A retired professor was handcuffed and arrested last week, for the crime of standing on the sidewalk in front of a delivery robot.
According to local channel 6ABC, 78-year-old Carolyn Marvin was arrested in Philadelphia’s Center City, after planting her feet in the path of an oncoming Avride delivery robot. Marvin, a retired communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told local reporters she was protesting the robots due to the threat they pose to local delivery workers.
“I know they’re taking the jobs of human delivery workers,” Marvin told 6ABC, “and so I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front of them and preventing them from going forward.”
The “confrontation” — if you can call it that — attracted a small crowd, who watched as police ordered Marvin to move out of the robot’s path. When she refused, citing protected speech, she was arrested and charged with one count of disorderly conduct, which she reportedly plans to dispute in court.
