Omaha police carried shock gloves at 29 of 34 schools, used them twice

OMAHA, NEB. — School resource officers with the Omaha Police Department carried an electric shock device at 29 Omaha-area schools and used it on two students during the 2025-2026 school year. A department spokesperson confirmed the school count to KMTV 3 News Now on August 14, 2026, saying the gloves had gone to officers at 29 of the 34 schools OPD covers across the Omaha, Westside, Millard and Elkhorn districts, with training planned at the remaining five. In its own statement that day the department said 29 of its 34 school resource officers were trained and authorized to use the device. The device delivers “an electric shock ranging from 324 to 362 volts” for “one second up to 15 seconds,” according to a joint statement from Omaha Mayor John Ewing Jr. and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer that WOWT 6 News and other Omaha outlets published in full.

The device is called the G.L.O.V.E., short for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, and it is made by Compliant Technologies LLC of Lexington, Kentucky. Omaha police submitted the purchase request in May 2025, and the Omaha City Council approved it unanimously on June 3, 2025 as part of its consent agenda, with no one speaking about it at the meeting. The council journal record for that meeting puts the purchase at $65,924.00 for “(40) pairs of compliant gloves,” approved as “a unique and non-competitive article” under Chapter 5.16 of the city’s Home Rule Charter, which is the provision Omaha uses for sole-source buys that are not put out to bid. The same record shows the money was “appropriated from the Omaha Police Department Equitable Sharing Fund,” the account that holds the department’s share of federal asset-forfeiture proceeds. City documents submitted to the council described the purchase as giving officers “another use of force option with the goal of de-escalating and preventing use of force situations.”

Susan Kochevar, owner of the 88 Drive-In Theatre, brought the Omaha deployment to The Kim Monson Show on September 4. The company’s name was what struck her first, she said. “I just find that name right out of George Orwell’s 1984,” Kochevar said. She told listeners it is “a device that the school resource officers wear,” that it “delivers a painful shock ranging from 324 to 362 volts directly through skin contact,” and that it is “very painful, and it doesn’t leave a mark,” which she noted the company advertises as an advantage.

Omaha police policy lists the glove as a response to subjects who offer no physical resistance

The department’s published use-of-force policy defines the device as “a battery powered glove that, when activated, uses direct skin contact to produce pain compliance or neural peripheral interference (NPI), which makes it difficult for the subject to perform coordinated movements.” The same document notes that when the glove is switched off, it “has no electronic control utility, and functions as a normal glove.”

The city says officers do not wear the device on patrol. “An officer has the G.L.O.V.E.s. snapped onto their vest or belt – not on their hands,” the Ewing and Schmaderer statement says. “When a serious situation calls for compliance, an officer must follow G.L.O.V.E. protocol that includes verbal commands and a warning. An officer then puts one G.L.O.V.E. on their hand for skin-to-skin contact.” The shock runs “one second up to 15 seconds,” and once compliance is gained the device “is shut off or placed in standby mode.”

The policy also sets out where the glove sits on the department’s force ladder. Omaha police define passively resistive subjects as those who “interact with officers by failing to follow the lawful orders of the officers”, and the policy’s own illustration is someone who, “when lawfully ordered to do so, fails to place their hands behind their back for handcuffing purposes but offers no physical resistance.” The glove is listed as one of four permitted responses to that category, alongside control holds, strength techniques and pressure points. The policy attaches a reporting requirement: officers who use the glove on a passively resistive subject “shall articulate in the Chief’s Report why lesser officer response would have been ineffective.”

That threshold is what school safety consultant Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, singled out in his own review of the Omaha policy. “School discipline cannot gradually migrate into police use of force simply because a police officer is standing nearby,” Trump wrote.

Officers used the device twice in 2025-2026, once at a program for students with disabilities

The Ewing and Schmaderer statement describes both uses. In the first, an officer used the glove to detain a student from a different high school who was trespassing at Omaha South High and tried to flee after fighting with a security guard. The statement says the glove was applied to his wrist for about two seconds.

The second use came on May 8, 2026 at the Integrated Learning Program, which the Associated Press described as a program for special education students and which KMTV 3 News Now placed in North Omaha. A security guard had confiscated a lighter from a student, and the student then made threats toward a paraprofessional and threw a chair. WOWT, reporting from the police account of the incident, said the chair struck the guard on the left side of the ribcage and that the guard was punched in the head while trying to restrain the student. The officer applied the glove to the student’s forearm for one second, then a second time for two to three seconds.

“In both cases, students were offered medical support and declined,” the city statement says. A school nurse found no injury to the student at the Integrated Learning Program. The department reviewed both incidents through the officers’ chain of command and its Safety Review Board, and found both uses justified and within policy.

