Dublin's Robot Cop Just Got Fired

Local News

Most of us have driven past the brick house tucked into Coffman Park without ever stopping to ask about it. This Sunday from 1-3 p.m., the Dublin Historical Society is opening it up for a free tour, and it's worth the stop.

The house dates back to construction starting in 1862, built on land Marinda Hays Coffman inherited from her father, Colonel Elisha Hays — which is where Coffman Park actually gets its name. Alongside the house, there's a barn and a replica one-room schoolhouse, giving a real sense of what farm life in Dublin looked like in the 1800s.

Kids can make their own 1803 flag — the year Ohio became a state — and every family heads home with a US yard flag. It's at 5200 Emerald Parkway, with parking available at the Municipal Building lot or the nearby Coffman Park spaces.

More on the Coffman Homestead and the Historical Society's tours here.

Local News

If you've got a teenager who's ever talked about becoming a firefighter or paramedic, there's a serious new option headed their way. Tolles Career & Technical Center, one of the schools Dublin students can attend tuition-free alongside their regular high school, just landed $400,000 in Ohio's capital budget to build a four-story Fire & EMS training facility on its campus near Plain City.

We're talking real working conditions: smoke-filled stairwells, rope rescue setups, multi-story search-and-rescue areas — the kind of hands-on training that's been hard to come by regionally until now.

It's not just for students, either. Pretty much every fire and EMS agency in the area is expected to train there once it's built — including departments that could end up working alongside Dublin's own — which means better-prepared responders showing up if any of us ever need one.

For a Dublin teenager who's curious about the work, this is now sitting right there as a real path — no tuition, real equipment, and a credential waiting at the end of it.

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One of the things I respect about Dublin is that we're willing to try things, even knowing some of them won't pan out. The DubBot story is a good example of that in action.

Back in 2025, Dublin let residents vote on a name for the 420-pound security robot that started rolling through the Rock Cress Parking Garage, watching for trouble with 360-degree cameras and an emergency call button. It's now on its way back to the manufacturer in California — Dublin just ended the pilot.

Here's the part worth noticing: the city didn't quietly let the program limp along or rebrand the trial as a success. Police said plainly that DubBot's patrols never led to a single arrest, ticket, or case, and a second robot planned for Riverside Crossing Park never even shipped because the tech wasn't ready and the park couldn't support it. Rather than pay full price for something that wasn't working, the city walked away — Knightscope refunded most of the contract, leaving Dublin's final bill at $67,548 instead of the original $238,440.

That's not nothing. A lot of cities would've kept the robot rolling another year just to avoid admitting the experiment flopped. Dublin tried it, watched the results come in empty, and pulled the plug instead. The garage hasn't gone unguarded, either — the city's already moved to other security measures there.

That's innovation working the way it's supposed to: try the new thing, measure it honestly, and have the discipline to walk away when it doesn't deliver.