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43–115 PDF 2008

THE FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE: 

AN AGENCY IN NEED OF REBUILDING 

(110–142) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

TRANSPORTATION AND 

INFRASTRUCTURE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JUNE 18, 2008 

Printed for the use of the 

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 

( 

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman 

NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, Vice 

Chair 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

CORRINE BROWN, Florida 

BOB FILNER, California 

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas 

GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland 

ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California 

LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa 

TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania 

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington 

RICK LARSEN, Washington 

MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts 

TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

JOHN T. SALAZAR, Colorado 

GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California 

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois 

NICK LAMPSON, Texas 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

MICHAEL A. ACURI, New York 

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

VACANCY 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

WAYNE T. GILCHREST, Maryland 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

FRANK A. LOBIONDO, New Jersey 

JERRY MORAN, Kansas 

GARY G. MILLER, California 

ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina 

HENRY E. BROWN, JR., South Carolina 

TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois 

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

TED POE, Texas 

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia 

CHARLES W. BOUSTANY, JR., Louisiana 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

THELMA D. DRAKE, Virginia 

MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma 

VERN BUCHANAN, Florida 

ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio 

(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chairwoman 

MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine 

JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York 

CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania, 

Vice Chair 

TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota 

(Ex Officio) 

SAM GRAVES, Missouri 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

JOHN R. ‘RANDY’ KUHL, JR., New York 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

(Ex Officio) 

(III) 

(V) 

CONTENTS Page 

Summary of Subject Matter .................................................................................... vi 

TESTIMONY 

Goldstein, Mark, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, Government Accountability Office ................................................................................................ 5 

Schenkel, Gary, Director, Federal Protective Service ........................................... 23 

Wright, David, President, Federal Protective Service Union ............................... 23 

PREPARED STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Altmire, Hon. Jason, of Pennsylvania .................................................................... 43 

Carney, Hon. Christopher P., of Pennsylvania ..................................................... 44 

Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, of the District of Columbia ................................. 46 

Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota ................................................................. 50 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES 

Goldstein, Mark L. ................................................................................................... 52 

Schenkel, Gary W. ................................................................................................... 79 

Wright, David L. ...................................................................................................... 89 

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43115.0005
(1) 

HEARING ON THE FEDERAL PROTECTIVE 

SERVICE: AN AGENCY IN NEED OF REBUILDING 

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC

BUILDINGS AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, 

Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:10 p.m., in Room 

2167, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Eleanor 

Holmes Norton [Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Ms. NORTON. Good afternoon. We welcome today’s witnesses from 

the Government Accountability Office, the Federal Protective Service and the FPS Union. GAO has completed its much anticipated 

report on the condition of the Federal Protective Service, or FPS. 

At our February 8th, 2008 hearing on GAO’s preliminary findings, the Subcommittee heard chilling testimony from the GAO 

that FPS had deteriorated so substantially that its difficulties ‘‘may 

expose Federal facilities to a greater risk of crime or terrorist attack.’’ The Subcommittee has not forgotten that Federal facilities 

where Federal employees work, in particular the Pentagon and the 

Alfred P. Murrah Oklahoma City Federal Building, have been the 

choice targets of major terrorist attacks in this Country—clearly 

because Federal facilities are symbols of the United States Government. 

The documented history of terrorist assaults on Federal assets 

and consistent threats since 9/11 have required continuing high 

levels of vigilance to protect both employees and visitors who use 

our Federal facilities. In the post-9/11 and Oklahoma City world, 

Congress recognized the need for bolstering police protection in and 

around the White House and the Capitol Complex, and one surely 

would not want to underestimate the importance of increased protection for the Federal workforce as well. 

When the Department of Homeland Security was formed in 2002, 

the FPS was transferred from GSA to the newly created Department and placed within the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit, ICE, as it is known. The Committee expressed its strong 

support for the transfer but insisted that FPS officers and guards 

be used exclusively for and by the FPS. Starting in February 2005, 

the Chairman and I have sent a series of letters to the DHS, the 

Department of Homeland Security, and held hearings questioning 

the use of funds, the placement of FPS within ICE, and the major 

2 

shift from a protection-based workforce to an inspection workforce. 

We have supported an increase in the number of FPS employees 

as well. These concerns have strong bipartisan support. Both 

Chairman Oberstar and Ranking Member Mica have expressed 

their own views about the gravity of the FPS situation. 

The final GAO report confirms in stark terms GAO’s preliminary 

findings reported at our February 2008 hearing. The report says 

that the FPS has seen its budget decimated, morale and staff 

plummet, and attrition skyrocket. The final report confirms the bipartisan concern that the effectiveness of the FPS has been compromised since its placement in Immigration and Enforcement inside the Department of Homeland Security. A February 18th, 2008 

editorial in the Federal Times calls on Congress to consider removing FPS from ICE. 

Our Subcommittee has carefully tracked the downward trajectory 

of the agency until it became clear that deeper investigation than 

hearings were necessary, and we requested the GAO report before 

us today. Among the many signs that an investigation was in order 

was an ICE-endorsed proposal last year to substantially reduce 

FPS officers across the Nation, including providing no FPS officers 

in almost 50 cities. Memoranda of Understanding, or MOUs, we 

were told, would be developed with cities to make up for the absence of Federal police officers. The GAO, in its preliminary review, 

found that not one MOU had been signed and found numerous instances in which the local jurisdictions had no knowledge at all of 

these supposed memoranda. 

During our April 2007 hearing, when this proposal was first discussed, I voiced my concern that local police have little reason to 

volunteer to assume unfunded mandates to protect Federal sites, 

particularly at the same time that local police are facing cuts in 

their own budgets and in Federal programs. In GAO’s final report 

we learn that the ICE management has abandoned the idea of 

MOUs and will now rely on ‘‘informal relationships’’ between FPS 

and local law enforcement entities. It is fair to ask if this is any 

way to protect Federal employees across the Nation in post-9/11 

America. Is this any way to ensure the protection and security of 

an inventory that has a replacement value of $41 billion? 

The GAO report leaves no doubt that the FPS, the Nation’s first 

Federal police force, established in 1790, has been rocked by inadequate funding and staffing, leading to the inability to complete its 

core mission of facility protection of building security assessments 

and to complete building security assessments in a timely and professional manner, and to monitor and oversee the contract guards. 

We learn from the report, ominously, that proactive patrols, the 

core work of a police force, have been eliminated at many GSA facilities. This decision was made in spite of the fact that the GAO 

reports that ‘‘multiple governmental entities acknowledge the importance of proactive patrol in detecting and preventing criminal 

incidents and terrorism-related activities.’’ 

It appears that the ICE/FPS answer to funding problems and 

management issues has been to change the nature of the workforce 

from a protection-based police force to an inspection-based workforce. In addition to this baffling decision, ICE and FPS decided to 

3 

add contracting duties to the already overstretched inspector position. 

As I reviewed the final report, I was struck by the similarities 

between the demise of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, and the ongoing destruction of this once 

highly regarded police force. Upon transfer, each of these entities 

suffered from a blurring of their mission’s oversight by DHS entities with almost no programmatic or organizational similarities, 

leadership by management without the necessary expertise, and, in 

the case of the FPS, paperwork used in place of police work. The 

irony is too striking to be missed: both FEMA and FPS were moved 

to DHS to enhance their mission capacity for protection, only to 

suffer devastating decline inside a Homeland Security agency. 

The Subcommittee has witnessed the slow disintegration of a 

workforce that once had a reputation as a highly effective and motivated police force, providing an invaluable and necessary service 

to both Federal employees and taxpayers. According to the report, 

however, the FPS workforce has been reduced by approximately 20 

percent during a time when the number of Federal buildings has 

increased from 8,800 to 9,000. Yet, the GAO reports, while the 

Service was hemorrhaging officers, ICE and FPS was actually hastening the reduction by offering ‘‘early retirement, detailed assignments to other ICE and DHS components, and not filling vacant 

positions.’’ 

The Subcommittee commissioned this report to guide future action. Our major concern now must be moving to shore up the protection for hundreds of thousands of Federal employees and property. DHS and ICE appear to believe that, without statutory authorization, they can unilaterally change the core mission of the 

FPS so that it no longer is a police force by any accepted definition 

of the term. However, no one has told Federal employees and visitors not to expect routine patrols and protection from the FPS. If 

the FPS is no longer a primarily protective police force, someone 

should inform Federal agency heads and Federal employees, and 

certainly visitors throughout the United States who make 10 million law enforcement calls each year to the FPS, particularly considering that the 15,000 security guards on duty must remain stationary and do not patrol, while the FPS, too, no longer patrols, for 

the most part. FPS must tell us how it will be possible to continue, 

for example, to make 4,000 arrests annually on charges of committing crimes on Federal property. 

These are not rhetorical questions or matters. We have been prepared to work with FPS on corrective action since our hearings 

first identified serious problems several years ago. We have shown 

every desire to be partners, not adversaries. But despite our hearings and the oversight of the Homeland Security Committee, on 

which I also sit, Congress has been ignored, even defied. 

This Subcommittee, and now our Full Committee, are on notice. 

We ignore this report at our peril and may put hundreds of thousands of Federal employees at risk if we do. The report mandates 

immediate action and response unless FPS can show us otherwise. 

We will listen carefully to the agency’s response. We welcome all 

the witnesses. Each of you is essential to this hearing. This is a 

very important, one of the most important hearings of this entire 

4 

year for this Subcommittee. We appreciate the time each of you has 

taken and the effort you have made in preparing testimony and 

coming this afternoon. 

