The Department of Homeland Security — which is tasked with securing federal facilities — still faces challenges in ensuring that the guards it contracts through its Federal Protective Service have been properly trained and certified before they are deployed, a Government Accountability Office official told Congress on Wednesday.
The FPS is so inept that the Department of Homeland Security will no longer use the agency to protect its own headquarters, said Rep. Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania Republican. He is the chairman of the House Transportation subcommittee on federal buildings, which requested the GAO audit of the agency.
“I am very concerned with the conclusions reached by the GAO report, as well as the fact that overall confidence in FPS appears to be eroding. Fake bomb components and weapons have been secreted into buildings undetected, which is an alarming exposure of weakness in security,” Mr. Barletta told The Washington Times. “It’s necessary to know the challenges and problems, but we also need solutions.”
The Federal Protective Service provides security to 9,600 federally owned and leased buildings, properties and other assets around the country and protects more than 1 million employees and visitors at federal spaces each day.
According to the GAO report, an official from one of the security guard companies contracted by Federal Protective Services told auditors that about 38 percent of its guards had never received training in X-ray screening — raising questions about how well they actually perform their monitoring duties. Officials from five companies said their guards had not received training on how to respond to an active shooter.
“Without ensuring that all guards receive training on how to respond to active-shooter incidents at federal facilities, FPS has limited assurance that its guards are prepared for this threat,” the GAO said.
In 2012, the GAO told Federal Protective Services that it should develop a system for managing guards’ information on training, certifications and other qualifications to ensure that all information is complete and up-to-date. Yet when the GAO performed its most recent audit, FPS still hadn’t created such a database.
