If you've paid attention to the news reports today, a report came out about the "in"security of the Nations Federal Buildings.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/Story?id=8025140&page=1

I debated about doing an ireport on this because I do have to worry about my job...you see I work for the Federal Protective Service.

This article does point out the myrid of issues that the FPS has faced sice we were placed under the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) umbrella.  Many of us in FPS were confused about our placement within that agency of the Department of Homeland Security.  We do not deal with Immigration nor Customs Enforcement so it really wasn't a good fit for us.  What this article fails to tell you is the fact that FPS DOES NOT receive any federal funding!  We are what is called a "reimbursable" agency, meaning we get our funding from the security services we provide via an 8% Overhead fee charged to the agencies that use our services and a direct funding security charge based on square footage of the buildings we protect.  That money funds all aspects of our agency (payroll, equipment, training, etc), it's not much!

Since 2007 we have lost 20% of our workforce; mostly because the current director wanted "Inspectors" and that eliminated most of our Federal Police Officers.  There is no way we can properly protect over 9000 buildings with only 950 Inspectors!  In many instances we only have 1 or 2 officers to cover an entire STATE!!

Now on to our contact guards.  This is the main part of my job withinn FPS.  I am basically the liason between the Contract Guard Company and the agencies we service.  If an agency is needing guard services, they call me and I set it all up.  My position is a federal position, however, I am only one of maybe 4 in the NATION...the others that handle this particular job are contractors.  That's right...contractors managing the contractors.  Doesn't make sense to me either.

We at FPS have taken steps to better the security of our Buildings with the limited resources we have.  Since we have been cut to the quick in regards to personnel thats very hard to do!  We have even had our own training cut back due to the lack of funding.  We have heard rumors of getting some sort of federal funding but that just hasn't happend.

I will say that the way we hire the contract guard companies has taken great strides forward.  A guard contract is awarded for 5 years and many older contracts are finally being phased out (thank god).  Years ago, we contracted based on price, that practice is no longer used.  Newer guard contracts are now primarly based on "Performance" and "Management" over price.  The saying you get what you pay for certainly applies!!

Thanks for listening!!