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The Department of Homeland Security plans to give ICE officers gloves that can deliver electric shocks. Similar to a Taser, they're meant to subdue a person during an arrest if officers think the person is noncompliant. The company that makes them says they are a tool for de-escalation, but as NPR's Meg Anderson reports, there are critics, and they have concerns.
MEG ANDERSON, BYLINE: The contract for the gloves is worth up to $20 million, and it would go to a Kentucky-based company called Compliant Technologies. Its Instagram page is full of demo videos showing police officers being shocked with these things. Almost all of them fall to the ground. Some of them even cry out in pain. And that's the point. The company's website says the glove is a tool to manage someone who's agitated or combative with, quote, "confidence and control."
KENNETH COREY: I've had it used on me. It hurt. I'm a big guy. And I'm 6'3", about 250 pounds. It made my knees buckle.
ANDERSON: Kenneth Corey spent more than three decades at the New York City Police Department. He says the glove itself isn't really the problem. It's how an agency uses it.
COREY: Any new piece of equipment that's being introduced, you have to have strong policies that govern its use, and then you have to make sure that your people are being held accountable.
ANDERSON: Without those guardrails, he says, many tools are ripe for abuse. That's what worries Naureen Shah, a policy director with the ACLU. ICE officers have come under intense scrutiny for their use of force, including the fatal shootings of multiple people. Shah wrote a recent report that documented widespread use of force by immigration agents.
NAUREEN SHAH: The idea of arming ICE agents with limited training and a recent track record of misusing force - to hand them this kind of weapon is reckless and surprising.
ANDERSON: DHS told NPR in a statement that ICE always seeks to make sure its officers have the tools to safely make arrests and that they are highly trained. Compliant Technologies declined to comment. The company website says there have been no documented injuries from the glove. Right now, these electric shock gloves are being used around the country in dozens of police departments, prisons, hospitals, and some schools have signed contracts to buy the devices.
Meg Anderson, NPR News.
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