I am pleased now to ask the Ranking Member, Mr. Graves, if he 

has any opening remarks. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair, for having this hearing 

today. 

I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here to discuss this 

very important issue on the Federal Protection Service. 

I also particularly want to thank David Wright, from my home 

State of Missouri, for being here. I appreciate your efforts to improve the FPS and everything you have done to try to make things 

better. 

We know Federal buildings are proven targets for terrorism. The 

devastating bombings in Oklahoma City and the terrorist attacks 

of 9/11 show that Federal buildings are prime targets. Despite the 

clear danger to Federal facilities, the GAO concluded security at 

Federal buildings has decreased and the risk of crime and terrorist 

attacks at Federal buildings has increased in recent years. There 

are many factors that have contributed to the increased risk: building security assessments are unreliable, patrolling is down, security equipment is broken, there are no reliable systems to assess 

risk or performance. Meanwhile, the over one million people that 

work and visit Federal buildings each year are poorly protected. 

The number of security countermeasures that are not working is 

unacceptable, everything from security cameras, x-ray machines, 

FPS radios reportedly broken and, in some cases, have been for 

months and even years. For example, in one of the most sensitive 

buildings in the Country, only 11 of 150 security cameras are operating. 

On top of this, FPS has eliminated patrolling of many facilities. 

FPS’s own policy handbook identifies patrolling as necessary to 

prevent and deter crime and terrorist attacks. Despite this, FPS 

has reduced patrols and the contract officers are restricted to their 

fixed posts and can’t make arrests. 

There are real dangers to the lack of patrols. In one region, there 

were 72 homicides within three blocks of a major Federal office 

building. At other locations, FPS personnel complained that some 

Federal day care centers are left vulnerable to loitering and drug 

users. 

DHS proposes relying more on local law enforcement to fill gaps 

and policing Federal facilities; however, DHS is unclear of what authority local police may have in responding to incidents at Federal 

facilities, and there is no formal agreement with them. For example, in 2006, the Kansas City Police Department chased two armed 

robbery suspects into a vacant Federal office complex in my home 

State. Given the size and complexity of the facility, local police 

called FPS for help. The FPS officers who responded were directed 

by their superiors to unlock the gates and stand down. Local police 

were left with no backup to apprehend armed robbers in an unfamiliar Federal complex. 

If FPS won’t back up local police at Federal facilities, why should 

we expect local law enforcement to help police Federal buildings? 

5 

Another glaring problem is the unreliability of building security 

assessments. According to GAO and an outside news investigation, 

the FPS conducted building security assessments without ever inspecting the buildings, recycled old security assessments, and copied assessments from one building report to another. In fact, GSA 

and other Federal agencies have begun to hire outside security 

firms or other Federal agencies, like the Army Corps of Engineers, 

to do their own assessments. In the end, agencies wind up paying 

twice for the same service, a prime example of Government waste. 

In addition, while FPS was struggling to perform its basic mission of protecting Federal buildings, FPS reassigned dozens of key 

personnel to other functions within DHS. A news investigation also 

revealed FPS was spending time and resources on security assessments of several high-ranking Government officials’ private homes. 

I am very concerned about the safety and security of the people 

who work and visit our Federal buildings. Yet, given the mission, 

the poor management, the lack of real data to measure performance or to assess risk, I am concerned that throwing more money 

and personnel at FPS is not going to solve the agency’s problems. 

Again, Madam Chair, I would like to thank you for holding this 

hearing. 

I look forward to our witnesses’ testimony. Thank you all for 

being here. I am hopeful that this hearing is going to help focus 

some of what we need to do, I guess it is, to try and improve FPS 

and also trying to improve on its primary mission of protecting the 

people who visit the Federal buildings across this Country, and I 

want to thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Graves. 

Mr. Shuster, we are glad to have you, if you have any remarks. 

Mr. SHUSTER. No, thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. All right. 

We would like to ask Mr. Goldstein, who did the report from the 

GAO, if he might begin now. 

TESTIMONY OF MARK GOLDSTEIN, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE ISSUES, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY 

OFFICE 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you, Madam Chair and Members of the 

Subcommittee. We are pleased to be here today to discuss the efforts of the Federal Protective Service in protecting Federal employees, the public, and GSA facilities. 

As you know, in 2003, FPS transferred from the General Services 

Administration to the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for providing physical security and law enforcement services to about 9,000 GSA facilities. Within DHS, FPS is part of the 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement component, the largest investigative arm of DHS. 

This testimony provides information and analysis on FPS’s operational challenges and actions it has taken to address them, funding challenges FPS faces and actions it has taken to address them, 

and how FPS measures the effectiveness of its efforts to protect 

GSA facilities. This testimony is based on a report we have issued 

today called Homeland Security: Federal Protective Services Faces 

6 

Several Challenges That Hamper Its Ability to Protect Federal Facilities. 

My full testimony is summarized by the following: 

Number one, FPS continues to face several operational challenges that have hampered its ability to accomplish its mission to 

protect GSA facilities, and the actions it has taken may not fully 

resolve these challenges. Since the transfer, while FPS has maintained 15,000 contract guards, its staff has decreased by about 20 

percent, from almost 1,400 employees at the end of fiscal year 2004 

to about 1,100 employees at the end of fiscal year 2007. 

This decrease in staff has contributed to diminished security and 

increased the risk of crime or terrorist attacks at many GSA facilities. For example, FPS has decreased or eliminated law enforcement services such as proactive patrol in each of its 11 regions. In 

addition, FPS officials at several regions we visited said that its 

proactive patrol has, in the past, allowed its officers and inspectors 

to identify and apprehend individuals that were surveilling GSA facilities. In contrast, when FPS is not able to patrol Federal buildings, there is increased potential for illegal entry and other criminal activity at Federal buildings. 

Moreover, FPS has not resolved longstanding challenges such as 

improving the oversight of its contract guard program. In addition, 

FPS faces difficulties in ensuring the quality and timeliness of its 

building security assessments, which are a core component of FPS’s 

physical security mission. For example, one regional supervisor 

stated that while reviewing a BSA for an address he personally visited, he realized that the inspector completing the BSA had falsified the information because the inspector referred to a large 

building, when the actual site was a vacant plot of land owned by 

GSA. 

FPS has also experienced problems ensuring that security countermeasures such as security cameras and magnetometers are 

operational. To address some of these operational challenges, FPS 

is currently changing to an inspector-based workforce which seeks 

to eliminate the police officer position and rely primarily on FPS 

inspectors for both law enforcement and physical security activities. 

FPS believes that this change will ensure that its staff has the 

right mix of technical skills and training needed to accomplish its 

mission. 

FPS is also hiring an additional 150 inspectors and developing a 

new system for BSAs. However, these actions may not fully address 

or resolve the operational challenges that the agency faces, in part 

because the approach does not emphasize law enforcement responsibilities. 

Second, until recently, the security fees FPS charged to tenant 

agencies have not been sufficient to cover costs and the actions it 

has taken to address the shortfalls have had adverse implications. 

Since transferring to DHS, DHS and FPS have addressed these 

projected shortfalls in a variety of ways. For example, DHS transferred emergency supplemental funding to FPS and FPS has restricted hiring and travel, limited training and overtime, and suspended employee performance awards. 

According to FPS officials, these measures have had a negative 

effect on staff morale and are partially responsible for FPS’s overall 

7 

attrition rate increasing from about 2 percent in fiscal year 2004 

to about 14 percent in fiscal year 2007. FPS also increased the 

basic security fee charged to tenant agencies from 35 cents per 

square foot in fiscal year 2005 to 62 cents per square foot in fiscal 

year 2008. Because of these actions, fiscal year 2007 was the first 

year that FPS collections were sufficient to cover its costs. FPS also 

projects that collections will cover their costs in fiscal year 2008. 

However, its primary means of funding its operations is the basic 

security fee, which is the same for Federal agencies regardless of 

the perceived threat to any particular building or agency. Therefore, the fee does not account for the risk faced by particular buildings, and, depending on that risk, it does not account for the level 

of service provided to tenant agencies or the cost of providing those 

services. For example, level I facilities may face less risk because 

they are typically small storefront operations with a low level of 

public contact. 

However, these facilities are charged the same basic security fee 

of 62 cents per square foot as a level IV facility that has a high 

volume of public contact, may contain high-risk law enforcement 

intelligence agencies and highly sensitive government records. The 

report recommends incorporating a security fee that takes into account the complexity or level of effort of the service being performed for the higher level security facilities. 

Finally, FPS is limited in its ability to assess the effectiveness 

of its efforts to protect GSA facilities. To determine how well it is 

accomplishing its mission to protect GSA facilities, FPS has identified some output measures such as determining whether security 

countermeasures, such as bollards and cameras, have been deployed and are fully operational, the amount of time it takes to respond to an incident, and the percentage of BSAs it has completed. 

Output measures assess activities, not the results of those activities. 

However, FPS has not developed outcome measures to evaluate 

the results and the net effect of its efforts to protect GSA facilities. 

Outcome measures are important because they can provide FPS 

with broader information and program results, such as the extent 

to which its decisions to move to an inspector-based workforce will 

enhance the security at GSA facilities. 

In addition, FPS does not have a reliable data management system that would allow to accurately track these measures or important measures such as the number of crimes and other incidents 

occurring at GSA facilities. Without such a system, it is difficult for 

FPS to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of its efforts to protect Federal employees and facilities, to allocate its limited resources, or to make informed risk management decisions. According 

to FPS officials, the agency is in the process of developing such a 

system and in the future that will allow it to improve its data collection and analysis of its performance. 

