This past week, a notice posted by the Department of Homeland Security revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently entered into a $20 million no-bid contract with Compliant Technologies for “The G.L.O.V.E.” The contract comes as ICE takes advantage of the billions in funding that Congress has awarded the agency since Donald Trump returned to the presidency.
The acronym stands for “generated low output voltage emitter,” and it is exactly what it sounds like: an electrified glove that agents can trigger to deliver a pretty powerful, painful-looking jolt to anyone the officer has in their grasp.
The device is marketed as a de-escalation device, but the potential for widespread escalation and abuse seems pretty clear.
The device is marketed as a de-escalation device, but the potential for widespread escalation and abuse seems pretty clear. ICE has already demonstrated a willingness to excessively point — if not fire — guns and pepperballs at people, even when they are being clearly filmed by civilians and media alike. These gloves would allow ICE agents to hurt people in ways that could leave no marks and may be impossible for observers to notice or document.
What if, for example, an agent activates his gloves while holding someone down who has already been arrested and who is blocked from the public’s view by other agents? No weapon is pulled; the agent just touches a button on his gloved hand.
Alarmingly, the DHS notice listed the firm’s North American Industry Classification System code as “Other Spectator Sports,” a category the firm itself doesn’t use — it instead lists services such as “security guards and patrol services” — and whose definition it doesn’t appear to meet (which, if just an administrative screw-up, is an ironically dark one).
It’s also alarming that Compliant Technologies felt the need to include in its terms of service that the gloves are not to be used against mere verbal disagreement, or for punishment or torture — a clear indication that they are concerned about such risks.
It may be helpful to first identify what those risks are, beyond just intense (if short-run) pain and suffering. Compliant Technologies claims there are no documented instances of injury from any of its devices, including The G.L.O.V.E., since the company launched in 2018. But it is worth noting that almost all of its clients for The G.L.O.V.E. are sheriffs’ departments, which likely use it to subdue people held in county jails — places that tend to be dry and indoors.
This is important because the wetter human skin is, the more of an effect any sort of electric shock has. On dry skin, The G.L.O.V.E. in general may be unlikely to administer enough of a shock to do serious harm (and Compliant Technologies claims that this holds true even for those with medical devices like pacemakers), but that risk rises, perhaps significantly, as the skin gets wet from, say, rain, or sweat.
Moreover, the gloves do not appear to have any sort of automatic turnoff. The training manuals encourage officers to use it for no more than 15 seconds straight, but in a way that suggests longer shocks are possible, meaning people could be subjected to extended shocks. And potentially, multiple officers could grab someone at the same time, each activating their gloves — especially since the gloves only work when they make direct contact with exposed skin. That could encourage multiple agents to activate their gloves simultaneously in case one fails to make contact.
The promotional videos on Instagram of people volunteering to be shocked show people collapsing almost instantly in pain, after being touched by one glove for well under one second. And those appear to be filmed indoors, in air-conditioned expo halls.
Outside, in the rain or heat, applied for long periods of time by several agents at once to someone in a high-stress situation? Seems like a recipe for serious harm, if not death.
Promotional videos on Instagram of people volunteering to be shocked show people collapsing almost instantly in pain.
On top of this, the potential danger of these gloves intersects with ICE’s well-documented lack of training and hiring of agents who all too often seem to exhibit levels of violence and dangerousness that in some instances have made other law enforcement agencies unwilling to hire them. Compliant Technologies does stipulate that everyone who uses its gloves must receive training and certification, but the course is about a total of three and a half hours of lectures and demonstrations, including some breaks, and requires a multiple-choice test whose answer key is publicly posted on Compliant’s website.
Ostensibly, the gloves record each time they are used, which in theory could provide some oversight. Except the data has to be manually offloaded from the gloves, stored and distributed by the agency itself. But DHS, ICE and the Department of Justice have made it clear that they will not hold ICE or Customs and Border Protection accountable. Plus, ICE recently stated it will only release bodycam footage when it is in the agency’s “best interest” — not exactly confidence-building when it comes to transparency of glove data.
The Trump administration is aiming to slash the budget for the DHS’ Office of Inspector General, so any data that is actually gathered and retained — and there are already allegations of ICE destroying evidence in other situations — is unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon.
So we have a dangerous tool, given to those who are disproportionately likely to engage in excessive violence, with little training, overseen by a government that not only refuses to hold them accountable but also takes affirmative pride in their violence, and deployed under relatively untested conditions that are objectively riskier than those in which it is currently deployed.
The post DHS arms ICE agents with dangerous tool despite history of excessive violence appeared first on MS NOW.
Author: Source Author
From MS Now.
Leave a Reply