Cops used electrocution gloves to subdue high school students in Omaha, now the school district and parents are pleading with police to stop: “This is supposed to be a safe space for students.”

In early August, it emerged that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to spend $20 million to purchase thousands of electric shock gloves. Dubbed the “Low Output Voltage Generated Emitter” or GLOVE, the devices deliver a painful electrical shock intended to immobilize anyone with a simple flick of the wrist. While the gloves may be new to the general American public, for local police officers they’ve been around for a while. Plus, they recently used them on two high school students.In Omaha, Nebraska, at least two high school students had been subdued by school resource officers wearing gloves during the 2025-2026 school year, NPR reported. The first student was identified as a trespasser at a different school, Omaha police said in a statement seen by NPR. When he tried to flee, police shocked him in the wrist for “approximately two seconds” to stop him.The second high school student was enrolled in the Omaha Public Schools Integrated Learning Program, described as a “specialized program for students with social, emotional, behavioral and learning deficits.” After this student made “verbal threats” and “threw a chair at the school security guard,” the officers delivered two consecutive shocks, a one-second shock followed by a longer two- to three-second shock, apparently restraining the boy long enough to stop them.After news of the two incidents broke, Omaha Superintendent Matthew Ray pleaded with the city’s police department to stop using electrocution gloves on students. Although Omaha police refer to the gloves as their “safest use of force option” for subduing suspects, they agreed to no longer use the devices in schools, according to the Associated Press. However, the suburban Bellevue Police Department that patrols two Omaha schools and the greater Bellevue district said its officers will continue to wear gloves. “I am not comfortable with our officers giving up a tool that has repeatedly been shown to be safe, effective and less harmful than alternatives,” Bellevue Police Chief Ken Clary said in a statement.Three other large metro area school districts that have Omaha school resource officers assigned to their buildings have not taken steps to prevent police from using the devices. Although Ray said he learned about the gloves last week, local station KETV reported that police had informed school administrators about the devices as early as 2023.The district’s request came after outraged parents and students spoke out against the use of extremely controversial devices, which local and federal law enforcement agencies are acquiring at an alarming rate. “I can’t even imagine walking down the hall and seeing a classmate of mine being electrocuted in a place that’s supposed to be a safe space for students,” Omaha Central High School senior Nora Wessel said at a recent school board meeting, according to the AP. “However, this is now a very real possibility. These are adults we are supposed to trust, but these weapons create a barrier for our students to turn to resource officers when necessary.”As recently as 2022, the company behind the devices, called “Compliant Technologies,” marketed the anti-shock gloves as a “weapon” in its advertising material. In recent years, they have changed, calling them “conductive distraction and de-escalation” devices. In 2025, Omaha police agreed to pay Compliant Technologies LLC, which makes the gloves, about $66,000 for 40 gloves, according to the contract.Officers were expected to give a warning before using the gloves and then touch the person for up to 15 seconds while the electric shock was delivered, Mayor and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said in a statement, according to The Guardian. The devices are activated when an officer presses a button. The gloves must touch someone’s skin directly to produce a pain-causing voltage, the goal of which is to stop people resisting the agents. Unlike stun guns, they do not leave burn or contact marks.In practice, the shock gloves look like little more than rebranded Tasers, although they are much more “discreet,” as Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer told Government Technology in a statement. The devices may go unnoticed, but that doesn’t automatically make them humane or effective tools for solving crimes, as experts argue.Speaking to Mother Jones about the gloves, Yumna Rizvi, senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture, called the devices “inherently abusive equipment that facilitates torture,” adding that they serve “no legitimate law enforcement purpose.”As a recent ACLU of Iowa report found, school police are increasingly being used to maintain classroom discipline for minor infractions like vaping and disrespectful behavior, a marked departure from the task of deterring criminal activity. Unsurprisingly, this type of policing has had an enormous effect on black and disabled students, who are disproportionately cited and arrested by school police, the ACLU concluded. Instead of acting as a deterrent to police harassment, high-tech tools have only made the situation worse.