Moms try to get electric shock gloves out of their kids’ schools

By Rachel Clarke, Shimon Prokupecz, Meridith Edwards, Eduardo Cuevas, CNN

Omaha, Nebraska (CNN) — California has banned them. Army experts trying them experienced so much pain they were “apprehensive” about further tests and were swapped for new personnel. In Nebraska, mothers are fighting to get the same electric shock gloves out of schools.

The devices have opened a new front in the national debate over force in schools: whether police assigned to protect students should be allowed to carry this tool that delivers an electric shock to gain compliance.

“The kids there are scared,” Katy Eilers said of Millard North High School in Omaha where her 16-year-old son is a student. “He’s scared he’s going to get shocked. He’s scared one of his friends is going to get shocked.”

Parents in Omaha complained when they found out this summer that the same shock gloves ordered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a controversial move were already on the hands of their school resource officers. It’s now known officers have used the devices at least five times on students across the city, including a middle-schooler in an integrated program for children with special needs, since 2022.

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Ray said he had been unaware that police officers assigned to his schools were using the devices — and with the support of the mayor he banned them in August this year. But in the separate school district of the suburb of Millard, the leadership wanted to keep them.

“They tried to shut down comments about it,” said Rachel Murphy, the mother of a seventh-grader and a new high school graduate who complained during a school board meeting in September.

“They basically said, ‘I know some of you are interested in talking about this. Here’s our stance: We’re keeping them.’ And then they moved on,” she told CNN.

Millard Superintendent John Schwartz declined to speak with CNN about the devices, which cause pain when touched to bare skin by completing an electrical circuit and delivering a shock.

Schwartz would only say that “we’ve already made comments,” before directing CNN to a public statement, which read, in part: “In evaluating whether to dictate that officers not carry these devices, we carefully considered what the real-world consequences could be. It became clear that removing this tool would take away a lower-impact option for officers if use of force is necessary to protect health and safety. Doing so could inadvertently place students, staff, and officers at a greater risk of injury.”

The device known as the G.L.O.V.E. — for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — is produced by a Kentucky firm, Compliant Technologies. Its maximum shock is 380 volts, the company says, much less than a Taser. The user manual recommends the G.L.O.V.E. not be used on “small children.” Founder and CEO Jeff Niklaus declined to speak with CNN, but in a video Q&A posted last month he said the devices were “safe and effective.” “Our products are tested for 35 pounds and up,” he added. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show average American 11-year-olds weigh more than 75 pounds.

John Stuck, a law enforcement veteran who now trains personnel in use of force, said the G.L.O.V.E. is a useful addition to other tools carried by school resource officers, like batons, tasers, tear gas, and firearms. Users and trainers of shock gloves say they get immediate compliance and leave no marks.

“We have a high success rate and a low injury rate,” Stuck told CNN while demonstrating the equipment at Complete Tactical Consultants in Omaha. Stuck, who is also a captain in the Bellevue Police Department, said he would expect parents and the public to welcome a tool he views as less harmful than other options carried by officers.

Bellevue Police Department has had the devices for more than four years and refused to stop their use when asked by the Omaha schools superintendent. It provides resource officers to two schools in Omaha and those in Bellevue. Police Chief Ken Clary said in a statement, “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.” A police spokesperson said students have been shocked three times — in January and April of 2023, and January 2025, All the events happened at Bellevue East High School after students resisted an officer’s command, the spokesperson said.

In Omaha, the first use was in January 2026. An incident report from South High School said an OPD school resource officer shocked a student who was fighting with an administrator and a security guard noted that the student’s mother “had no issues with the level of force used.” The second use was in May, when a middle schooler in the Integrated Learning Program was taken to an intervention room by a security guard and the school resource officer. Reports from the school and police said the student threw a chair at the officers and punched the security guard in the head.

Stuck said he’d heard from school systems that the shock gloves can have a deterrent effect too once students have seen them used.

“We get kids that once that school resource officer has put the gloves on, or they see that the gloves are on, they immediately comply without even touching them or doing anything. Which again, that’s a complete success for us,” he said.

Omaha approved a nearly $66,000 contract to buy 40 pairs of the G.L.O.V.E.s in June 2025. The police department said 29 of its 34 school resource officers had been trained to use them.

Officer Jason Cvitanov of Omaha Police said in a news conference on August 14 this year the G.L.O.V.E. devices were bought specifically for use in schools.

“The chief’s objective was to utilize them in schools, so we had another option available outside of taser, the impact weapon, or OC (chemical irritant) or actual physical force, and to give this some time to run, see how it went,” he said.

The shock gloves are designed to get a person to follow instructions, whether they are violent or simply non-compliant, according to the manufacturer.

That makes some parents worry about how children with their developing brains or special needs could be affected.

“When you’re autistic, sometimes you can’t articulate what you’re doing, and you just freeze,” said Eilers, who is especially concerned because her son has a heart defect. “I’m terrified that they’re going to shock my son, and he’s going to go into a fatal arrhythmia and die. Yeah, genuinely.”

Another mom, Jenna King, added, “My son is biracial. He is also neurodivergent. That is terrifying to know that he could have one bad day, and be shocked, and I have no control over whether they’re in the school or not.”

Murphy added: “We need to learn how to communicate and resolve our issues, and the way to teach a child to do that is not to shock them into compliance.”

The three mothers who spoke with CNN are upset that there had been no communication about the use of GLOVEs in Millard Public Schools until after the uproar and action taken in neighboring Omaha.

“When my son was going to this school, we got a letter when they got a drug dog,” Eilers said. “To find out that these were like in the schools for half of last year, and the teachers weren’t informed, I wasn’t informed, is honestly terrifying to me.”

The use of shock gloves and the lack of communication have strained relationships between law enforcement and the community, according to Sherman Wells, a longtime neighborhood activist and liaison with city officials.

“I was surprised we were having that conversation in 2026,” he told CNN. “What are we talking about? Shocking children! I can agree if they were using them in prisons to break up prison fights or traffic stops, but children, it just don’t seem like it’s real to me that we are having that conversation.”

Wells and Millard parents have vowed to keep pushing the district to change its policies. Three of the six seats on the Millard school board are up for election in November.

“All we can do is keep speaking with the parents and hope that when it’s time for election, we can get that superintendent (Schwartz) out of there,” Wells said.

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