Officer Jason Cvitanov, who trains Omaha school resource officers on the device, told WOWT that the appeal is how little force it takes. “That allows the officers to apply just a mild grip. You don’t even need to squeeze,” Cvitanov said. “It’s a mild grip, and then what we’ve seen thus far is immediate compliance.” He also told KMTV 3 News Now that he weighed the glove against the other tools he carries: “I don’t have taser barbs. I’m not gonna spray pepper spray where there’s a lot of aftercare.”

Compliant Technologies advertises that the device leaves no burns, marks or scars

The manufacturer’s own product page states that the discomfort “is usually effective in bringing individuals into compliance in less than three seconds and leaves no burns, marks or scars.” The company calls the underlying technology CD3, for Conductive Distraction and De-escalation Device, and describes it as “a device used to quickly distract with small uncomfortable electrical pulses directly where the CD3 is applied to the surface of the skin.” It markets the glove as a “Soft Empty Hand” force option “as it does not cause injury,” and says the technology is “a great, humane, low-optics, de-escalation solution for many situations facing our men and women in uniform today.”

The Associated Press reported the same effect. “Unlike Tasers, they do not leave burn or contact marks,” the wire service reported. The 324-to-362-volt range the city published is the manufacturer’s own figure. Compliant Technologies’ GEN 4 & GEN 5 G.L.O.V.E. Product User Guide, version 1.4, lists a maximum voltage of “324-362V (cannot go above 380V)” for the CT-G5, the newer of its two models, and 210 to 380 volts for the CT-G4. The city’s statement also asserts that “a Taser emits higher voltage,” which it puts at “up to 1,000 volts” delivered through metal probes, and adds, “We believe the tool to be a less impactful option than other force tools like the Taser.”

Because the device looks like an ordinary glove until an officer presses a switch, National School Safety and Security Services warned that an electrical use of force during a hands-on encounter “may be less visually obvious to nearby students, staff or someone later reviewing video than the deployment of a traditional weapon.”

Compliant Technologies’ user guide bars use for punishment and lists small children among those to avoid

Compliant Technologies sets limits on the device in its own published guidance. The GEN 4 & GEN 5 G.L.O.V.E. Product User Guide tells agencies the glove “SHALL NOT be deployed” for four listed uses: “Verbal defiance or belligerence,” “Punishment,” “Torture” and “Horse play.” Under the heading Medical Considerations, it says Compliant Technologies “recommends avoiding use of these devices on the following higher risk portions of the population,” and lists four groups: “The elderly,” “Small children,” “Pregnant women” and “The severely handicapped.” The Associated Press reported the same cautions while covering a plan by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to buy the same class of device, and National School Safety and Security Services cited that wire reporting in its own review of the Omaha deployment.

Omaha issued the device to officers assigned to middle schools and high schools, and used it on two students, one of them enrolled in a program for children with behavioral and learning disabilities. “My assessment is caution, leaning strongly toward no for routine deployment of these devices in K-12 schools,” he wrote. He also told the Associated Press, “Less than lethal doesn’t mean low risk.”

About 30 people spoke against the gloves at the August 17 school board meeting

Roughly 30 parents, students and residents addressed the Omaha Public Schools board on August 17, and the Associated Press reported that no one spoke in favor of the practice. Speakers included the president of the Omaha Education Association, students from Omaha Central High School, and a speaker representing the NAACP and the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation.

“When law enforcement equipment is going to be used on students in our schools, educators, school leaders, and the public deserve a meaningful opportunity to be part of that conversation, not learning about it from the news,” Omaha Education Association President Kathy Poehling said at the meeting.

The Arc of Nebraska, a disability rights group, said in a statement carried by WOWT that it “is strongly opposed to the use of aversive procedures, including shock technology, on students in Nebraska schools, and particularly on students with intellectual or developmental disabilities.” Voices for Children in Nebraska, which WOWT identifies as an advocacy organization, raised the medical unknowns. “This officer doesn’t have any background on this child’s physical health or mental health,” said Katie Nungesser of the group.

Matthew Ray asked Omaha and Bellevue to stop on August 18, and Bellevue police refused

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Ray sent letters on Tuesday, August 18, the day before classes began, to Mayor Ewing, Chief Schmaderer, Bellevue Mayor Rusty Hike, Bellevue Police Chief Ken Clary and Douglas County, Nebraska, Sheriff Aaron Hanson. “I am writing today on behalf of the Omaha Public Schools to request that School Resource Officers (SROs) assigned to our schools no longer be authorized to carry Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters (GLOVEs) on our premises,” Ray wrote. He told families the district considers use of the gloves “to be counterproductive to our work together.”

