School Asks Cops To Stop Using Stun Gloves On Its Students

from the today-in-what-the-everloving-fuck dept

Compliant Technologies probably would have preferred to keep flying under the radar. But a gaudy new no-bid contract with ICE (worth up to $20 million!) made it impossible.

Prior to ICE’s big purchase, it may as well have never existed. It only had a few clients, and those few clients purchased a few pairs for prison guards and jail staffers. That’s the sort of thing that kind of makes sense. Controlling inmates in enclosed spaces requires a bit more finesse than just beating them with batons.

Given the increased chance of losing control of a “compliance” option, turning gloves into quasi-stun guns made it easier to deploy force while simultaneously reducing the probability of losing a baton/Taser/OC canister to an inmate who’s stronger and faster than the average prison guard (i.e., most of them).

But ICE decided it wanted even more force to deploy, even though deploying force (a lot of it “excessive”) is basically all ICE does. Under-trained officers tend to underperform in the field, especially when they’re asked to do something more than seize the occasional website or find illegal substances hidden in cargo containers.

Here comes the shocker. Not only did a cop shop give officers some stun G.L.O.V.E.s (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters), but it allowed them to deploy them in Omaha, Nebraska schools. With the G.L.O.V.E. backlash now fully engaged due to ICE’s interest in inflicting further unnecessary pain, an Omaha school district is “asking” cops not to use these gloves.

And the best thing we can say about this development is that the cops have actually agreed to stop glove-stunning students, without engaging in too much extracurricular bitching:

Omaha police agreed this week to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in the halls of Nebraska’s largest public school district.

The Omaha mayor and police chief said in a joint statement Monday that the gloves were used twice in the last school year, including in a program for students with learning deficits.

Reread that last sentence a few more times. That’s extremely disturbing. While officers claim to have only used them “twice,” it did deploy them at least once to stun “students with learning deficits.”

And I only said there was a minimum of bitching by the cops. There was still some bitching, which arrived in the form of belated justification for stun-tech I can almost guarantee no parent was aware school resource officers (a fancy phrase for “school cop”) had access to, much less using on students.

“We believe it is the safest use-of-force option in the rare times when it is used,” the statement said.

“Safest?” As compared to what?!?! At what point do you decide a school discipline issue necessitates an ambush with literal shock tactics? Is this safer than NOT FUCKING DOING THIS AT ALL? I’m not an expert in “low voltage emissions” but I would like to believe any option that is less violent than stunning a student into submission is actually safer than any option that involves incapacitating someone with an electric shock.

What’s wild is that the school district actually had to make this request and then hope the cops would comply. And they had to hold onto this hope despite there being significant pushback from the community these cops are supposed to be serving. That it took the cops an entire day to simply agree to use the multiple violent force options they already have available to them doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.

Destroying this minimal amount of confidence is the fact that this “agreement” (which hasn’t been made official) only extends to the Omaha PD. For some fucking reason, a bunch of Omaha-area cops “serving” Omaha schools apparently also have these gloves and aren’t promising to change a damn thing about how they handle policing schools.

However, the suburban Bellevue police department that patrols two Omaha schools and the large Bellevue district said its officers will continue carrying the gloves. Three other large school districts in the metro area that have Omaha school resource officers assigned to their buildings have not taken action to stop police from using the devices.

This agency saw the backlash and the semi-capitulation of the city’s largest law enforcement agency and then… did absolutely nothing. As far as the Bellevue PD is concerned, it’s still open season on students when it comes to SROs (school resource officers) and their stun gloves.

The schools in that district appear to be led by people who will never take issue with anything cops might do. Nothing to see here, says the district spokesperson, whose statement sounds like something delivered by someone who developed Stockholm Syndrome while undergoing a lobotomy:

Bellevue schools spokeswoman Amanda Oliver said the district has a great relationship with Bellevue police and doesn’t see a need to alter anything.

Oh, I’m sure the district has a “great relationship” with the cops. But we’re not worried about the administrators. We’re worried about the kids, who are the ones who will be subjected to violent force, including these novel stun gloves the kids at ICE keep talking about. And the Bellevue PD has used them just as often on students as the Omaha PD. And even though it was only “two” instances, the Omaha PD was at least willing to swear off using this tech in schools.

Meanwhile, in Bellevue, it’s apparently business as usual, even though no one (other than the PD and this weirdly cheery PR person) wants cops to have this option when patrolling schools.

At last week’s school board meeting, about 30 people spoke out against police using the gloves. Residents and board members alike said they were appalled at the practice. No one spoke in favor of it.

No one except the people who will never be subjected to the stun gloves, which the company helpfully points out won’t leave evidence “burn or contact marks” on the minors subjected to them. Bellevue schools — via its PR flack — said everything is fine. The chief of the Bellevue PD, Ken Clary, similarly claims to have a healthy relationship with the G.L.O.V.E.

“I am not comfortable having our officers give up a tool that has repeatedly proven to be safe, effective, and less harmful than the alternatives,” Clary said in a statement.

Again: as compared to what? You can’t just say this option is better than others without providing any evidence to support this statement. I mean, you can, but you shouldn’t expect anyone to believe you. This just sounds like a top cop claiming each new force option is more “effective” and “safer” than whatever the department is already using. Adding yet another option is never viewed as adding to the excess. It’s just folded in with everything else and glossed over in public statements until the public’s attention is focused elsewhere.

There’s no reason for ICE to have these gloves. Officers already have tons of force options, as well as the full permission/judicial immunity to use whatever option they feel will inflict the most pain at any given point. The G.L.O.V.E. may have started out as a prison option, but now it’s clear cops want this option whenever they’re dealing with… shall we say… captive audiences. And the defenders of this tech are making it clear they think inmates and students are interchangeable, at least when it comes to deploying force.

Filed Under: ice, nebraska, police misconduct, police violence, school resource officer, stun gloves, wtaf

Companies: compliant technologies