Before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that it was providing electric shock gloves to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the technology known as Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter — or GLOVE — was relatively obscure. Very few municipal law enforcement agencies use the gloves, Seth Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law, affiliate professor in the university’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and faculty director of the Excellence in Policing and Public Safety Program, told Smart Cities Dive. Stoughton, a former officer with the Tallahassee, Florida, police department, outlined why the gloves aren’t commonly used in street policing and the questions municipal agencies should ask before buying them. Editor’s note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. SMART CITIES DIVE: Is this a technology municipal police departments are interested in? SETH STOUGHTON: I'm actually not aware of any police agencies that issue these gloves. The only agencies that I'm aware of that use them are sheriff's offices that run jails or other correctional facilities. The gloves inevitably involve a lot of limitations and raise a lot of potential questions about their use in police interactions. What are the drawbacks for street policing? It's most natural to compare this glove with a Taser. It is a type of what police call a CEW, a conductive electrical weapon, or an ECD, an electronic control device. There are a couple of different names, but the basic idea is it uses electricity to inflict pain. Tasers, as the leading ECD, are generally considered, and in many places legally considered, to be appropriate for use only when officers are defending themselves or someone else against a physical threat. So, if someone is resisting in a way that does not actually physically