Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on buying specialized gloves that pulse with electrical energy, which make it easier for agents to subdue people, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.
A user manual for G.L.O.V.E, or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, sold by a company called Compliant Technologies, provides more specifics on how the gloves are supposed to work and allegedly be used.
“No more than two (one pair or equivalent) of G.L.O.V.E. devices should be applied at one time to a single Subject,” the manual reads. 404 Media found multiple copies of the manual online and archived a version here.
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The manual says the gloves may even contribute to “sudden death.” It says “Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Devices” or CD3s may “increase the affects [sic] that can cause sudden death including physiological changes.” It then lists increases in blood pressure, respiration, and heart rates; changes in heart rhythm; and increases in adrenaline.
The manual says the gloves must “come in contact with the subject’s skin” and are not effective through clothing or hair. It also says the gloves “can be degraded on individuals and animals that are extremely hairy.”
Screenshots from the manual and a screenshot of the Peacekeeper Products video.
Another page includes a diagram of the human body and says officers can “grab anywhere on the body” with the gloves “while avoiding the head, face, throat, chest and groin areas.” If the subject resists, though, another page says to deploy the gloves “as necessary.”
It recommends using the gloves for around 15 seconds, but a demonstration video published by Peacekeeper Products, which also sells the device, shows staff using it for only a second or two with people already yelling in pain.
The manual says users should avoid using the G.L.O.V.E device against elderly people, small children, pregnant women, and “the severely handicapped.”
The Associated Press report was based on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) procurement record that said the gloves would be issued specifically to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE focused on deportations. Civil rights advocates expressed alarm at the planned purchase of the technology by an agency that is already widely seen as out of control and using physical force disproportionately.
The CEO of Compliant Technologies Jeff Nikaus published a long Instagram Reel after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. “I believe as a nation we are on a precipice,” he said. He said, “we need supernatural activity” and “we need to repent as a nation,” among other explicit Christian Nationalist ideas.
Compliant Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
