Are ‘rent-a-cops’ threatening security?

Brock N. Meeks Chief Washington correspondent • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - In the aftermath of 9/11, private security officers are being asked to step into the breach and fill gaps in the nation's homeland security plans.  But experts warn that most of this 2 million person workforce receives little or no training, aren’t subjected to rigorous background checks for previous criminal behavior and are paid so poorly that many quickly leave for better paying jobs.

Private security services are a nearly $12 billion a year industry in the United States. They are employed to protect everything from the Empire State building to Rockefeller Center to Ft. Bragg and West Point and nearly every nuclear power plant in the nation.

The General Services Administration says the Department of Homeland Security paid about $257 million in 1,609 separate contracts or amendments to existing contracts for "private security guards or patrol services," according to the Scripps Howard News Service. The Federal Protective Service, the arm of DHS responsible for the protection of all federally owned and leased buildings, for example, includes a force of 10,000 contract security guards.

Yet national standards for private security officers do not exist. “There is no equalized [training] standard from state to state or region to region and in many cases it may not even be required,” said Chris Grniet, vice president of the security arm of risk consulting company Kroll, a New York based company.  “These are the people that we’re entrusting the safety and security of our public and our assets to, our homeland security in general and we’re putting people in positions that have no business being there,” Grniet said.

Regulating our safety
Ten states don’t regulate the security industry at all. “The specific requirements for private security officers in [the remaining] 40 states vary significantly, even as to the extent of background investigations required for employment,” says the National Association of Security Companies.

“Only 31 states call for FBI criminal history records checks, and at least seven of those limit the FBI checks to applicants for armed security positions (who constitute a distinct minority of all private security positions),” the association says.  “Also among those 31 state laws are other state regulatory statutes that appear to permit the FBI checks, but do not require them, leaving yet another gap for an out-of-state convicted felon or an identity thief to gain security employment at a sensitive site,” the group says. These gaps open the door for the very types of criminal conduct that our employees are typically assigned to prevent.”

Two recent events raise questions about the effectiveness of the industry to carry out its mission and whether the nation is being served by a false sense of security.

On Feb. 14, New York’s Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum released a withering report regarding the capability of the city’s private security forces to protect citizens in the event of another terrorist attack, calling the standards for New York City’s private security officers “alarmingly low.”

Gotbaum’s report notes that a New York cosmetologist is required to have 40 times more training hours than a security guard.  “I am dismayed by the lack of training for private security forces that guard hundreds of buildings with thousands of workers,” Gotbaum said.  In addition, the report found that what little training the guards do receive doesn’t concentrate on terrorism or working with the police or firefighters.

Meanwhile, in mid-February the Maryland Port Administration fired the security company providing contract security guard services to the Port of Baltimore after it was discovered that the company’s guards were sleeping on the job, abandoning their posts during the night and violating federal security regulations.  And according to a published report of the incident in the Washington Post, guards sometimes didn’t even show up for duty. The $1.5 million contract, which has been given to another private security firm, came from $15.6 million in Department of Homeland Security grants that have gone to the Port since 9/11.

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