#TI #AOC #Racism #Yoga #NYPD #Africa #Digidog

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has denounced the NYPD's new crime-fighting robot dog, appearing to accuse the department of racism for deploying the device for testing in only low-income communities of color.

The Democratic firebrand blasted the police department's four-legged 'Digidog' in a succession of Thursday tweets, two days after the cyber hound was filmed responding to a home invasion in her home borough of the Bronx.

'Shout out to everyone who fought against community advocates who demanded these resources go to investments like school counseling instead,' she wrote.

'Now robotic surveillance ground drones are being deployed for testing on low-income communities of color with under-resourced schools.'

Ocasio-Cortez then argued that police funding that allows for new technology like the Digidog would have better served the community if it had been allotted to programs for education or housing.

'Please ask yourself: when was the last time you saw next-generation, world class technology for education, healthcare, housing, etc consistently prioritized for underserved communities like this?' she added in a follow-up tweet.

Digidog, which was designed by Boston Dynamics and has a starting price of around $75,000, joined the NYPD last year.

The blue and black rover, which weighs approximately 70 pounds, is equipped with lights, two-way communication, and video cameras, the department said.

The robot is fitted with cameras to search an area and send back real-time footage and is powered by artificial intelligence to navigate on its own.

The cyber canine can also climb stairs, see in the dark, and run at about three-and-a-half miles an hour. It was designed for emergency situations that would otherwise be too dangerous for human officers.

Digidog is currently being tested by the NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit, which deployed it at a home invasion and barricade situation on East 227th Street near White Plains Road in Wakefield on Tuesday.

Two men were reportedly being held hostage in a Bronx apartment. They had been threatened at gun point, tied up and tortured for hours by two male assailants who pretended to be plumbers to gain access to the home.

One of the victims managed to escape and called the police.

Digidog was deployed and helped officers determine that the armed suspects were no longer inside the home.

The police said they were still searching for the two men, who stole a cellphone and $2,000 in cash and used a hot iron to burn one of the victims.

Digidog was also previously deployed in Brooklyn in October to help find a gunman hiding in a basement, and was also used in a hostage situation in Queens the following month.

The robotic dog is also currently being used by the Massachusetts State Police and the Honolulu Police Department.

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A Delaware kindergarten teacher has come under fire for an online yoga lesson that used the history of slavery in the US — and an inaccurate one at that — to teach different yoga poses.

The unidentified teacher pre-recorded a 35-minute yoga lesson for students of the McIlvaine Early Childhood Center in Magnolia.

But in a misguided attempt to incorporate some Black History Month education into the lecture, the teacher shared an abbreviated and incorrect history of how enslaved people were brought to the US and made to work, using their boat journey across the Atlantic to teach 'boat pose' and their forced work of the land to teach 'plow pose.'

A video recording of part of the lesson has been making the rounds on Facebook after being uploaded by a parent of one of the students.

The online clip starts a partial world map with the image of a boat in the middle of the ocean, with arrows showing how enslaved Africans were taken to other parts of the world, including the US.

'African people came to America on boats to become slaves,' the teacher can be heard saying.

'So here's the great big country of Africa. They crossed the Atlantic to come over to America. So right now, I need you to get into your boat pose.'

Besides the teacher mistakenly referring to Africa as a country — it is in fact a continent made up of many countries — she also makes it seem like enslaved people went to the US and 'became' slaves willingly.

As the parents who is recording the lesson can be heard saying in the background, Africans did not 'come' to America — they were stolen from their lands and transported forcibly, often in chains.

But the teacher continues to try to find links between slavery and yoga poses.

'Africans were treated very poorly, even though they farmed the land and plowed the fields to make America beautiful and help grow our food,' she says.

'They worked in the fields all day. If you're at home, you can try the plow pose.'

Commenters on the video have been horrified by the lesson, arguing that it trivializes slavery by relating its horrors to relaxing yoga poses.