In our report that we issued to this Subcommittee and other 

Congressional Committees, we recommended, among other things, 

that the Secretary of DHS direct the Director of FPS to develop 

and implement a strategic approach to better manage its staffing 

resources, to evaluate current and alternative funding mechanisms, 

8 

and to develop appropriate measures to assess performance. DHS 

has agreed with these recommendations. 

This concludes our testimony. We are pleased to answer any 

questions that you may have. Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much, Mr. Goldstein. We have 

tried to be a problem solver throughout this process. When we saw 

ICE having a problem with contract guards. We didn’t just have a 

hearing in which we exposed, for example, the fact that one of the 

contractors turned out to be a felon, we put in a bill, but we 

worked with ICE and we had a very good relationship with ICE in 

that working relationship, and we were very pleased that, working 

with them over a period of just a few weeks, ICE revised entirely 

its contracting, back pay—I shouldn’t say back pay because people 

were getting back pay, but contractors weren’t always getting their 

amounts. 

So we have seen what can be done if the agency works with the 

Subcommittee and we are going to try to approach this quite devastating report in that spirit and try to get at what is the source 

of the problem. 

There seems to be a management and resource problem, Mr. 

Goldstein. Listening to your testimony, I listened attentively to the 

fee structure and the placement of this force, this police force inside a DHS entity, in this case ICE, as perhaps a fatal placement 

here. It appears that what was truly a cosmic change for FPS is 

that they have had to get appropriated funds for the basic fee portion of the FPS budget that came out of the Building Fund, I believe, when FPS was a part of GSA. 

Do you believe, looking at the various component parts of this 

problem, that placing FPS in a more appropriate place in DHS 

would help solve the problems of mission and funding? Is FPS in 

the right place? Why in the world is it in ICE; what was the thinking? And is it possible for FPS to support itself with this kind of 

a fee structure? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I will answer in several ways, Madam Chair. I 

think, first of all, when we did our interviews in seven of the regions of FPS and we talked to about 167 different individuals that 

were inspectors or officers or regional administrators out in the 

field, virtually every single individual that we asked the question 

that you just asked, which is where FPS should be placed, is FPS 

placed in the right location within DHS, almost every single individual said, no, they did not believe it should be part of ICE. They 

gave a variety of different responses of whether it ought to be more 

broadly in the physical security section or somewhere else within 

DHS. 

One of the things that we are doing for this Committee now, in 

the second part of our work on FPS, is we are going to look systematically at exactly why it was placed there and whether it should 

be placed there. But as I say, almost no one believed that its placement in ICE was effective, based on the interviews that we did. 

Ms. NORTON. If you think mechanically about where to place 

something, whether it is Border Patrol there, so here are some 

cops, throw them in with the other cops. But here you had a very 

different kind of police force, different kind of fee structure, not deVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:41 Mar 11, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\43115 JASON
9 

pendent upon appropriated funds, and they got stuck and didn’t 

seem to know what to do. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Also, ma’am, a number of not only the things 

that they do, but the way they are treated in terms of training and 

recruitment and all those kinds of things are very different from 

many of the ICE officers, and that too we will be looking at. There 

seems to be a bit of a second class system, if you will, between ICE 

officers and FPS officers, as reported to us by various FPS people 

in the field. 

Ms. NORTON. Can they go from one to the other? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. They can necessarily go from one to the other, 

and many, many people we talked to, both police officers and inspectors, one of their principle concerns that we will be looking into 

further is that they felt that they were not being treated commensurate with other ICE officers. 

Ms. NORTON. In terms of pay or benefits or—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. In terms of pay, in terms of training and opportunity and those kinds of things, that is correct. That they are 

under a different system and that was partly why their morale is 

bad and partly why they weren’t fully integrated into ICE. As I 

say, we will be looking into that in the near future for this Committee. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, it is truly lethal to put police forces together 

and then have invidious distinctions among them. I wonder, have 

there been problems with people wanting to get out of FPS and join 

the border police or other parts of the Federal police? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, ma’am. Because of the way that FPS has 

been operating in the last couple of years, with its reduced staff 

and budget and morale being as bad as it has been, a number of 

officers have thought that they might go elsewhere within DHS, 

and we have many instances of individuals being told that they 

would not be able to transfer their law enforcement responsibilities 

to another part of DHS. 

Ms. NORTON. Would the infrastructure and protection section of 

DHS or, for that matter, perhaps operating independently, as it did 

virtually at GSA—I mean, it was part of GSA, but there never 

were these kinds of—of course, it was part of this Committee—we 

never had any of these problems within GSA. Would it be better 

in infrastructure and protection or would it be better as a standalone entity in DHS, for example? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Many of the officers raised both of those issues, 

that it might be best in IP or it might be better as a standalone 

entity, and that is part of what we will look at to try and ascertain 

what was the reasoning behind why it is in ICE and what would 

be the best location for it. Some have obviously also indicated that 

it might be better at GSA. 

Ms. NORTON. You spoke about retention pay and its effect on 

keeping officers on, officers’ morale. What is retention pay and 

would you explain how that works here? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I was referring generally to pay levels and other 

kinds of human capital effects that they receive in terms of pensions and other things, and they are very different, I am told, between what FPS gets and what ICE and other law enforcement 

10 

agencies get, and they are treated differently; and this is partly 

what we will be looking at in the second phase, here, of this work. 

Ms. NORTON. Congress is trying to deal with these problems 

within a police force that we now know ought to be one, certainly, 

it is my view. Out of the 19th century you have, for example—I 

don’t suggest this to be the case for Border Patrol and FPS, but a 

lot of our thinking really has not jumped to the 21st century, with 

just the Library of Congress police and the Supreme Court police 

and the Capitol police. You know, if there was a threat on the Capitol Complex, having those divisions is a threat to the people in the 

Capitol Complex. So now I guess we are close to getting the Congressional police and the Capitol police together, and we recognize 

that it raises all kinds of issues. So your further investigation here 

is very welcome. 

You mentioned, as a basic weakness, that the fee charge is regardless of risk. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. 

Mr. NORTON. Is this how the fee structure was set up prior to 

Oklahoma City? How is risk determined? How is the fee charge 

done? Everybody in the whole, every kind of facility pays the same 

fee? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. They do, they pay the same basic security fee. 

They can pay additional fees in terms of building specific fees or 

for security work authorizations that will provide added features to 

the security of a building based on the recommendations of a building security committee, but everyone pays the same basic security 

fee regardless of whether they are a level I building or a level IV 

building, and that does not take into account—— 

Ms. NORTON. The same fee for a level IV building as for a level 

I building? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, ma’am, whether you are a storefront or—— 

Ms. NORTON. Even though you may need more officers and security guards for a level IV building? Or does the fee take account 

of that? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That fee does not take account for it, it is a basic 

charge. 

Ms. NORTON. Regardless of the size of building? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. 

Ms. NORTON. Who invented that? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sixty-two cents per square foot whether you are 

in a level I building or a level IV building. 

Ms. NORTON. Is that how it has always been? Of course, that 

says a lot about pre-and post-9/11 right there. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. One of the recommendations we made relates to 

cost accounting, where we are recommending that FPS try to get 

a better handle on what it costs to provide its security to buildings 

across the spectrum so that it could create a defensible system of 

security fees based on risk and the level of buildings, as opposed 

to a blanket fee that has no equity in it. 

Ms. NORTON. For example, does it make any sense that all courthouses are deemed level IV, even if they are in a Federal building 

in a county that is isolated somewhere or if it is New York? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. They are paying the same. 

Ms. NORTON. Does that make any sense, I am saying? 

11 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No, ma’am, we don’t believe it does, which gets 

to our recommendation. 

Ms. NORTON. I have a number of other questions. I am going to 

go to the Ranking Member. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Mr. Goldstein, given all the problems you found in your investigation with the Federal buildings and FPS, do you think that the 

occupants in them and the visitors to them are safe? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is a hard question to answer, sir. In our 

conversations with 167 officers out in the field, we have found them 

increasingly concerned over time that they don’t believe that they 

can provide the same level of security as they have been able to 

in the past. 

And as my testimony indicated, with problems with countermeasures, with problems of not being able to provide proactive patrols in most areas, and with problems with not being able to rely 

on local jurisdictions to fill the gap if FPS officers aren’t available 

or if contract guards can’t do anything other than keep to their 

posts, that is very much cause for concern in a period of post-9/11 

activity. So we would have to say yes, we are concerned that security of Federal property and the people within them has deteriorated and is not what it once was or could be. 

Mr. GRAVES. Given what you just said about lack of patrols and 

obviously you testified about the staffing issues—and I think everybody today is probably going to talk about staffing issues and the 

problems there—do you think it is a wise decision for Homeland 

Security to move or to see FPS personnel doing other assignments 

within DHS or tasking FPS personnel and resources to do private 

homes? Do you think that makes sense, given the fact that we have 

a staffing issue and moving these resources and these personnel to 

other areas and doing other things like private homes, doesn’t that 

contribute, then, to the problem of being able to provide adequate 

security? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sure. Any time that the officers and inspectors 

and the officials are taken off of their principal duties and are 

asked to do something different, that is creating a further burden 

and drain on the resources for those remaining. We indicate several places in our report that when special events occur or when 

there are high level trials at Federal courthouses—for instance, we 

have one instance in the report where there was a high level, very 

high visibility trial a couple years ago, and 75 percent of that region’s FPS resources were sent to provide perimeter security to 

that courthouse, leaving very few officers remaining to protect the 

rest of the region. So these kinds of activities do very much highlight the burdens being placed on the agency overall and their ability to protect Federal property. 

