White House border czar Tom Homan defended Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers gloves that deliver painful electric shocks, calling them a tool to help officers end confrontations without using deadly force.
Homan argued the gloves could help avoid such encounters. “It’s just a safer way. It’s safer on the inmate. It’s safer on the staff.
“You can’t just go from 0 to 100, right, and the first thing you go for is lethal force.
“It’s another device to help someone get compliant when they are not,” Homan said Thursday in an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends. He said they would give another less lethal option to ICE officers, similar to Tasers or pepper spray, for use in potentially violent situations on the streets and in detention facilities. He said that it would “be awhile” before the gloves are deployed in the field by ICE officers because the agency is still working out training protocols and other policy issues. In Bardstown, Kentucky, Nelson County Jailer Justin Hall said Thursday that his agency began using the gloves four years ago to try to gain compliance when inmates are out of control. He said that, unlike Tasers, the shocks do not incapacitate people and make them fall or leave contact or burn marks. He said the shock gloves have been used sparingly, but are helpful as an initial deterrent when de-escalation techniques do not work. And most of the time, most of the time we get compliance,” he said. “It’s been a great tool for our facility.”
