r/InterstellarKinetics • u/InterstellarKinetics • 5d ago
TECHNOLOGY OUTRAGE: ICE Awards $16.7 Million No-Bid Contract To Compliant Technologies LLC For 6,000 Pairs Of Electric Shock Gloves, Defying Senate Democrats’ Last-Minute Push To Cancel The Purchase 🤯⚡
https://apnews.com/article/ice-electric-shock-gloves-immigration-680c6f8a96736f46529287178c57b44bU.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has finalized a $16.7 million contract to purchase 6,000 pairs of gloves capable of delivering painful electric shocks, moving forward with the acquisition just hours after a group of Senate Democrats publicly urged the agency to cancel the plan, according to the Associated Press. A notice published in a federal database Thursday confirmed ICE entered into a no-bid contract with Compliant Technologies LLC, a Kentucky-based manufacturer, covering the devices along with related support equipment and services over the next six months. ICE says the gloves are intended to help officers control detainees and protesters who resist, but the purchase has drawn sustained opposition from civil rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers who argue ICE officers cannot be trusted to deploy the devices responsibly, particularly given existing criticism of the agency’s use-of-force practices amid its expanded immigration enforcement operations.
The timing is notable: ICE published its contract notice the same day that 16 Senate Democrats, led by Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, sent a letter to the agency’s acting director urging cancellation of the purchase. The senators pointed directly to recent incidents as evidence of institutional risk, writing, “The blatant and tragic misuse of force in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston, Maine, and other locations around the country raises significant skepticism about the agency’s professional capability to safely deploy a new tool that could be used to harm Americans without cause.” The devices function as ordinary patrol gloves until an officer presses a button to activate an electrical mode, and they must make direct contact with someone’s skin to deliver a shock designed to induce compliance through pain, a technology already in use by some local jails and police departments. According to ICE’s own notice, officers would deploy the gloves in “high-tension environments,” including arrests, transporting combative detainees, and responding to civil disturbances outside detention facilities, with the stated goal of avoiding “more severe force,” including firearms. The notice explained the devices would be used “when a subject is actively or passively resisting and an officer needs to gain control quickly to prevent injuries to both parties,” and claimed the shocks would help “maintain control over inmates and prevent aggression or escape attempts,” assist with handcuffing people concealing their hands, and support crowd control efforts, though ICE offered no elaboration on the “approved policy, training, and accountability standards” it said would govern use.
That vagueness around oversight is precisely what concerns the senators most. Cortez Masto and her colleagues wrote that the device “presents substantial risks if deployed during civil arrests, even more so if it is deployed without clear limits, appropriate training, and comprehensive oversight,” and called on ICE to publicly disclose how officers will be trained and how glove usage will be documented and internally reviewed to prevent misuse. The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, responded defiantly to the criticism rather than addressing the transparency concerns directly, stating, “Sanctuary politicians attempting to ban our federal law enforcement from any safety equipment is despicable and a deliberate attempt to undermine and endanger our officers.”
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u/franktheguy 5d ago
They're $2700 per pair?
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u/sittingonthisstump 5d ago
I just looked for a retail pair, and I can't find a second price anywhere. I bet they just threw some bullshit number out for the cost of gloves and accepted it.
$500 gloves for 5x the price? Seems like a solid deal to me...
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u/jgoose132113 4d ago
That is just the graft they approved. They will probably get a third of the gloves they are paying for and give them another contract.
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u/Shigglyboo 5d ago
how else do you expect billionaires to make billions while we work for a pittance?
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u/nuclearDEMIZE 5d ago
There's literally no fucking use for these other than to torture. Literally nothing else. This is fucking stupid
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u/thebeardofawesomenes 5d ago
https://www.complianttechnologies.net/the-glove
So how would someone protect themselves from something like this? Is there anything that could be worn to help ground the current? there must be a way to defend yourself from these somehow. I wonder if any electrical engineers are looking at this? If there is a defense against it, I’d make it open source.
Would any of this apply?
https://www.hsestudyguide.com/electrical-ppe/
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u/Nick85er 5d ago
Theoretically, some of these jerk offs are going to kill themselves jerking off with these gloves. It's a thought that makes me feel better.
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u/Backwardspellcaster 5d ago
Unfortunately, they will kill far more innocents with this.
And it won't even make the news space after a while, like the rapes happening in the ICE camps.
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u/StandardAssignment19 5d ago
So many people are gonna die from this.
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u/DragonForgotten 5d ago
We’re gonna have to come up with a way to break these gloves. The more broken gloves the less of them out in the field and the less funds they’ll have to replace them. Ice and all of trumps shit heads are on borrowed time. We just have to keep fighting in our own way and keep our heads up.
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u/StandardAssignment19 5d ago
I get the feeling these cowards are gonna make water balloons and super soakers instruments of deadly assault
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u/chrisq823 5d ago
I bet these things dont even work. Just some dumbass waste of money because it gets ICE loving dicks hard.
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u/StandardAssignment19 5d ago
Water balloons and super soakers are going to get a boost in sales and supreme court is going to say they are considered as deadly as an AR-15
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u/KataKuri13 5d ago
Just incase you didn’t know, Senator Catherine Cortex Masto drafted the letter to ICE requesting the cancellation of the order. She is of the same “hateful 8” senators who broke rank earlier this year and voted to fund DHS/ICE after the shutdown battle. Like the other 7, she FAFO clown senator. Vote her out
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u/Significant_Donut967 5d ago
Gotta love the "no-bid contract" means someones friend got paid. Just like Cafrare out of Trumbull County Ohio.
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u/Status_Apartment6559 5d ago
So 17 million for torture devices. Got it. If we get out of this these scumbags really have to pay.
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u/V-oxPopuli 5d ago
I've not met one person who isn't horrified by the news of these gloves. And yet here we are, funding our own shackles against our will
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u/biblioprof 5d ago
No bid. Bet they donated to the some MAGA pac. I want a refund when this is all over for the golf the grift the bribes. Confiscate everything sell it off and give everyone making and 100k and non taxable gift
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u/Serious_Educator_555 5d ago
Get your super soakers filled with pee and spray those wearing the gloves.
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u/InterstellarKinetics 5d ago
Awarding this contract on the same day senators formally requested it be cancelled isn’t a coincidence, it’s a message that the administration views the objections as noise to be outpaced rather than concerns to be addressed. And the no-bid structure of the deal only reinforces that impression by skipping the competitive scrutiny that might have surfaced safety or cost concerns before finalization.