Ms. NORTON. As far as the Federal Government is concerned, 

there are no distinctions among regions as far as the mission to 

protect according to risk, but clearly in this National Capital Region we are obligated to have special concern. I wish you would tell 

us your view of whether the National Capital Region is sufficiently 

covered by routine patrols in the kinds of facilities we have in this 

region in particular, almost all of whom would be, of course, level 

IV facilities. 

12 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I can tell you, ma’am, that every single region 

of FPS, including the National Capital Region, has far fewer officers than they did even a couple of years ago, and their ability to 

protect and to patrol and to react—— 

Ms. NORTON. Are patrols done in buildings within—let us take 

this region since you have the predominant Federal presence here. 

We will take this to be an indicator of what might be happening 

in other regions. Are there regular patrols? Are FPS officers in this 

region, bearing in mind that the far larger number of security 

guards cannot, as far as I understand, patrol? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There are some patrols in this region. There are 

not nearly as many as there used to be. And there are also many 

facilities in the National Capital Region, like elsewhere, that do not 

receive any proactive patrol at all, and many Federal facilities that 

have no nighttime or weekend coverage by FPS at all, just like 

throughout the rest of the Country. The National Capital Region 

has suffered in the same way that the other regions have. 

Ms. NORTON. So even in this region there are level IV buildings 

without nighttime or weekend FPS coverage. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, what that means is that the only coverage, 

if any, would be from stationary security guards? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct, or if there happens to be a local 

metropolitan police officer nearby who may see something. 

Ms. NORTON. Trust me on that one. So that the theory is that 

you can’t get into the building passed the security guards, so there 

couldn’t be a crime within the building? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That would be part of the rationale. But one of 

the biggest concerns remaining, of course, is that you would be undetected if you were surveilling those level IV buildings for terrorist purposes, and much of that work is done in evenings or on 

the weekends, when potential terrorists will know that there isn’t 

really coverage and that nobody is watching them. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, staff does have admission to do work in level 

IV buildings here and throughout the Country, is that so? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. And there are, in some facilities, 

in one region we visited, there are a number of facilities that I can 

think of where there are weekend hours for the public. And in discussing the coverage of FPS, GAO actually ended up being the entity that told an agency that I have in mind that FPS was not covering their facility on the weekend, and the agency was very surprised to learn that and indicated that it might have to shut its 

doors on the weekend as a result. 

Ms. NORTON. And that is even though it was open on the weekends and visitors, that is to say, taxpayers and others from the 

public—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. This was a level IV building as 

well. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, you can understand our concern, Mr. Goldstein. Let me ask you about the contract guard role. Now, how 

many FPS personnel—leave aside the inspector and the smaller 

number that do any patrols. How many FPS police are there? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. As of the end of 2007, there were 215 police officers. 

13 

Ms. NORTON. And how many security guards? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There are 15,000. That has remained relatively 

stable, while the number of police officers has dropped about 40 

percent since 2004. 

Ms. NORTON. And there were how many in 2004? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. 359 police officers in 2004. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, who supervises the contract security guards? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is a combination of the inspectors and the police officers. The principal responsibility is for the inspectors, because they have contract authority, but the police officers help in 

checking out the stations in the buildings as they go through. But 

it is principally the inspectors. And as our report indicates, there 

are a number of difficulties there, and because of the distance between Federal facilities, as well as the decrease in staffing, many 

contract guards have not seen an FPS official at their station in a 

long time, and we had officials tell us that they hadn’t visited contract guard stations in some Federal facilities in a year or 18 

months. 

Ms. NORTON. That who hadn’t, the FPS had not visited? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Correct, in a year or 18 months to some facilities. They are supposed to visit monthly, and it has gotten to the 

point where many inspectors have been encouraged to do their reviews by telephone. 

Ms. NORTON. And this would mean even during the regular work 

week no FPS? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Right, for many buildings, because there are a 

limited number of inspectors. Many buildings are in rural areas or 

places that are far from where an FPS inspector lives, so oftentimes there is no coverage or very limited coverage. 

Ms. NORTON. Are the contract guards peace officers? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No, ma’am, they are not. 

Ms. NORTON. So they do not have the power to arrest. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. 

Ms. NORTON. So a contract guard in a building which has not 

been visited in a couple of months by a FPS officer or inspector 

would have about the same power as I have to make an arrest. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. 

Ms. NORTON. Does he have the power to pursue a criminal? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. He can detain a perpetrator, but, based on our 

experience and our discussions—and I believe we indicated in our 

testimony—there are a number of instances we have already—and 

this is before we have thoroughly investigated the contract guard 

program, which we are about to do as well—that contract guards 

are being told by their contract guard companies to not get involved because of the liability. 

We have in this report one instance that shows that, in which 

an officer was chasing an individual through a Federal building, a 

level IV Federal building. That individual had been in the process 

of being detained, had a handcuff on one arm, in the struggle lost 

most of his shirt; the perpetrator went flying through the lobby of 

the building pursued by an FPS officer. There were several contract guards, all of whom were armed, in the lobby; they simply 

stepped aside. The individual went flying out the front door, and 

14 

was only caught several blocks away by another FPS officer who 

happened to be going by in a patrol car. 

So, no, the contract guards, even when armed and in the lobby, 

are not—— 

Ms. NORTON. This is a bizarre kind of story. Why would there be 

a liability problem for a security guard that was maintained by the 

Federal Government? What is the liability problem? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is something we are going to investigate. We 

haven’t done the work to really get into that issue yet, but it was 

raised in a number of the interviews we had. But we will get back 

to the Committee on that issue. 

Ms. NORTON. This is mysterious to me, very mysterious, that the 

Federal Government could have security guards for which it had 

not accepted liability. So I am not—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I understand. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, the notion that this is a question—legal matters like this get settled well before you decide to use a workforce 

other than your own. This is extremely disturbing, I say as a lawyer who does not relish litigation. 

I am going to ask Mr. Shuster for any questions he may have. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

Thank you, Mr. Goldstein, for being here today. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Yes, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I believe in your report you pointed out that 

many—I don’t want to quantify this, but a lot of the inspections 

were being conducted without inspectors actually going to the site, 

doing it, I think it says, by e-mail? Is that a significant number? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. By telephone. 

Mr. SHUSTER. A significant number? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There were instances where inspectors were encouraged by their regional administrators to complete their inspections of contract guards by telephone, since there was either no 

money or time to complete them. One of the big problems that we 

faced is—in one region this is a big issue. They are supposed to, 

as I say, review contract guard posts monthly. In one region that 

we visited, in one metropolitan city, only 20 of the 68 facilities had 

been visited that month. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Can you do an adequate job by doing it by phone? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I can’t imagine how you would be able to do 

that, no, sir. 

Mr. SHUSTER. You need to go out there. How long ago was your 

report done? When did you find that out? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. This was fairly recent. These were all issues 

that were raised in our field work for the report that we are releasing today. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And was it just significant in that one region, or 

was it widespread throughout the Country? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, the issue of reporting by telephone was 

raised in more than one location. The one where I am referring to, 

20 out of the 68, just happened to be the log in one region that we 

talked to. 

Mr. SHUSTER. What do you think it takes to do an assessment, 

hours, man-hours, days? 

15 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Usually, you try to check each month to be able 

to determine if people are reporting, if they had their certifications, 

if they are in the right places, the kind of incidents that they have 

had. Inspectors are also required to check time sheets for the contract guards as well. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Right. I am talking more about building security 

assessments. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Oh, the building security assessments. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Yes, I am sorry. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There are a lot of things that go into it. In fact, 

inspectors receive training to be able to do building security assessments. Many of the inspectors and regional officers indicated to us 

that the training for building security assessments is not adequate 

and that refresher courses are needed. FPS has begun to provide 

them, but many of the field offices have not had a refresher course 

yet. And many of the inspectors that we talked to said that they 

really don’t have a good grasp of the kinds of things that are supposed to go into that security assessment. 

Mr. SHUSTER. Let’s back up a second. The building security assessments, were they being done without actually going to the 

building also? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There were some instances of that occurring. 

There were some instances where building security assessments 

were being simply cut and pasted from previous years, where nothing had changed, and there had been some examples where people 

weren’t even doing that, where they were simply making it up. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And, in your view, you really can’t do a complete 

and adequate assessment unless you go to the building. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Even more than that, sir. There are time frames 

that are actually recommended for them. A level IV building assessment is supposed to take a couple weeks to accomplish. Because of the problems that they have had in maintaining a workforce that had the skills to do this and the number of building assessments they have had to do, in many instances they don’t get 

more than a day or two, or sometimes a couple of hours, in which 

they are supposed to do this. 

Mr. SHUSTER. When you say weeks, is that one person? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. One person. 

Mr. SHUSTER. One person. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. And a number of the tools that they need, lighting assessment tools and the like, they don’t have those actual 

tools to complete those parts of the assessment because they don’t 

have the funds to pay for them. 

Mr. SHUSTER. I note that some of the Federal agencies have resorted to hiring private firms to do the BSA. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. And other Government agencies as well, such as 

the Corps of Engineers. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And how does that work? What is your view on 

that as far as can it be done effectively? Is it done effectively? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, it can be done effectively. The problem is 

they are already still paying for that. They are paying twice. 

