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Federal Non-Protective Service - July 16, 2009 #203
By Dr Dave McIntyre, Director Integrative Center for Homeland Security, 16 July 2009
Maybe you heard the recent news story about guards at federal buildings having inadequate training, and failing to detect explosives and weapons smuggled into sensitive work sites. If you thought that was bad, you were wrong. It was worse. I will tell you more if you will give me Just a Minute for Homeland Security.
I’m Dave McIntyre, Director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M
The Federal Protective Service, or FPS, is a component of Immigration and Customs Enforcement within the Department of Homeland Security. It is responsible for protecting federal property, workers and visitors, primarily by deploying 13,000 contract guards at more than 2,300 federal facilities in the United States. They check identification, control access to buildings, run the x-ray scanners, and carry weapons to protect themselves and others. The guard force costs a bit more than $600 million a year.
Since last year the Government Accountability Office has been examining this program. Its July 2009 report found serious deficiencies in three major areas.
First, contractors could not show that many of the guards had the training required for their jobs. For example, guards are required to receive eight hours of training each year on how to use the x-ray equipment. Many had received no training at all in the last five years. As a result, guards used the equipment improperly, missed weapons and bomb components smuggled in a test, and in one case sent a baby through the x-ray scanner in its carrier. Records for weapons qualification, and even permission to have a weapon, were in worse shape.
Second, many guards were just not doing their job as required. Individual stories are revealing. Some were sleeping; some were using computers for personal business instead of watching their posts; and at least one enterprising fellow reset the motion sensors to tell him if inspectors were approaching. He needn’t have bothered, since inspections were inadequate, and mostly made during regular business hours. Importantly, these contract guards were inspected only by the contractors, who self reported their problems. Sort of.
Thirdly, even where guards were doing their jobs, the security system was weak. Inspectors who smuggled bomb parts and weapons past check points, then assembled them inside and walked around sensitive buildings without challenge in place after place. Security was exactly one faulty guard post deep.
The problem here is not bad people. Checks at almost any routine security job might find similar problems. But that is the point. A security system must account for human nature. It must check itself as vigorously as it checks visitors. It’s a lesson that applies to every security system in the country – to include where you work and visit.
This is Dave McIntyre, Director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M, inviting you to join us again next week on Just a Minute . . . for Homeland Security.