Federal Protective Service can’t…um…protect

The Washington Times reports that a GAO report finds that many of the contract guards that the Federal Protective Service uses to protect a million or so Federal Employees and the nearly 10,000 facilities aren’t properly trained in handling their weapons, or even in being able to read X-ray machine output. So untrained that the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Federal Protective Service, won’t use them for their own protection;

The group is so inept, even the Department of Homeland Security — which oversees FPS, will no longer use the agency to protect its own headquarters, said Rep. Lou Barletta, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management, which requested the study. He compared that action to a police department hiring somebody else to protect its own station.

“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,” said Mr. Barletta, Pennsylvania Republican, in a statement to The Washington Times. “It’s necessary to know the challenges and problems, but we also need solutions.”

So, we’re paying them for what? To be mannequins at the doors of federal buildings to scare off hobos?

Category: Terror War