Omaha police agreed the same evening. “If Omaha Public Schools requests that our officers not utilize this tool, we will adhere to that request,” Schmaderer said, adding that officers would continue to carry Tasers, chemical spray, batons and firearms. Ewing said the district “was given the option to opt out, and we honored that.”

The Bellevue Police Department, which polices the Omaha Public Schools buildings that sit inside the city of Bellevue, declined. Clary said his department has deployed the glove for more than three and a half years and has had the device used on him in training. “I am not comfortable having our officers give up a tool that has repeatedly proven to be safe, effective, and less harmful than the alternatives,” Clary said in an August 19 statement. “When you compare it to other tools we carry; including a Taser, chemical spray, baton, or physically restraining someone, the G.L.O.V.E. is, in our experience, the least likely to cause injury or lasting harm to anyone involved. That matters everywhere, but especially in a school setting where we are likely dealing with juveniles.”

Ray then wrote to families at Bryan Middle School and Bryan High School to tell them the request had failed. “The Bellevue Police Department has declined our request,” he wrote. Students at those two schools remain the only Omaha Public Schools students whose officers still carry the device.

Ray has said he learned of the gloves only the week before the board meeting, and that the district’s head of security had been notified while he had not. The Associated Press reported that KETV found emails from 2023 in which Omaha police notified the districts of the plan to equip officers, and that a district official said Omaha Public Schools was already familiar with the device because Bellevue police had it at two Omaha schools. Millard, Elkhorn and Westside, the three other districts where Omaha officers serve as school resource officers, took no action to stop the practice. Westside said it “is continuing to investigate and learn more about all of the tools available to School Resource Officers before making any decisions.”

ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on the same class of device by March

The Department of Homeland Security published a notice in August 2026 saying that ICE plans to spend up to $20 million on “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” for officers and agents by March, and that a solicitation for a no-bid contract could be published within days. The Associated Press broke that story, and Omaha police said afterward that their own purchase became public because of the coverage that followed.

Jeff Niklaus, the founder and chief executive of Compliant Technologies, declined to discuss it. “Unfortunately, we are unable to speak on this subject,” he told the wire service.

California lawmakers passed a statewide ban on police use of wearable electroshock devices on August 31

Assembly Bill 2760, led by Assemblymember LaShae Sharp-Collins, a Democrat from San Diego, cleared its final legislative step on August 31, 2026, when the Assembly concurred in the Senate amendments and sent the measure to engrossing and enrolling. The bill adds Section 7286.1 to the Government Code and bars any law enforcement agency from using “a wearable electroshock device … within the State of California.” A second clause bars agencies from using “state funds to purchase” one, which would not have reached the Omaha buy, since Omaha paid with federal asset-forfeiture money. A third requires agencies to “update their use of force policies to prohibit the use” of the devices. Sharp-Collins has said the device has not been through adequate health and safety review for law enforcement use, according to Police1 and the Sacramento Bee.

The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, which spent $35,000 on 10 shock gloves and 10 shock bands, defended the purchase. Sheriff Jim Cooper said banning it would make his deputies’ work harder. Lt. Will Vernon said his office would not use the device on someone believed to be armed and would not use it punitively. “We’re using them to get control of the person safely,” Vernon said.

Seth Stoughton says he knows of no police agency that issues the gloves

Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor and former Tallahassee police officer who studies police use of force, told Smart Cities Dive in an August 25 interview that he was unaware of any police department issuing them. “The only agencies that I’m aware of that use them are sheriff’s offices that run jails or other correctional facilities,” Stoughton said. He classifies the glove in the same family as the Taser. Stoughton said Tasers are generally treated, and in many places legally treated, as appropriate only when an officer is defending against a physical threat. Omaha’s policy, by contrast, lists the glove among the permitted responses to a subject who offers no physical resistance.

Stoughton does expect some copying. “Agencies certainly respond to what other agencies are doing, and there is a little bit of a contagious effect,” he said. “So, I wouldn’t say there’s going to be no increase, but I don’t predict this becoming the next Taser.”

No Colorado school district, police department or sheriff’s office appears on the public record as having purchased, piloted or deployed the device. Compliant Technologies does not publish its customer list, so the public record is the only available measure. Kochevar told The Kim Monson Show that the spread through school resource officer networks is what concerns her. She said on the September 4 broadcast that she wanted people to know the device “was being used in some schools, because what goes through one area seems to get shared through all the other schools, all the other SROs, school resource officers.”