Mr. SHUSTER. So they are paying the Federal Government Service—— 

16 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is right, because they are already paying 

FPS to do them. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And I understand there are some reports that 

these building security assessments, there is some pressure in a 

particular region to speed them up because there is—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There is a major political event coming later this 

year, so there is considerable pressure to have all the building security assessments done by the end of this month, I believe. 

Mr. SHUSTER. And the impact on the quality of the assessment 

is? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. We haven’t looked at that, but one would assume that could be an issue. 

Mr. SHUSTER. All right, I have no further questions. Thank you. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you, sir. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Goldstein, I would like the objective view, your 

objective view of the effect that all of this has had on the morale 

of, let us say, the average FPS officer. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sure. I mean, morale is not good. I mean, it is 

very simple: they don’t have the equipment; officers don’t have career paths; and they, in many instances, have been told to leave 

because of the decimation of the patrol function. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, they don’t have career paths because? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Because they can’t advance to the inspector 

ranks. 

Ms. NORTON. And the reason they can’t? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. They don’t have the training and the skills base 

to do that, and FPS has not had the money to provide training for 

that. 

Ms. NORTON. This is a police force in stalemate; it is just there. 

It sounds like it is there in name only. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is increasingly fragile, I think that is correct. 

Inspectors are overworked and they are overwhelmed. These are all 

people who want to do a good job, but they are being hamstrung 

in many ways by the problems. 

Ms. NORTON. Every police force has people who get to the retirement age. Are they recruiting officers, younger officers to come in? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. They have had a number of problems doing that 

because, at least in the current environment, most people know 

that FPS is not a place, at least if you want to be a police officer, 

where you are going to be able to have a career, because they are 

phasing out that function. If you want to be an inspector and handle some of the other, sort of the broad panoply of issues that we 

talked about, an inspector has so many responsibilities and many 

of them are very overwhelmed by this, and I think only the addition of additional inspectors will help to start to alleviate that problem will you see a change. People are, I think, understandably 

wary at this point in time of joining the Federal Protective Service. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, if you were recruited for the Federal Protective Service today, would you be recruited as a police officer or as 

one of these inspectors? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. My understanding is that they are not hiring police officers, only inspectors, and that they are attaining and seeing 

the police officer function phase out. 

17 

Ms. NORTON. So you are saying to us that their goal is to have 

no police officers and only inspectors? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. That is correct. We were told that both in the 

field and at headquarters that that is the goal. 

Ms. NORTON. Who then would patrol? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. There would really not be patrols. The law enforcement function would be one part of the inspectors’ responsibility. But as we have indicated, the inspectors have oversight of 

contract guards, building security assessments, they are the contracting officer technical representatives, they have law enforcement response, criminal investigations, collecting contract guard 

time cards, and they are also responsible for the building security 

committee support. 

Ms. NORTON. So it doesn’t mention patrolling in there? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. In that list? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No. There is law enforcement response, but, 

again, that is only one of the many functions they have. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, response is, as I take it, once somebody—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It is a response, it is not proactive, that is correct. 

Ms. NORTON. Yes. Well, to say this is serious is to make a vast 

understatement. 

I am going to ask the Full Committee Chairman, Mr. Oberstar, 

who has had a continuing serious interest in this issue, whether he 

has any questions or any statement. I appreciate his coming today. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for being 

very vigilant and diligent in following up on this issue. And I thank 

the gentleman from Missouri, the Ranking Member, for pursuing 

the matter further following our hearing last year. 

It was shocking when we received information about the shortcomings that we heard, flaws and outright failures in the protection of the Federal workforce in the Federal office buildings across 

the Country. There are over 9,000 buildings that GSA either owns 

or leases. That is some 367 million square feet of Federal civilian 

office space. There is nearly $42 billion asset value in those properties. They are scattered in every State all across the Nation. 

And we have a Federal workforce of various sizes in various communities, and the shocking thing that we heard last year was that 

a sizeable portion of the Federal Protective Service had been contracted out to private security guards that over the past three 

years the workforce of police force has been cut 40 percent. Inspectors were cut 10 percent, at a time when we are mounting a massive national Homeland Security initiative. 

It seemed to me inconsistent with the mission of the Homeland 

Security Department to have one of the components of that agency 

cut its workforce, cut the number of inspectors and contract work 

out at the very time when we did the opposite with aviation. For 

years we had the security workforce at airports contracted for by 

the airlines to the lowest bidder, with reports of certain airport facilities, turnover as much as four-fold or six-fold. They couldn’t 

keep trained personnel on station; they didn’t have money to do 

and didn’t do training or retraining. The way up for security perVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:41 Mar 11, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00027 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\43115 JASON
18 

sonnel at domestic airports was a job at McDonald’s in the airport 

terminal. 

I served on the PanAm 103 Commission in the aftermath of that 

tragedy, and we proposed a federalized workforce comparable to 

that which existed in Germany in the course of our inquiry overseas, but the then Bush I administration would not hear of it. We 

backed off and included other measures that we thought were of 

great significance, and when they didn’t act just introduced a bill 

incorporating in legislative language the 63 recommendations of 

our commission, and eventually we got those enacted. 

Then came September 11th. Now we have the federalized workforce, and it is in place and it is professional. You can go to every 

airport around the Country and get the same treatment. And I 

have been in about half the States, at any rate, at least, all of the 

major airports, and now with my new replacement metal hip I set 

off the alarms and I get the same treatment at every airport, the 

same pat-down, the same procedure, and that is wonderful. 

But now that is what we need in the Federal office buildings. I 

thought that after the alarming reports that we heard last year, 

things would get better. But, in fact, more private contract guards 

have been hired, according to your report, to replace the Federal 

Protective Service workforce; that armed guards and that contract 

authority guards took no action while a suspect with no shirt and 

handcuffs ran through the lobby of a Federal building; a GAO investigator witnessed a person trying to enter a high security facility with illegal weapons; contract guards allowed him to leave with 

the guns. What is this? What kind of system is this? 

I heard you say a moment ago that morale is deteriorating. Have 

you found that throughout the system in various Federal office 

buildings, that the existing Federal workforce morale has deteriorated? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. We found in our interviews throughout the regions that we went to that morale was a significant problem because of what FPS is facing and the challenges that they have to 

overcome. Yes, sir, in all the regions that we visited that was the 

case. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. That is the same in the air traffic control workforce. They have not had increase in personnel; they are working 

longer hours; more hours at controls without respite; instead of a 

break after two hours; they are working three hours continuously 

at shift; not getting respite time, leave time, retraining time; and 

morale is deteriorating. Plus, their pay has been frozen at September 2006 levels. So if we are again repeating that situation in 

the protective workforce—— 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. It sounds very similar, sir, yes. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Who conducts the building security assessment? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. The inspectors do, sir. There are 541 inspectors 

within the Federal Protective Service, and among their responsibilities that I mentioned a few minutes ago are the building security 

assessments. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And do the members of the contract workforce 

participate in those assessments? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. No. Their job is solely to remain in fixed posts 

and to secure the entrances and exits of the building. 

19 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Then when the assessment is completed, who acts 

on the recommendations of the assessment? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. The assessments are provided to a building security committee. Every Federal building has a security committee 

that is made up of a representative of each tenant agency, and they 

get together on a regular basis and they evaluate the security assessments and the kind of measures that FPS is suggesting be put 

in place. In very few instances, however, are the measures that 

FPS is recommending actually implemented, for several reasons, 

one of which is that the individuals who sit on a building security 

committee are lay people, they do not have security expertise to determine what should or should not be incorporated into a building 

security. 

Second of all, they don’t have the authority to provide the funds 

to FPS to implement the measures; they have to go back to their 

headquarters and get permission to do so, and very rarely does 

that occur. Then, thirdly, when the measure is something the Federal Protective Service itself would implement, regional officials 

have told the inspectors not to include those particular items as 

part of the recommendations because the regional offices of FPS 

don’t have the money to actually put those things in place either. 

So it has gotten kind of to be a crazy situation. They are spending a lot of time and effort and money in completing building security assessments that in many instances don’t go anywhere and 

nothing comes of them. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. You anticipated my next two questions in your 

answer, thank you. Thank you, but that is shocking. That is astonishing to me that there is an assessment conducted and the personnel responsible for implementing tell the FPS don’t do this, tell 

the building personnel don’t do it because we don’t have the money 

to implement it? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Because we don’t have the money or our headquarters agency doesn’t believe that it is something we ought to do 

or be involved in. So it is security by committee of lay people of, 

say, the Social Security Administration or HHS, or whomever happens to be a building tenant. They are the ones who make these 

decisions and, as I say, rarely do the actual countermeasures, such 

as an additional magnetometer or night patrol or something that 

would help improve security, actually get implemented because of 

the cost or even understanding what the threat might be. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Isn’t that creating holes in our security protection 

for Federal office buildings? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sure it is. Because if the premise is that the 

agency is trying to improve the security of Federal buildings and 

you do a security assessment and you make recommendations on 

how individual buildings might be better secured, and then nobody 

takes any action for all the reasons I have mentioned, then not 

only is the building not secure, but you have also wasted public 

funds to try to achieve that objective. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Did you find a differentiation among types of Federal buildings, that is, courthouses in one category, Social Security 

in others, veterans in others? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. In terms of? 

Mr. OBERSTAR. In terms of the security risk. 

