Federal Protective Service (United States) - Recent

Recent

On October 28, 2009, President Barack Obama, signed legislation which effectively transferred the Federal Protective Service from Immigration & Customs Enforcement to the National Protection and Programs Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security issued reports that were highly critical of the Federal Protective Service for relying on low-wage contract personnel to provide security at federal buildings. See GAO-09-0859T and OIG-09-51. Both documented that the contractors lacked the necessary skills or training to handle their duties, which threatened the security of all federal employees and visitors. The GAO report made national headlines in July 2009 as it cited frequent lapses, including failure to prevent investigators from carrying weapons into several key federal installations. It also displayed a photograph of a contract security guard asleep at his guard post.

On 26 December 2007, President George W. Bush signed H.R. 2764 Omnibus spending bill into law which included a provision that FPS maintains, by July 31, 2008, not fewer than 1,200 full-time staff and 900 full-time Police Officers, Inspectors, and Special Agents who, while working, are directly engaged on a daily basis protecting and enforcing laws at Federal buildings. This amendment to H.R. 2674 was introduced by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and was successfully included in the bill and signed into law largely due to the efforts of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 918-FPS and the grassroots efforts of its membership.

Prior to H.R. 2764 a series of incidents on federal property across the country—including the theft of a trailer of surveillance equipment from an FBI parking deck—is being blamed on budget cuts at the agency told the chairman Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton on March 14, 2008. The service has seen its budget and staff cut since it became a part of the Department of Homeland Security in March 2003.