Recently in Public Safety Category

Source: YouTube.com, posted March 21, 2007

Privatizing public services is just a bad idea. Support your public service workers.

Source: By Amy Goldstein, Washington Post, Tuesday, January 2, 2007

....... With the sleeve patch on his black shirt, the 9mm gun on his hip and the blue light on his patrol car, he looked like an ordinary police officer as he stopped the car on a Friday night last month. Watt works, though, for a business called Capitol Special Police. It is one of dozens of private security companies given police powers by the state of North Carolina -- and part of a pattern across the United States in which public safety is shifting into private hands.

Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in some places -- and trying to expand their terrain. The "company police agencies," as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets. Elsewhere -- including wealthy gated communities in South Florida and the Tri-Rail commuter trains between Miami and West Palm Beach -- private security patrols without police authority carry weapons, sometimes dress like SWAT teams and make citizen's arrests.

Source: DAVE UMHOEFER, Journal Sentinel (WI), Oct. 13, 2006

In the first test of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker's privatization proposals, a key County Board committee on Thursday sided with retaining county employees for courthouse security screening and housekeeping. The Finance Committee voted unanimously to delete Walker's plan to privatize more than 70 positions. .........

The vote came after testimony from union leaders and workers who questioned whether private companies would provide the same quality of service as county employees who run courthouse visitors through metal detectors at public entrances and clean county facilities.

Source: Evan Brandt, Pottstown Mercury (PA), 08/03/2006

LIMERICK -- The disciplining of a security guard at the area’s nuclear power plant last week was not the first time the company that provides security there has dealt with a sleeping guard problem. ..... Wackenhut is a Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based security company with a division that specializes in nuclear power plant security and provides security at 30 plants across the nation, including all Exelon’s nuclear plants.

Source: By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, Fox News, Sunday , April 16, 2006

Not long after national debate raged on the use of foreign entities to operate critical U.S. infrastructures, the Department of Homeland Security has made an about face, dumping a British-based security firm that was contracted to protect the buildings where U.S. security policy is formed. DHS had received a variety of complaints about Wackenhut Services, Inc., and was supposed to sign a new security contract on April 1. Instead, Paragon Systems of Chantilly, Va., announced last week it was getting the five-year, $29 million contract.

Source: By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot, April 6, 2006

The U.S. Army and private contractors employed convicted criminals as security guards across the country despite repeated warnings in the past three years of the "risky situations" that could present, according to a new federal report. ........ The report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, said this is the third time in three years that it has warned the Army that the lack of proper background checks could jeopardize security at some of the largest and most important installations, including Fort Bragg and West Point.

Source: By Chip Reid, NBC News, Updated: 7:29 p.m. ET March 9, 2006

WASHINGTON - In a residential area of Washington, D.C., the headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security is fenced, gated and patrolled by armed guards. The guards are employed by Wackenhut Services, a British company that provides security for many sensitive American sites, including many of the nation's nuclear power plants. But the Homeland Security headquarters is anything but secure, according to more than a dozen former and current Wackenhut employees who signed statements citing everything from unmanned guard stations to inadequate training. .... The Department of Homeland Security says it “maintains several security measures both seen and unseen” and notes that after the white powder incident, guards were given additional training and more training will soon be required under a new security contract.

Source: By Miami Herald, Wed, Feb. 15, 2006

Miramar commissioners voted tonight to outsource crossing guards to Kemp Security. The contract is for up to $880,000 for the first two years. The company will provide 76 crossing guards to the city. The city police department had previously hired, equipped, and trained the school crossing guards in Miramar. Outsourcing the guards will take the strain off daily patrol staffing levels during the morning and afternoons on school days, city officials say.

Source: BY GARRY LENTON, The Patriot-News (PA), Sunday, January 29, 2006

Veteran guards responsible for training new hires to the security force that protects Three Mile Island were sharing a key piece of insider information -- the best places to take a nap, according to an internal memo. "We have mentors and qualified officers informing new hires of all the locations that they can hide and catch a quick nap," wrote John Young, the head of security at TMI for Wackenhut, a private security force employed by the plant. ..... The memo, sent to security supervisors at the nuclear power plant on Oct. 17, also maintained that new hires were being told of shortcuts for tasks and warned of the "horrors" of working for Wackenhut. ..... Guards at TMI work 12-hour shifts, usually for two to three consecutive days, but sometimes longer. Documents provided to The Patriot-News show one officer worked more than 150 hours in a 14-day period, nearly the equivalent of two full-time jobs. The same officer averaged more than 54 hours a week for the first 10 months of 2005.

Source: Dennis Wagner, The Arizona Republic, Jan. 22, 2006 12:00 AM

Forget the image of the pot-bellied security guard, asleep with a newspaper in his lap and doughnut crumbs on his chin. Post-Sept. 11, the old rental cop in many cases has been replaced by security officers who are screened, licensed, trained and equipped better than their quaint predecessors. Homeland defense experts, such as former FBI Deputy Director Weldon Kennedy, say the enhanced professionalism is critical because the private-security industry defends more than three-fourths of the nation's most likely terrorism targets.

....... Private officers are defending power plants, oil refineries, financial centers, computer systems, dams, malls, railroad lines and other prospective terrorism targets. They are responsible for millions of lives and billions of dollars in assets. And they are most likely to be first on the scene in major disasters.

.....Worldwide, private-security company revenues have been estimated at $100 billion by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The institute, which studies issues involving worldwide security, estimates the industry income will double by 2010.

..... The nation's security companies employ 1.5 million people and spend $52 billion per year, compared with public police agencies that have 600,000 workers and spend $30 billion,according to James Pastor, author of The Privatization of Police in America. Because government officers are more expensive, Pastor sees private guards rapidly absorbing roles once held by public peace officers, protecting stores and neighborhoods.