Two Kentucky lawsuits allege stun-glove death and injury in county jails
The G.L.O.V.E. — which stands for Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — is manufactured by Compliant Technologies, a company owned by military veterans and based in Lexington, Kentucky. The device’s CT-G5 model delivers between 324 and 380 volts when the user pushes a button on the glove and touches or grips bare skin, a fraction of the 1,200 to 1,500 volts a Taser can fire. According to the user manual, wearers are instructed to avoid using the product on elderly people, small children, pregnant women, and disabled people. Compliant Technologies did not respond to a series of questions and requests for comment from The Guardian.
The plan arrives as two Kentucky lawsuits allege that men were injured or died after being subjected to the devices in county jails. A pending wrongful-death lawsuit in Madison County alleges that 43-year-old Johnathan Mansfield suffered a cardiac arrest two weeks after he was subjected to 27 G.L.O.V.E. exposures and 13 Taser applications at the Madison County Detention Center in Richmond, Kentucky, following his 2024 arrest on a public intoxication charge. According to the complaint, an internal investigation by the detention center found that “Mr. Mansfield suffered a cardiac arrest following the series of Taser and G.L.O.V.E. exposures.” The suit alleges that two of the stun-glove exposures lasted longer than the manufacturer’s recommended 15-second maximum — one lasting 45 seconds and another 99 seconds.
A separate federal lawsuit alleged that Joshua Elswick, who has paranoid schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses according to the complaint, was subjected to the gloves during pre-trial detention at the Bullitt County Jail in Shepherdsville, Kentucky, in 2022. Surveillance footage shows a guard wearing bright yellow gloves shocking Elswick while he struggled against three guards and yelled, according to the lawsuit. A federal court dismissed Elswick’s excessive-force suit in June 2025, a decision upheld by an appeals court in January. Sara Collins, an attorney representing Elswick, told The Guardian that “feasibility, practicality, training, risk of error, and intent are among my many concerns about their implementation by ICE.” Collins added that she is “troubled by the fact that the overwhelming majority of law enforcement agencies across the country do not use them.”
The acquisition, detailed in procurement documents reviewed by The Guardian, would supply ICE officers with the gloves by March 2027. The devices are marketed as “conductive distraction and de-escalation devices” and are sold only to verified law enforcement, corrections, security, military, and emergency medical services buyers. The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the planned purchase. Sarah Mehta, the ACLU’s deputy director of government affairs in its equality division, told The Guardian that the gloves would be deployed by an agency that has relaxed its hiring requirements during an enforcement expansion. “ICE is putting these [gloves] in the hands of an agency that has dropped its hiring standards, its training, its background requirements in its hiring spree,” Mehta said. “We’re already seeing the consequences of that in lawless and violent enforcement actions in our streets.”
Mehta raised concerns about both public and detention-facility use of the devices. “What’s really terrifying is use of them on the streets, potentially to terrify people, to create a chilling effect,” she said. “But what’s also scary is what [their] uses will be where we can’t see them. We don’t know how they’re going to be used in places like Fort Bliss,” she added, referring to the largest U.S. migrant detention facility, which has faced allegations of abuse. The government denies claims of any inhumane conditions at the facility. Mehta added: “There are no circumstances where we think their use is appropriate.”
The gloves are already in limited use outside federal immigration enforcement. An NPR analysis found that an estimated 50 police departments across 20 states have deployed the technology. In May 2025, the Omaha Police Department purchased 40 pairs of the gloves for roughly $66,000 to be used by school resource officers in public schools, according to city documents; the department confirmed that 29 of its 34 school resource officers had received training in their use. Last week, the Omaha Police Department agreed to a request from the school superintendent to discontinue the gloves in Nebraska’s largest public school district, NBC reported.
A DHS spokesperson, in a statement to The Guardian, defended the planned procurement. “ICE is constantly assessing the needs of our officers in the field to ensure they have the tools and equipment necessary to safely arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens from our country,” the statement said. “Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.”