I taught arrest techniques and non-deadly force for a good part of my career, and I spent more than 24 years in immigration enforcement, finishing as deputy field office director for Enforcement and Removal Operations in New York City. I now serve as a visiting fellow for deportation studies at the Oversight Project. Before all of that and alongside it, I spent over three decades in uniform, including running a theater internment facility at Camp Cropper in Baghdad. I have put hands on people who did not want hands put on them, and I have taught other people how to do it without anybody ending up in an ambulance.

So when I saw that this week’s outrage is a contract for gloves that deliver a low-voltage stimulus, my reaction was not alarm. It was recognition. We have been trying to solve this exact problem since before I pinned on a badge.