20 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, there are four levels. There are actually 

five building security level risks that were put in place after the 

Oklahoma City bombing, the lowest being a level I, which is usually a storefront, sort of where you might go in for IRS or Social 

Security, and a level V, which is something like the CIA Headquarters, which is not protected by FPS, they only protect up to a 

level IV. But as we indicated earlier, the basic security fees are 

paid by tenants regardless of the level of security that a building 

has. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Following last year’s hearing and our request for 

GAO review, I stopped in to various Social Security offices in my 

district and there is, in each one, a security officer, usually a retired police officer from the community who has been engaged by 

Federal Protective Service or, I think in one case, by Social Security Administration—at least that is what I think it is. But every 

day or at least in the larger facilities almost every day there is 

some disgruntled person—not a terrorist with a bomb strapped to 

the body to blow the place up, but a disgruntled person who can 

make a scene and who is, therefore, intimidating to citizens who 

are coming to the facility for resolution of their various problems 

and to the Social Security Administration personnel. In others it is 

at least once a week there is some disgruntled person. 

And I asked them, supposing somebody really intended to do 

harm, come with a bomb strapped to their leg or their body. Oh, 

we don’t have a magnetometer here, we don’t have an x-ray machine. The larger facilities, where there is a courthouse associated 

with the Federal building, they do have the x-ray machines and 

magnetometers. 

We have these various levels of risk. Just my own random observation, backed by some years of experience in the investigative 

business, found these gaps in security. How do you rate the five 

levels of security standing for the Federal buildings under FPS jurisdiction? Did you find fewer problems at the lower security level 

Is and more at the level Vs, or what did you find? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. We had a similar experience as you did, Mr. 

Oberstar, in terms of, with level I facilities such as Social Security 

or IRS, there they just have a storefront, that they are as vulnerable, if not more so, than the larger buildings because, as you say, 

they rarely have a magnetometer, they might have an off-duty police officer or a contract guard that they have hired, but they do 

have significant incidents and threats of incidents all the time. 

And many Social Security offices that we talked to as part of who 

are on building security committees and the like express the same 

thing that you are saying as well. So they have significant threats 

that they have to encounter without the kind of resources that 

some of the larger buildings that do have, say, magnetometers or 

additional guards or even perhaps an FPS presence would have. 

Their recourse is to call local law enforcement, just like any other 

citizen. That is what they have. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. And in some cases it takes a while for law enforcement to respond. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sure. And an FPS officer is likely to take a 

much longer time. One of the things we did find, and our report 

highlights, is in many instances it will take hours, sometimes days, 

21 

for FPS actually to respond to an incident because there isn’t a 

local FPS presence and they have to come from out of State, or certainly out of a city. So the only response of any consequence would 

be a local response. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. Good heavens. That is outrageous. Now, when 

there is an incident and the Federal Protective Service contract 

guard comes on the scene, they don’t have law enforcement authority; they don’t have ability to arrest. What is the effect of their 

presence? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. The contract guards at Federal buildings are 

used to allow people in and out of buildings. They guard access to 

the building, principally, and they watch people as they go through 

x-ray machines and they monitor the magnetometers, where they 

exist, as well. 

But as we indicated in our report, there are a number of issues 

associated with the contract guard program, and it is something 

that we are starting to now look at. Now that we have finished this 

report for the Committee, we are starting to look at the contract 

guard program, and we will provide more information at a later 

date. 

But we did find a number of instances, just based on our preliminary observations, of how the FPS monitors and oversees the contract guards and the roles and responsibilities of the contract 

guards themselves. So, yes, this is something that we will take a 

further look at. 

Mr. OBERSTAR. [Presiding] I ask Mr. Graves if he has any further 

questions at this point. If not, then the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Carney. 

Mr. CARNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Goldstein, you mentioned that several Government entities 

really find great importance in proactive foot patrols. Which of 

these entities, could you specifically tell us that? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sure. We found the Department of Homeland 

Security itself, including the Federal Protective Service, which has 

specific policy handbook for patrolling, that they have found that 

this is a very effective tool. We have also found that the FBI has 

said the same thing. 

And we would note that the 9/11 Commission, among other entities, has also shown that potential terrorists are frequently to be 

found, in our discussions with FPS, said the same thing, that 

surveilling of Federal property is not uncommon and that only 

using proactive patrols—to be outside the building and not just at 

access points—is going to be the principal way you are going to 

thwart this sort of thing. 

And they gave a number of instances where they have in the 

past, because they had proactive patrols, been able to thwart potential terrorists who were surveilling a building, suspicious people 

who were sitting in cars outside for several days in a row in the 

same car, a variety of those kinds of activities. And you are not 

going to get that kind of ability to thwart those kinds of things if 

you don’t have proactive patrol and you are only relying on contract 

guards who are sitting at an entrance checking IDs or checking 

people who are going through x-ray machines. 

22 

Mr. CARNEY. How many agencies actually have the proactive foot 

patrols? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. I don’t know the answer to that, but we can try 

and find out and get back to you, sir. 

Mr. CARNEY. Yes. I would like to know that. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. The point is most of the Federal buildings are 

protected by—there are 9,000 Federal buildings, which is the bulk 

of the Federal portfolio, and they are protected by FPS. 

Mr. CARNEY. Okay. You also mentioned that developing the use 

of resources based on risk management principles. What are some 

of the principles that we ought to be employing here? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Well, one of the things that concerned us is that 

it is difficult for FPS really to tell you where and how they ought 

to be deploying their scarce resources based on risk, because they 

don’t have a full risk assessment model that would be able to help 

you determine where crime or potential terrorism is at its worst 

and, therefore, haven’t deployed resources to that kind of a model. 

They have more people in cities than they do in rural areas as 

one sort of broad-based measure, but the other problem related to 

this is their data systems are not reliable at this point in time and 

they are not able to tell you with any specificity or reliability how 

much crime is actually occurring where. Therefore, they can’t tell 

you the current status of the threats to Federal property because 

that information is highly unreliable. 

We tried to, not only based on how they define crime and how 

crime is entered into their system, but there are very big differences and discrepancies between regions and headquarters in 

terms of how much crime a certain region is supposed to have. We 

also found that because of the staffing shortfalls and the fact that 

you have had such a decrease in the number of police officers and 

inspectors, the crime simply isn’t being reported to the mega centers. What looks like a decrease in crime is probably not a decrease 

in crime because they are simply not being reported. 

Mr. CARNEY. One more question, Madam Chair, if you don’t 

mind. 

It is disturbing to know that the data problem exists, that they 

don’t have the data to make these determinations. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. They are working on fixing those systems, but 

it is going to take some time. 

Mr. CARNEY. Right. My concern, though, is how is the intelligence flow to know if there is a threat and how they handle that? 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. We have heard mixed things about that, sir. 

When we were in the field, we were told by a number of the regions 

that they had very limited access to specific intelligence information unless they were part of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. That 

existed in several cities. But that, other than that they were not 

provided access to a lot of intelligence information. Our discussions 

at headquarters seemed to indicate that that wasn’t the case. Also, 

in fact, if anything, there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect 

between headquarters and the field with respect to how much information they are getting from intelligence sources. 

Mr. CARNEY. Thank you, I think. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Sorry. 

Mr. CARNEY. No further questions at this time, Madam Chair. 

23 

Ms. NORTON. [Presiding] Thank you, Mr. Carney. I am going to 

let you go, Mr. Goldstein, but because of districts like Mr. Carney’s 

and, for that matter, I think perhaps Mr. Graves’, I have got to ask 

you about these informal relationships and these MOUs. Now, in 

big cities like the District and New York, we found very little in 

the way of proactive patrols and very few FPS officers, but we, of 

course, learned from your report that these MOUs, for MOUs between local police and FPS, instead of FPS, were in fact not being 

used and they were relying on informal relationships. 

I have to ask you, before you go, whether you saw any evidence 

of informal relationships between local police and Federal facilities 

whereby local police were willing to be on call, at least, for Federal 

facilities or in any other way help to cover Federal facilities, instead of FPS. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. In almost all the jurisdictions that we went to, 

we spoke with local law enforcement, and most of them were not 

even aware that the Federal Protective Service had instituted its 

inspector-based system or that the FPS had reduced or eliminated 

its evening and weekend hours. So they had not been told that the 

kind of protection that Federal property needed had changed, and 

had indicated to us—in fact, they were being told by us, by GAO, 

FPS had not indicated, and they were surprised—— 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. I just want to make sure for the record, 

because we are not only interested in high-target places like the 

District. This is a Federal police force for every part of the United 

States, and at least 50 cities were to be left with no FPS officers 

at all, and now we find that the MOUs don’t exist at all. 

Yours has been a very sobering report, Mr. Goldstein. I assure 

you that the Subcommittee will not only take it under advisement, 

while the Full Committee Chairman was here we discussed what 

we can do right now. Thank you very much. 

Now I would like to call the next two witnesses. 

Mr. GOLDSTEIN. Thank you. 

Ms. NORTON. The next witnesses are Gary Schenkel, who is the 

Director of the Federal Protective Service, and David Wright, the 

President of the FPS Union, which is AFGE Local 918. 

I am going to begin with Mr. Schenkel. 

TESTIMONY OF GARY SCHENKEL, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE; AND DAVID WRIGHT, PRESIDENT, FEDERAL PROTECTIVE SERVICE UNION 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Chairwoman Norton, Ranking Member Graves, 

distinguished Members, thank you for the opportunity to appear 

before you today to address the concerns raised in the report issued 

by the Government Accountability Office and to discuss the business improvements that FPS has made over the past three years 

and our vision for the future. 

As this Subcommittee is aware, auditors from the Government 

Accounting Office recently had the opportunity to sample the dayto-day work performance by the Federal Protective Service. We appreciate the thoroughness of this audit and welcome the recommendations for improving FPS. 

