Electric Shock Gloves Were Used On Students In Omaha Public Schools [Op-Ed]

In news that will make you go “hold up, what now?” Omaha police have agreed to stop using electric gloves in Nebraska’s largest school district.

NBC News reports that the Omaha mayor and police chief released a joint statement earlier this week saying that the gloves have been used twice in two separate incidents. The first incident involved a student from a different school who was trespassing at Omaha South High School. The second incident involved a student in the district’s Integrated Learning Program, which the district describes as a “specialized program for students with social, emotional, behavioral, and learning deficits.”

In other words, children with special needs. The incident occurred when a student in the program made “verbal threats and threw a chair at the school security guard.” 

The gloves used by the school resource officers were the same gloves ICE agents will use to apprehend people. Pardon the crappy AI voice-over, but here’s a demonstration of the gloves in action.

The fact that those gloves were used on a student with special needs is deeply upsetting. 

“We are constantly seeking ways to keep the public and police officers safe through innovations like G.L.O.V.E.,” the joint statement said. “We believe it is the safest use-of-force option in the rare times when it is used.”

Why are we using force on children? You’re grown-ass adults. Unless a kid is a D1 linebacker for a high school football team, I don’t see why you would potentially need to electrocute a child unless they had a weapon. Children behaving out of pocket isn’t new; I saw it all the time growing up. The teachers and school security managed to handle it without electrocuting anyone. 

It’s crazy that the same type of folks who would say the kids are too soft these days feel like they need electric gloves to deal with them. That sounds pretty soft to me, chief. 

WOWT reports that Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said the school district had no problem with the gloves when they demonstrated how they worked three years ago. “The reality of it is we informed OPS three years ago,” Schmaderer said. “They could have said no then. They could have posed opposition. They didn’t pose it.”

It’s worth noting that Omaha Public Schools approved the purchase of the gloves without going through a public comment period. The announcement that they will no longer be using the gloves came before meetings this week between the Omaha Public Schools Board and the Omaha City Council, where the public weighed in on the use of the technology. 

“I can’t even imagine walking down the hallway and seeing a peer of mine being electrocuted in a place that is supposed to be a safe space for students,” Nora Wessel, a senior at Omaha Central High School, said during the board meeting. “Yet, this is now a very real possibility. These are adults we are supposed to be able to trust, but these weapons create a barrier for our students to turn to resource officers when needed.”

It’s crazy that we live in a country where free school lunches are controversial, but electrocuting kids is perfectly fine. 

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