Known as a G.L.O.V.E. — "Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter" — the device delivers an electric jolt of up to 380 volts when in contact with bare skin. By comparison, the maximum output of a Taser X26 is about 1,200 volts.
Pain is not policy
The DHS plan to spend millions equipping ICE agents with electric-shock gloves is alarming. Known as G.L.O.V.E.s, these devices deliver painful electrical shocks for compliance. Unlike Tasers, they are subtle and leave no visual cues.
That lack of visibility invites abuse. Furthermore, manuals warn that the shocks can alter heart rhythms, elevate blood pressure and pose severe risks to anyone with pre-existing health conditions.
Law enforcement tools intended to inflict hidden pain threaten human rights and basic safety. We must demand accountability, not covert agony.
Laura Katrina
Green Valley
Election-law changes
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The state high court has ruled that Prop 144 can go to voters. Nevertheless, that Prop is bad law and should never see the light of day.
The Legislature would not pass the provision because they were certain it could never get past the veto pen on the Governor's desk. So they are using us to circumvent that certain veto. Those Republican Legislators know there is no vote fraud. Many times and many courts cannot "find" it. They hired the Cyber Ninjas out of Georgia to "find" the fraud. They couldn't find it. It's not there, plain and simple.
Voters cannot be fooled by being used to circumvent the veto pen. We must vote No on Prop 144.
John Yoakum
Midtown
Border wall
Sundt Construction has been a leader of building Arizona projects for decades.
Shame on this company for building the border wall. Your management should not have bid on this project, since you are tearing apart some of Arizona you have proudly built.
Penny Gassan
West side
Sweating environmental destruction
Three headlines in a recent paper, “Monitoring border wall work harder,” “Tree protest spreads into Mexico,” and “Public voices can protect federal lands,” focused on essential efforts to counter the Trump administration's abuses to environmental protections. The article on monitoring the border wall work detailed Russ McSpadden's laudable 15-mile hike in triple-digit heat to document with photographic clarity the devastation caused by border wall work in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The article on protesting tree removal captured local resistance to border wall environmental abuses, noting efforts to protect century-old cottonwoods from border wall destruction in the San Rafael Valley bordering Arizona and Mexico. The final article by Will Pattiz, contributor to Writers on the Range, described numerous eliminations of environmental review regulations by federal departments. I applaud these local voices and efforts to resist and counter the Trump administration environmental abuses.
Roger Shanley
East side
Remember 2020?
According to multiple government agencies (“US warns about hacking effort aimed at water plants”, Aug. 20), artificial intelligence is being used to “compromise” basic American infrastructure. It’s now clear that A.I. has the power, “in the wrong hands”, to commit some drastic act of sabotage. Something very bad, something that takes lives, will happen soon.
And then what? It may be like the COVID year all over again. Panic. The stock market will plummet. Politicians will lie. “Stop A.I.!” we’ll hear, but experts will testify against experts, confusion will abound, and businessmen will insist on “keeping things open” in spite of the danger. We can even blame China again, because China’s savvy A.I. competition is goosing Silicon Valley.
But really, it’s us. It’s our little invisible friend there on the screen. Sooner or later, we’ll realize that what we’re using is, as we were warned, a threat to civilization that needs, not better passwords, not “guardrails”, but real controls.
George Timson
Midtown
Destruction, not construction
What’s going on at the border is destruction, not construction. The wall is destroying our public lands — the San Pedro River, the San Rafael Valley, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument — much of the damage will be permanent; the rest will only be restored at great expense and by time and nature. Just as in Big Bend National Park, the wall provides diminishing and close to non-existent deterrence to illegal immigration. Those that get through die in the desert.
The great irony is that the wall (and worse, the double wall) will be a disaster for the health of animals bigger than a jackrabbit that can’t get through the wall (deer, bear, cougars, jaguars, coyotes, etc.) and who move back and forth in their traditional territories. But it won’t keep out the very few people who might brave this forbidding environment. They just cut through it and then die.
It all smacks of retribution by Trump for Arizona’s sin of voting for Biden.
Katharine Donahue
Foothills
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