Omaha police agreed this week to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in the halls of Nebraska’s largest public school district.
The decision affecting most Omaha middle and high schools came after The Associated Press first revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers the gloves, which are known as G.L.O.V.E.s or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters. The devices have also been used in recent years by some jails.
Omaha Superintendent Matthew Ray requested that police working in the schools, known as school resource officers, stop using the gloves. Omaha Police agreed.
When I got called to the office for breaking some unwritten rule, the principal had the school cop looming over me. My school was a “good” school that excelled at nothing. An aggressively mediocre, middle of the road experience. The school’s cop had no presence other then being seen in the mornings or wandering around.
Maybe instead of having cops in schools, we should be asking ourselves why kids feel like they have nothing left to lose. Why they feel they have no future, no hope, no optimism.