, radar, and x-ray vision. The end reveals that Robopup was actually sabotaging the investigation the whole time, as Mr. Gordon programmed him to serve his greedy purposes.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987): One episode introduces a robotic police officer named Rex-1 whose blueprints are stolen by Shredder to make an evil robotic army.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): During their time-travelling adventures in the Fast Forward arc, the turtles are occasionally hassled by Constable Aloysius Biggles, a Ridiculously Human Robot police officer who speaks like a British Copper despite being in New New York.
- Time Squad: Human members of the titular Time Police organization are paired with robot partners. Buck Tuddrussel has Lawrence 3000, Sheila Sternwell has XJ5 and J.T. Laser has Lance Nine Trillion.
- Transformers: Animated:
- The Detroit Police Department is shown to make heavy use of robotic drones (in both flying and ground-based variants) to augment their human police officers. Captain Fanzone isn't fond of this due to his distrust of machines, and on a few occasions he's shown to be right to be paranoid due to occasions where the drones have been hijacked or disabled.
- Downplayed by the Autotroopers, Cybertron's police force. Despite all having the same body-type, ancillary material like the All-Spark Almanac clarifies that when accepted into their ranks a new recruit receives an upgrade or transfer into a new body. This is to promote the image of a uniform police force, and some material depicts members of the Autotroopers who don't use the same body-type (e.g. Sideswipe, a senior detective, maintains his sports car mode to aid in pursuit of suspects). They're otherwise just normal joes doing their jobs, with a couple sometimes spotted doing activities like cheering at events.
Real Life
- Various security robotics firms have created surveillance robots. They are mostly just motorised self-driving security cameras on wheels that can alert authorities when they spot suspicious activity. The company Knightscope market their Automated Security Robot (ASR) units to private companies such as airports, casinos, and shopping centers so these are effectively robot mall cops. Their K5 unit was trialled by the NYPD in 2023-2024 patrolling the New York City Subway.