Auditor work products are used throughout ICE for the betterment of the agency, including within FPS. With this in mind, I beVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:41 Mar 11, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\43115 JASON
24 

lieve that it is necessary to address some of the points raised in 

the GAO report. Some additional context is needed. 

The transfer of the FPS into the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, ICE, provided 

an opportunity for FPS to comprehensively assess its mission and 

to ensure that its activities were focused on enhancing the security 

of the Federal facilities it protects. FPS has embarked on a strategic approach to ensure that its operations are not only fully 

aligned with the goals and objectives of DHS and ICE and its 

stakeholder, but that they also move FPS towards greater compliance with the standards for internal control as established by GAO. 

Using this strategic approach and this Subcommittee’s support 

and guidance, we have significantly enhanced our business processes, including our contracting functions. For example, we have 

improved the procurement process for guard services that, in the 

National Capital Region alone, we have reduced the cost of three 

new contract security guard contracts by $5.5 million in fiscal year 

2008, savings that were passed directly to the agency client. 

This strategic approach has resulted in a number of achievements, including, in 2007, FPS eliminated a backlog of 2200 invoices worth $92 million, some of which predated the creation of 

the Department of Homeland Security, all the way back to 1999. 

Chairwoman Norton’s attention to this issue was particularly helpful to us in identifying this area for improvement. To improve FPS 

invoice payment process, ICE/FPS consolidated the entire process 

by requiring that all invoices be sent to a single location. 

Since the beginning of fiscal year 2008, FPS has paid 95 percent 

of all invoices within 30 days. In the month of May, the percentage 

of payments paid within 30 days rose to 99.5 percent. Part of the 

success in the timeliness of the invoice payments is the fact that 

we added our Contractor Officer Technical Representation, COTR, 

training to our basic training curriculum. 

FPS improved working relationships with its internal and external stakeholders through newsletters and regular communications. 

FPS also provided customer service training to employees and used 

satisfaction surveys to gage its success at providing comprehensive 

security services that are meaningful for FPS stakeholders. FPS 

formally chartered an Executive Advisory Council, or EAC, to coordinate security strategies and activities, policy and communication with Federal department and agency occupants of GSA-controlled facilities. 

FPS also conducted numbers of focus groups and meetings with 

stakeholders to identify and resolve issues and to identify systematic problems. The focus groups enabled us to immediately identify 

a common concern of our clients in that they want FPS personnel 

to increase the level of physical security functions, such as contract 

guard oversight, quality building security assessments, or BSAs, 

and higher visibility throughout its facilities. We heard them and 

we agreed that the physical security needs greater attention, but 

not at the exclusion of our law enforcement function. 

Among the most important improvements from a strategic approach is our move to a Law Enforcement Security Officer, or 

LESO, inspector-based workforce, which will meet these customers’ 

concerns while affording the added protection of law enforcement 

25 

presence. To put in proper perspective the importance and advantage of transforming FPS’s workforce, FPS is responsible for protecting approximately 9,000 GSA owned and leased buildings in 

2003. 

At that time, only 55 percent of FPS law enforcement staff was 

qualified to conduct BSAs, a core FPS activity. As a result, the assessment function received far less attention than it required. Law 

enforcement staff qualified to conduct BSAs were stretched too 

thin, producing assessments that were inaccurate, incomplete, and 

untimely. Today, as FPS moves closer to a LESO-based workforce, 

more than 80 percent of its law enforcement staff is qualified to 

perform FPS’s core mission requirements. LESOs still retain law 

enforcement authority and are able to conduct BSAs that are more 

accurate, complete, and timely. 

The advantages of the LESO-based workforce are strategically 

aligned with the core mission of FPS: securing facilities and safeguarding their occupants. The LESO position incorporates the law 

enforcement duties of the Federal facilities FPS protects. In addition, the LESO receives extensive training in risk management, 

risk assessment, and countermeasures to mitigate those risks. A 

LESO-based workforce provides built-in flexibility to perform law 

enforcement and physical security functions. A LESO can be at a 

GSA facility performing an inspection or providing contract guard 

oversight and, if the need arises, immediately provide police response to a criminal activity. 

FPS decided to integrate the entire security program by making 

the contract security guard program a true extension of its law enforcement activities by combining the responsibilities. A LESObased workforce allows FPS the necessary flexibility to provide law 

enforcement and immediate corrective action to all countermeasures, including our contract security guards. Under the prior 

bifurcation of security operations, law enforcement had little or no 

oversight over the contract guard program or other integrated security countermeasures. 

Differences in the traditional police officer and LESO position 

begin with basic training. The police officer receives basic law enforcement instruction in the Uniform Police Training Program, or 

UPTP, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. For the 

police officer, basic training ends there. Basic training for the 

LESO only begins at UPTP. Following completion of the basic law 

enforcement training curriculum, the LESO Inspector is enrolled in 

the physical security training program. This advanced course provides the LESO extensive instruction in training and risk assessments, threat analysis, risk management, risk mitigation, and the 

latest technological advancements and countermeasures. To improve FPS’s contract oversight capability, we have also added a 

training module that prepares the LESO to perform the duties of 

the Contract Officer’s Technical Representative, or COTR. 

Notwithstanding the important issues and recommendations offered by the GAO, we agree that more can be done, including the 

following: a strategic risk-based approach to staffing is needed, and 

we have begun the process of doing that using several workload 

studies and analysis that have been conducted; there is a need to 

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ers, and we intend to work closely with our law enforcement partners in this effort; we must incorporate performance management 

into our law enforcement and administrative activities; and update 

our current performance measures. 

To this end, FPS is acquiring a new Risk Assessment and Management Program, also known as RAMP, to enhance its operational 

capabilities for gathering data and developing action plans to assess collective and individual performance. The RAMP will provide 

a suite of tools designed to ease the collection analysis and reporting of performance measure information. With respect to our collection and use of data, FPS will use RAMP, a secure Web-enabled 

tool, to conduct risk assessments. By building in specific workflow 

and enhanced reporting capabilities, FPS can use RAMP to identify 

security vulnerabilities and to provide the data FPS needs to make 

decisions as to workforce assignments, including conducting of security assessments and providing of security. 

I am extremely pleased to lead the proud and professional men 

and women of the Federal Protective Service. I interact with them 

every day and I can tell you that they are dedicated, determined, 

and committed to developing and implementing and maintaining 

security systems to ensure the facilities they are charged with protecting are secure and their occupants are safe. I am confident that 

they can be relied upon to ensure that FPS will continue to meet 

the challenge of its homeland security mission. 

Thank you again, Chairwoman Norton and Ranking Member 

Graves, for holding this important oversight hearing. I would be 

pleased to answer any questions you may have. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Schenkel. 

Mr. Wright. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Chairwoman Norton, Ranking Member Graves, 

Members of the Subcommittee, my name is David Wright. I am 

President of AFG Local 918, the Federal Protective Service Union. 

I have been an FPS law enforcement officer for the past 22 years. 

In the seven years since the September 11 attacks, I have watched 

with growing frustration and outrage as the Federal Protective 

Service has been allowed to deteriorate and drift like a rudderless, 

sinking ship. 

Madam Chair, every American should be shocked and frightened 

by the GAO testimony we heard today. The sole Federal agency 

charged with the critical mission of protecting thousands of Federal 

buildings and millions of people from terrorists and criminal attack 

has had its core mission challenges, its funding cut by $700 million 

since 9/11, its officer pay reduced by 10 percent, and its law enforcement ranks nearly depleted. 

If one of our local unions had performed in such a manner with 

respect to carrying out its mission and responsibilities, it would 

have been put into trusteeship. It is clear to us that we need Congress to act as a trustee for the Federal Protective Service. 

It has only been through the intervention of this and other Committees of Congress that we have stopped this dangerous and irresponsibility trend. Meanwhile, in fiscal year 2008, FPS is projected 

to have only 1,200 personnel and budgeted at approximately $238 

million nationwide for operational expenses, while there are over 

1,600 Capitol Police budgeted $281 million to protect the Capitol 

27 

and Congressional offices in a 12-block area of Washington, D.C. 

The Secret Service has over 1,300 officers in its uniformed division 

to protect its assigned facilities in Washington, D.C. The Veterans 

Health Administration employs over 2,500 police officers to protect 

154 medical centers nationwide. 

I should also add that each of the above-mentioned agencies use 

extensive proactive patrol by police officers to detect and deter attack, the very critical activities that GAO has found missing in 

FPS. 

The questions we need to answer today are why was this allowed 

to happen to FPS and what needs to be done. My written testimony 

answers both of those questions in detail, so I would ask that it be 

submitted for the record. I also want to make four key points here 

this afternoon. 

Regardless of why this agency has been allowed to ‘‘twist in the 

wind,’’ as the Senate DHS Appropriations Committee put it last 

year, we need to continue to rebuild the FPS in a rapid manner. 

A comprehensive review and assessment of manpower needs, as 

called for by GAO, and a request for sufficient personnel to perform 

the mission must be produced by the agency as quickly as possible. 

In the interim, Local 918 is asking Congress to increase the current 

level of 1200 personnel—that includes about 900 law enforcement—by about 400 in the fiscal year 2009 DHS appropriations 

bill. 

GAO pointed to the importance of a uniform Federal law enforcement presence surrounding Federal buildings as an essential security requirement to detect and deter attack by terrorists and criminals. It is an approach embraced by all law enforcement agencies 

across the Country. Yet, it is precisely this component of proactive 

patrol that DHS and ICE have worked so hard to eliminate. 

