For roughly two years, the small-town police department in Sahuarita, Arizona, has been using electric shock gloves to control uncooperative subjects.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set to spend up to $20 million on thousands of the gloves amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, according to a recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notice.
“It’s another device to help someone get compliant when they are not,” White House border czar Tom Homan said in a recent Fox News interview. “You can’t just go from 0 to 100, right, and the first thing you go for is lethal force.”
Opponents of ICE’s plan call it “disgusting and barbaric.”
But Sahuarita’s police chief, John Noland, who oversees a force of 68 officers in the southern Arizona town and once approached ICE about using the gloves, says that could not be further from the truth.
When used “appropriately” and with the required training, “it is not inhumane,” Noland told The Daily Wire.
Noland himself has experienced the shocks roughly a dozen times during training exercises and said the electric jolt is only felt where the glove touches. He also said that the pain instantly disappears once contact ends.
“It hurts. It is so strange, the moment the glove is no longer applied to your skin, there is zero pain. It’s not as if I twisted your arm to the point of pain, and then I let go, I back off, and your arm still hurts. It is instantaneous,” he said.
Noland says the gloves are often more humane than a taser or a baton, his other options for controlling the unruly.
“I see it as a tool that might be overdue. I know that may not be a popular thing for those folks that are anti-ICE … But ICE is a law enforcement agency,” Noland said.
“In Arizona, we were the first law enforcement agency that does street work or patrol work to put them out. We’ve been successful with them,” he said.
It comes as ICE officers have experienced an uptick in violent attacks by both outside agitators and illegal immigrant targets.
Since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, ICE agents have seen a 1,300% jump in assaults, along with a 3,200% increase in vehicular attacks, according to DHS.
Law enforcement officers across the country have used the technology, known as G.L.O.V.E., or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, to control violent suspects inside jails and in the field.
In order to use the gloves, law enforcement officers must complete a training course and get re-certified every two years, according to the company behind the gloves, Kentucky-based Compliant Technologies LLC.
“The skirmish lines that perhaps you have seen on different news channels and whatnot, over the last few years of our federal agents, Border Patrol, ICE agents, and others, DHS, all struggling with people out in the field, trying to get them to comply, now becomes less of a struggle. Now becomes a scenario where there are realistically going to be less injuries,” Noland said.
“I wish we had it at the beginning of my career. There would have been so many fights and struggles that would have been over in a matter of moments,” he said.
Officers wearing the gloves must press a button to activate them before putting them to use and can only deliver a shock when they touch another’s skin. The current can’t pass through clothing, hair, metal, plastic, or fur, according to Compliant Technologies.
“The plus behind the gloves are, as soon as I’m done grabbing you, the pain is off,” Noland said, adding that “people give up real quick, so that’s a plus for us. Less injuries on our end, less injuries on their end.”
The gloves each have a unique serial number that identifies the officer assigned to it. They also track when and how long a shock is administered.
The result is better accountability when officers are using force, Noland said.
“The gloves track when they’re actually utilized, similar to a taser. If I touch my t-shirt with it, it shows no application was ever given. Even though the glove is on. But if I touch my skin or somebody else’s skin … it gives the date, the time, and how long the application was that I touched somebody.”
“And each glove has a microprocessor in it. that says this particular glove, with this particular serial number, issued to John Noland, or Officer Smith, or Officer Jones, or Garcia, etc. was utilized on whatever date and time. And here’s how many times it was utilized. So those are also pluses for us, because it helps track use of force.”
Noland sees the value for ICE, saying it gives agents the ability to stop an escalating situation in its tracks more quickly and with less force.
“I could have one of my officers that weighs much less than me, much shorter than me, have a pair of these gloves on, and if they’re grabbing onto my arms, or my hands, or my wrists, etc., and they’re pulling me to the ground, I’m realistically going through the ground,” he said.
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