After the September 2001 attacks renewed the government’s zeal for protecting critical infrastructure, it would seem that the agency in charge of securing federal buildings would be one of the last to undergo a downsizing.

But the Federal Protective Service (FPS)—which was part of the General Services Administration (GSA) and is now under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—not only dropped its payroll by 20 percent since 2004, but pursued cost savings measures that “had a negative effect on staff morale and is partially responsible for FPS’ high attrition rates.”

More so, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released this summer, The Federal Protective Service Faces Several Challenges that Raise Concerns about Protection of Federal Facilities, a lack of full-time law enforcement agents and inspectors at the nation’s 9,000 federal facilities, and an over-reliance on private security guards—who don’t patrol and don’t have the authority to arrest—has made for some serious security gaps.

In fact, according to the GAO, one GSA facility was patrolled by federal officers so infrequently that they found a dead body in one of the buildings. The deceased had been there for at least three months.

In another example, officers and inspectors complained that a lack of coverage at facilities in two cities left “some federal day care facilities vulnerable to loitering by homeless individuals and drug users.” In others, private security contractors refused to chase criminals because of “liability” issues, or turned a blind eye while federal property was spirited away on their watches.

GAO officials say the busiest, most concentrated federal properties are in Washington, DC, and New York City. At those places, field workers report feeling pretty vulnerable these days.

“There, we were told by the inspectors and supervisors that the decrease in resources and funding has increased the risks at their particular locations,” Tammy Conquest, one of the seven researchers on the GAO team that reviewed FPS for Congress, told HSToday.

It cannot be a good day for the Nebraska Ave. Complex when one of its sub-components draws such negative, head-scratching attention. The examples of incompetence are embarrassing if not numerous: like the individual who tried to get into a federal building with illegal weapons while GAO researchers looked on. Private security merely turned the man away without confiscating his weapons or alerting a full-time FPS officer. Or the $500,000 surveillance trailer owned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was stolen—on camera—while security guards were on duty.

But the response has been somewhat underwhelming. After the GAO released its preliminary review in February, FPS Director Gary Schenkel told The Washington Post that the report “glossed over the positive things that FPS has been able to accomplish in the past year.” But he did not dispute the report itself.

When asked by HSToday for comment after the final report in June, DHS officials deferred to ICE public affairs, which insisted in an e-mail response that FPS is already making positive reforms, including “the most aggressive and highly successful recruiting campaign in its history.” This would presumably allow FPS to meet a congressional mandate of 1,200 workers by the end of fiscal year 2008. Officials have also announced a new goal of 1,450 by 2010.

Whether FPS is taking the most effective path to reform seems to be in dispute.

Setting the stage

In FY2007, FPS maintained approximately 1,100 full-time employees—almost 50 percent of whom were inspectors. They are primarily charged with responding to incidents and demonstrations, overseeing contract guards, conducting building security assessments (BSAs) and participating in tenant meetings. The rest of the full time force consisted of police officers, who engaged in patrolling, investigating and apprehending criminals and assisting in the oversight of contract guards. The remaining—about 104 individuals—served as special inspectors in charge of gathering intelligence and running anti-terror and criminal investigations.

Given that there are 9,000 facilities of various sizes in the FPS jurisdiction, those 1,100 employees are stretched dangerously thin, said GAO officials. Most of the daily security, therefore, is handled by 15,000 private contract guards, most of whom serve at fixed checkpoints, like manning a lobby desk, and never conduct foot patrols. GAO officials charged that FPS has eliminated proactive patrol “at many facilities” because of the strained workforce, and private security guards often operate without supervision.

Complicating things further, FPS may be hiring more people, but it’s shifting to an “inspector-based workforce” in which the full-time staff will be completely composed of individuals who do the job of two—inspectors and law enforcement. “FPS will also place more emphasis on physical security, such as BSAs, and less emphasis on the law enforcement part of its mission,” according to the GAO, with a continued reliance on contract guards for “front line” defense and local law enforcement in emergency situations.

“They’re assuming that with an inspector-based force, they’ll get more for their buck,” said Kate Siggerud, the director of the physical infrastructure issues team at GAO.

For a long time, FPS was running in the red, and not until raising fees four times since 2003 (each facility pays FPS fees for service) and the aforementioned cost-saving measures has it been able to operate self-sufficiently. That’s a big feat, considering that when FPS transferred to DHS in 2003, its outside federal funding was taken away— though in 2006, DHS was forced to transfer $29 million in emergency supplemental funding to keep the service afloat.

However, these cost-saving measures were detrimental, said GAO researchers, believing they were linked, in part, to the 12 percent jump in attrition rates from 2004 to 2007. And they don’t think moving to a so-called inspector-based force is necessarily good for the department either.

Speaking to officers in the field, said researcher Dan Hoy, “they were not so sure the (new) inspectors would be able to accomplish all of the tasks they have before them. They just have a lot of things on their plate.”

Reforms on the way?

Brandon Montgomery, an ICE spokesman who responded to questions from HSToday in July, insisted that FPS is not reducing law enforcement activities by combining the inspector and police positions. Rather, it is creating “an incredibly leveraged workforce, one that can provide both law enforcement and inspector duties without denigrating its capability to protect federal facilities and safeguard their occupants.”

In fact, the new officers will be called Law Enforcement-Security Officers (LESOs) and will be qualified to serve as both police officers and maintain the BSA and other oversight and investigatory responsibilities.

In addition, Montgomery said there are a number of things FPS is doing to improve the conditions revealed in the GAO report, not the least of which is the lack of maintenance of surveillance and security equipment and the seeming inability to collect data in order to assess performance in any meaningful way at individual facilities.

“FPS has recently conducted a full inventory of countermeasures, including surveillance equipment, and is in the process of repairing or replacing inoperable or outdated equipment,” said Montgomery, adding that the department was launching a “National Countermeasures Program” in FY2009 to ensure the early detection and replacement of any malfunctioning equipment.

FPS is also working with representatives of private security companies—of which 30 to 40 currently have FPS contracts—to establish “best practices” for security, including defining the guards’ responsibilities, standards and training within their contractual agreements. As the FPS relies on private guards more, and incidents of “bad apples” have in part played a role in calling the service’s efficacy into question, this needs to be done, said Steve Amitay, general counsel for the National Association of Security Companies (NASCO), which has set up a working group and is meeting regularly with FPS officials.

“FPS can best determine, through contracts, through oversight, the performance of the contract guards,” said Amitay. “With the industry working with FPS, you can have sufficient training and standards, sufficient job responsibility, so these contract guards will be able to perform to the best extent possible.”

ICE also said in June that it is building computer-aided applications for department-wide assessments in response to shortfalls in that area. In addition, Conquest said FPS officials have begun to formulate a strategic plan and “are trying to increase their resources.”

Skeptics abound, particularly members of Congress who believe that the dependence on private guards with no arrest authority and who don’t typically patrol is a major part of the problem.

“We have been able to save FPS,” Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told HSToday, noting that it was Congress that mandated the full-time force be at least 1,200 by the end of the year. “But you’re talking about people who want to eliminate foot patrol all together; you’re talking about security guards [who] cannot leave their posts and do not have police powers. We believe this has put at risk federal workers and we don’t believe this administration can or will, before January, do what we are asking—which is to restore FPS.” HST