With its ability to climb stairs, open doors, and dazzle inebriated suspects, police are now using it in situations including armed standoffs, hostage rescues, and hazardous materials incidents - things where sending in a human or a real dog could be life-threatening. 

According to Bloomberg, over 60 bomb squads and SWAT teams in the US and Canada are now using Spot, Boston Dynamics has revealed. 

Yet, there are obvious ethical concerns - including oversight, and the risks that military-grade tools will be deployed in civilian settings. 

Defense and public safety agencies are increasingly adopting cutting-edge technologies to enhance their operations. Defense tech funding has soared past $28 billion in 2025 — up 200% year over year, even as broader venture markets cooled, according to PitchBook data.

Robots in particular have been finding a home among law enforcement agencies. ICE, or US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, recently spent around $78,000 on a robot from Canadian tech manufacturer Icor Technology Inc. that can perform similar tasks as Spot and also deploys smoke bombs, according to contract records. -Bloomberg

That said, Spot has done good good-boy work; in 2022, it approached a man who had crashed his car while kidnapping his son in St. Petersburg, FL to see if the man was armed. 

In Massachusetts last year, Spot helped assess a chemical waste accident at a North Andover Middle School, and intervened in a hostage situation in which a suspect had his mother at knifepoint and fired at officers. After spot cornered the man, police followed with tear gas to apprehend him. 

"It did its job," trooper and Massachusetts State Police bomb squad member John Ragosa told Bloomberg."The suspect was stunned, thinking 'What is this dog?'"

Spot starts at around $100,000, and in many cases can operate autonomously - performing maintenance checks, detecting gas leaks and inspecting faulty equipment. For now, it still relies on human operators like Ragosa for decision making - as an operator guides the 'dog' from a tablet while monitoring a live video feed from its onboard camera system. Spot's built-in sensors handle things like navigation and mapping, as its technology continues to evolve.