Most recently in February, federal security officials in Detroit discovered that a bag containing an explosive device had sat in the building’s lost and found for nearly three weeks before it was noticed. A FPS agent had picked up the bag initially and placed it in the lost and found without first screening the contents. Fortunately, the bomb did not explode and did not cause any injuries.

 

In addition, in 2009 Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigators managed to successfully sneak bomb making materials into ten high-security federal buildings. The undercover operatives were then able to find and enter a bathroom and assemble the bombs uninterrupted. They were even able to carry the bombs around the building without being stopped.

“One of the concerns we had is that in a number of the locations, three or four of them, guards were not even looking at the screens that would show materials passing through. If a guard had been looking, they would have seen materials not normally brought into a federal building,” said Mark L. Goldstein, who led the investigation.

“I think we would be able to say that FPS is simply an agency in crisis,” he added.

Since the damning 2009 GAO report was published, the agency has made little progress drawing the ire of lawmakers. At the House Homeland Security subcommittee on cybersecurity, infrastructure protection, and security technologies last week, Representative Bennie Thompson (D – Mississippi) blasted FPS in reference to the incident in Detroit saying that it illustrated the agency’s “fundamental ineptitude at managing contracts.”

Representative Dan Lungren (R – California), the subcommittee’s chairman, added the incident shows “how not to respond to suspicious packages” and he questioned the agency’s ability to protect federal buildings.

Of particular concern was the agency’s training policies. FPS only employs about 900 federal law enforcement officers who supervise more than 13,000 private security guards employed by FPS subcontractors. With 130 private subcontracting companies overseeing the training of their employees, standards are not consistent across the agency and there is little oversight.

At the hearing, Leonard E. Patterson, the director of FPS, admitted that one of their primary problems was the agency’s inability “to ensure the training is being delivered in an acceptable manner.” He added that the FPS “can’t ensure that a certain standard level” of training has been accomplished for all the guards.

In addition a $41 million software tool designed to help FPS track guard training has proven to be an expensive failure. Patterson said the Risk Assessment Management program “was not cost-effective and has not fulfilled its original goals.”

The GAO’s most recent report found that FPS has yet to fully implement any of the GAO’s twenty-eight recommendations that it had made in its 2008 report. The GAO also found that FPS’s current funding mechanism of charging tenant agencies occupancy fees is inadequate resulting in consistent underfunding. Furthermore, FPS has placed a decreased emphasis on patrols which as lead to an “increased potential for illegal entry and other criminal activity.”

FPS has struggled in recent years under three different parent agencies in recent years and Patterson has only been the organization’s head since September. Representative Lungren admitted that “it is extremely difficult to develop and implement the policies and procedures necessary to effectively secure federal buildings when there is little continuity in leadership and structure within FPS.”