I was curious. When I first saw the Plastic Ties being used as handcuffs, I thought that was kind of a smart alternative.
Then I saw the double ring plastic tie cuffs. INNOVATION, isn't that what America's all about?
Then I saw local policeman with dozens of these new, innovative, cheap, disposable plastic tie handcuffs dangling from their belt loops and being used to cuff hundreds of peaceful protesters across America. INNOVATION used to hinder and arrest Americans' Constitutional First Amendment rights to assemble.
At this point I wanted to know WHO is making them and WHO is making a bundle selling them.
The following is what I have found. Below, I will take you on my search journey. In the end we will know who is importing these Plastic Cuffs.
Thanks to the wonderful DailyKos commenters, I must add that these Plastic Handcuffs morphed from Cable Ties as well as plastic ties used for sealing shipping containers.
In my previous diary, Who Is Making All These FlashBang/RubberBullet/Non-Lethal Weapons?, GrumpyOldGeek left a comment regarding Safariland so
I began my search for The Maker(s) of PLASTIC TIE HANDCUFFS
I always begin my research with the obvious search criteria, in this case I Googled: Safariland plastic cuffs
As luck would have it, I found the Chinese manufacturers in the list of hits Google provided:
Yueqing Xinguang Plastics Co., Ltd. Security Seals and Cable
If you click here, you will see that Yuezing Xinguang (YX) was perfectly poised to produce this Great American Innovation! YX has been producing plastic ties in many shapes and forms for use in the packaging industry for years.
However, YX doesn't shout out its handcuff line. You have to enter "cuffs" in the "Search Our Product" box in the upper left hand column.
Click here to see YX's line of Plastic Tie Handcuffs.
Here's a picture. This model is called the Max-Cuffs-8777:
Here's an Instruction Video for proper use of the Max-Cuffs . Go to minute 3:08 for Usage Instructions. At Minute 4:49 IT CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES HOW TO MAKE SURE THE MAX-CUFFS IS NOT TO TIGHT!
If you have followed the Occupy arrests, you will have read of many instances where these cuffs were too tight, causing peaceful protesters to bleed and experience the circulation being cut off to their hands.
That was unnecessary and can easily be construed as Police Brutality.
Here's a vid of a group of protesters yelling Loosen The Cuffs
It would be poor planning, however, to depend on one Chinese source for America's new Plastic Tie Handcuffs.
There is another company and another version of the cuffs.
Jiangsu Shunda Police Equipments. Co., Ltd
is the fixed-point production enterprise of the ministry of public security of the people's republic of china. The company's main product series includes: police equipments, security devices, defend devices, against-terrism equipments, the bank convoy equipment, traffic management equipments, the fire-fighting equipments and so on. total six series, 380kind of products.
Here's a picture of the Jiangsu Shunda Cuffs which match Safariland's Model 8222 Double Cuff:
This appears to be a huge conglomerate.
Jiangsu Shunda is pretty much a one stop shop for all things needed for the police to confront protesters.
I found this OTHER Plastic Tie Handcuff set when I was looking for Youtube videos. I searched YouTube for plastic handcuffs.
Imagine the surprise! I guess anyone can buy these "FlexCuffs". Tishawn has all the colors except the PINK ones and bought his handcuffs from the online store called HandCuff Warehouse, which is cheaper than Safariland's cuffs. I wonder if Joe Arpaio asked for PINK cuffs to be made?
Safariland has some US Competition.
ARMAMENT SYSTEMS and PROCEDURES, INC.
I think that some of ASP's equipment is manufactured by this Chinese company: Shyh Sing Enterprise Co., Ltd., Manufacturer of Security & Safety Systems, Personal.
You can view the yellow ASP Tri-Fold Plastic handcuffs here; however, they cost almost twice the price of the above.
HERE'S THE SAD PART
It appears that anyone can become a supplier for Plastic Handcuffs.
To see for yourselves, google "plastic handcuffs"
My search produced 144,000 results.
I'll check into PEPPER SPRAY next.
DISCLAIMER: This information was found via Google. Therefore, it is speculative and based solely on where my Google searching took me. I can't verify the information provided by Google. I am presenting what I think is the process that brought the Plastic Tie Handcuffs to America only according to the information provided via Google.