Border Czar Tom Homan Says The Glove Tasering Will Continue Until Morale Improves

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the ride-the-lightning,-plebes dept

We’ve moved into a new era where the administration’s constant cruelty, violence, and actual murders simply aren’t enough to keep Trump appeased or entertained. ICE is now goosing its arrest numbers by arresting holders of expired visas at domestic airports. Now we’re being treated to additional abject cruelty in the places where boots are on the ground.

An option only rarely secured by agencies that oversee jails — confined areas filled with convicted criminals that might need more immediate response alternatives — is now the subject of a $20 million no-bid contract. Once fulfilled, this will outfit any number of federal immigration officers with gloves capable of standing in for Tasers.

And while the company selling these G.L.O.V.Es (Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters) has draped itself with CYA fine print to offload any eventual deaths/maiming on owner/operators, it’s really just giving them all they need to joy buzzer people into submission/death while absolving themselves of their contributory actions.

Hell, the owner’s manual even pretends Excited Delirium is an actual medical condition, even when the AMA (and others) refuse to recognize a “syndrome” that somehow is only witnessed by cops who have restrained someone to death. It rephrases this as an “Agitated Chaotic Event (ACE)”, which would suggest that agitation and chaos are things cops bring the restraint party while simultaneously suggesting agitation and chaos are things in need of additional force deployment.

Managing chaos in a prison might call for some immediate incapacitation options. But ICE et al are operating out in the open. Any situation that’s uncontrollable is largely the fault of officers who’ve never been properly trained to do the job they’re now doing. CBP historically has handled illegal border crossings, patrolling southern deserts and/or pitching in with Border Patrol operations at border crossing points. Prior to Trump’s revamp of ICE to focus entirely on any migrant anywhere in the nation, ICE spent most of its time handling the customs side of its purview.

Now, every DHS agency (and plenty of voluntolds from the FBI, DEA, ATF, US Marshals Service, etc.) is a masked jump-out squad participating in open-air ambushes and kidnappings. Unsurprisingly, they’re so bad at it that they routinely murder people literally any other law enforcement agency would arrest peacefully, if not ignore completely.

Having realized no one is up for the task — especially since ICE has drastically cut back its training regime while simultaneously loosening entry requirements — the government must now rely on increased violence to meet its arrest goals.

Enter the G.L.O.V.E. And enter Tom Homan, who just sees this as the next step in the “truth, justice, and the American way” continuum:

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.

“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.” “You can’t just go from 0 to 100, right, and the first thing you go for is lethal force.”

Well, what’s wrong with whips? I mean, that’s a historic method that was used to great effect to make non-whites fall in line while slavery was still the operative policy, as well as for years after the slaves had been freed. How about fire hoses? That takes us all the way up to the mid-60s, where meeting “0 to 100” midway meant pinning people to the wall with water pressure meant to subdue industrial fires.

Why is shocking people with electrified gloves suddenly a smart option when ICE, CBP, etc. have never had to rely on this tech prior to this point? Homan pretends it’s about compliance when it’s really about subjugation and maximum pain infliction. He says the gloves are something that sits between the “0 to 100” scale of law enforcement violence, deliberately ignoring the fact that ICE officers will choose the option closest to 100 no matter where on the 0-100 scale the threat level actually is.

If we could trust immigration officers to not murder people simply because they’re (1) inconvenient or (2) driving vehicles, we might be able to accept a “compliance” tool in limited situations, like detention centers or border crossings. But Homan — and the agencies he (sort of) represents — want to see these used everywhere, all the time. Why limit yourself to punching someone when you can immobilize them before handing out a beating? Why consider de-escalation when everything you wear and everything you hear from your supervisors says do unto others first.

A nation that has still managed to raise its voice against Trump despite being beaten, shot, stripped of due process rights, and depicted as “garbage” from “shithole countries” is going to be silenced, immobilized, and violated by officers who now get to add stealth stun options to the “roving death squad” loadout they’ve preferred ever since Trump took office again. Homan is just here to blame the victims for their own injuries or deaths.

Filed Under: asshats, cruelty, dhs, gloves, ice, mass deportation, rights violations, taser, tom homan, trump administration
Companies: compliant technologies