The Union believes that eliminating police officers and maintaining a depleted all-inspector workforce is a dangerous mistake. 

While inspectors can and do perform law enforcement tasks, they 

also have a very different set of responsibilities on a day-to-day 

basis: overseeing the contract guard workforce; performing building 

security assessments, which is very labor-intensive; training employees in regards to workplace violence; and other security issues, 

to name several. In the performance of these duties, it is less likely 

that inspectors will uncover criminal or terrorist activity. Such activity is far more often revealed through community interaction 

and continuous law enforcement uniform patrol, which are the primary responsibilities of FPS police officers. 

Three, in the post-9/11 world of today, it makes absolutely no 

sense to rely on a square footage base fee to entirely determine the 

funding for FPS. While the Union does not oppose the continued 

funding of some optional FPS services through this funding mechanism, we strongly believe that most activities of FPS can and 

should be funded through annual appropriations. I have to reiterate, as I have over the past two years, the current funding formula is the root cause of the problems at FPS and it is in desperate need of reform. 

My fourth point, just within the past two years, FPS police officers and other law enforcement officers have seen their pay cut by 

10 percent. Many have been told that their jobs were being elimiVerDate Aug 31 2005 15:41 Mar 11, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 P:\DOCS\43115 JASON
28 

nated and we have watched as the agency’s core mission has been 

threatened by a misguided attempt of non-law enforcement bureaucrats to eliminate critical FPS law enforcement activities. I can tell 

you we have lost many talented, experienced officers as a result, 

and it will not be easy to attract them back or to hire new personnel to replace them in any short manner of time. 

Evidently, the agency is finding this out as it tries to recruit new 

personnel for the positions required under last year’s appropriations bill. As you can imagine, morale is in the tank. Your FPS law 

enforcement officers have borne the brunt of recent FPS budget reductions and we need Congress to step in. We have borne that 

brunt. We have taken the pay cuts; we have been out there without 

the equipment, without the supplies, without the uniforms. I have 

guys paying for uniforms out of pocket, I have guys paying for 

equipment out of pocket, and we will never see that money back. 

Restoration of retention pay and the provision of law enforcement retirement benefits are two changes that should be implemented as part of any FPS building process. By the way, retention 

pay, as alluded to, when they cut retention pay a couple years ago, 

amounts to less than $5 million annually. As a result of losing that 

10 percent retention pay, we have lost approximately 150 to 170 officers and inspectors. 

Madam Chair, I believe the state of the FPS right now is little 

different from that of the airline industry security prior to 9/11. 

There, a reliance on poorly trained, un-monitored contract guards 

with no law enforcement authority, with security implementation 

by conflicting entities, an unworkable funding structure, and a perception of security through inspections, instead of protection by 

boots on the ground Federal officers, proved disastrous. It should 

not have happened then and it should not be allowed to happen 

now. 

I will be glad to answer your questions. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Wright. 

I am going to go first to the Ranking Member, Mr. Graves. 

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

The core mission of FPS is to protect Federal buildings, the people who work in them, obviously, the people who visit them, and 

we all know, we all agree that Federal buildings are obviously targets. The GAO study concluded that many Federal buildings are 

more at risk of crime and terrorist attacks, which basically shows 

that FPS isn’t adequately fulfilling its basic mission. Yet, during 

the time when we had some level IV buildings that did not have 

building assessments completed, FPS still had the time and resources to conduct security assessments of private residences of 

Federal officials, and I am surprised that nobody is talking about 

this. 

My question, Mr. Schenkel, is how many of these assessments of 

private residences did FPS perform and whose were they? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am aware of six. I have a list. They were performed. The most recent was probably two years ago, and they go 

back as far a six years. 

Mr. GRAVES. Who are they? 

29 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Senator Feinstein’s residence; Assistant Secretary Myers’ residence; Robert Brown from FEMA; Mr. Alfonso 

Jackson, former Secretary of HUD, I believe. 

I am incorrect, sir, it was five. I apologize. I thought there were 

six. 

Mr. GRAVES. Were there specific threats that were anticipated? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. There were specific threats in the case of Mr. 

Jackson, there were specific threats in the case of Ms. Myers, and 

implicated threats in the case of Senator Feinstein. I am not aware 

of anything on Mr. Brown, sir. 

Mr. GRAVES. Who requested the assessments and who authorized 

them? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. They would have to have been authorized by the 

regional director or whoever sat in this chair, sir. And they would 

be requested normally either by the local law enforcement entity 

responsible for that jurisdiction or another Federal law enforcement agency that was aware of a threat. 

Mr. GRAVES. Well, what is the protocol in approving requests like 

this? I mean, what criteria do you use to evaluate? How many requests do you get, for that matter? How many were turned down? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I really have no idea. I can say that since April 

1st of last year I have not seen any requests. But the normal protocol, if you would, would be a request from the law enforcement 

agency primarily responsible for that individual. In some cases it 

would be the Capitol Police, in some cases it would be the local law 

enforcement. They would request through a letter saying we request your assistance on a security assessment of a residence and 

then it would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis. 

Mr. GRAVES. Is FPS reimbursed for all of these, for the resources, 

the manpower, whatever is done? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Not that I am aware of. 

Mr. GRAVES. Well, do you think these assessments were appropriate use of FPS resources? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Not having been in the chair at the time, I would 

have to evaluate them very seriously, especially under the constraints that we have right now with the limited resources, sir. 

Mr. GRAVES. I mean, everybody is talking about manpower shortages and everybody is talking about all of these problems, but, yet, 

we have got folks running around doing—not only that, we are not 

even touching on the issues of FPS personnel doing things other 

than what they are supposed to be doing in homeland security. 

I will ask Mr. Wright, too, do you think that is an appropriate 

use of FPS personnel? 

Mr. WRIGHT. I can say that I have never seen any protocol for 

assessments on private residences. A proper security assessment I 

believe would average around 80 hours. You are talking about an 

inspector at nearly $40 an hour, then you have the management 

process, the review process from there. We are talking probably 

$3500 for each of these assessments. These are Federal officials. 

Certainly, these assessments could have been conducted by other 

security professionals. Certainly, they could have offered to reimburse. Apparently, that didn’t happen. 

I find this absolutely disturbing if this happened. We have 

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partment of Homeland Security. Matter of fact, we have known 

about the financial plight since before March of 2003, when we 

came into Homeland Security, so, to me, this is inexcusable. It is 

a fraud, waste, and abuse issue. 

Mr. GRAVES. Well, the fact that there is no protocol, as you mentioned, too—and we haven’t seen any protocol either—is something 

that disturbs me in a huge way. 

Mr. WRIGHT. And from an agency, for Ms. Myers to have a security assessment done on her residence with public funds, and then 

to turn around and not endorse Law Enforcement Officers Safety 

Act for Federal Protective Service officers so we can protect ourselves while off duty, this is inexcusable. 

Mr. GRAVES. We have got reports, too, doing assessments on 

some private companies, chemical companies, for instance. Is that 

correct, doing some outside assessment work? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am not aware of anything like that, sir. 

Mr. GRAVES. Detailed 39 inspectors for infrastructure protection? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. That is not private security work. Those people, 

we got 39—actually, it is 30 right now, 30 inspectors detailed to infrastructure protection in the chemical facility sector, and they are 

doing inspections at chemical plants. They are Federal employees, 

they are just detailed to infrastructure protection and performing 

under the direction of infrastructure protection. 

Mr. GRAVES. But it is a private facility. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. These are private facilities, yes, sir. 

Mr. GRAVES. I appreciate it, Madam Chair. Obviously, we have 

got problems that run pretty deep. 

Ms. NORTON. I think you brought out some of them. 

Mr. GRAVES. I appreciate your testimony very much. 

Ms. NORTON. But the inspectors that the Ranking Member just 

raised, the physical security specialists, these people could be doing 

some of the inspections in Federal buildings, could they not? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, why are they being detailed to private chemical plants, who can hire their own people with expertise? Why are 

we doing that? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Under the President’s fiscal year 2008 budget, we 

only had enough resources to support a force of 950. Under the 

same situation, we promised that no one would lose a job. So those 

are fully reimbursable positions paid for by IP. 

Ms. NORTON. So this brings money to keep these people working, 

these people who are necessary for the agency. In fact, if truth be 

told, this change to inspector-based workforce, Mr. Schenkel, is 

really driven by funding, isn’t it? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes and no. I have to answer that truthfully because as much as we have discussed here, the testimony from Mr. 

Goldstein, the old GAO reports, we cite proactive patrol on the law 

enforcement side as being a negative, and there are multiple negatives on the physical security side. So with limited resources in 

that aspect, yes, ma’am, I have to concentrate my activities. 

Ms. NORTON. We are just trying to get to the bottom of this. 

Now, here the testimony is that the security specialists are bringing revenue to the agency that the agency cannot get in any other 

way, because they are being hired out; therefore, the agency is 

31 

being reimbursed. If they were employed in the agency, of course, 

the agency would have to take it out of appropriations, which the 

agency does not have. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. That is correct. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, I want to establish that these inspectors, 

physical security specialists, could be doing some of the very same 

work that law enforcement officers now used as inspectors are 

doing, isn’t that correct? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. The people on the IP detail are 

LESOs, they are all LESOs. The common term is inspector, but 

they are all law enforcement security officers, not physical security 

specialists. 

Ms. NORTON. I am trying to make sure. But could not the physical security specialists be doing this work inside of Federal buildings, were we able to afford them? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am 

Ms. NORTON. Instead of law enforcement officers. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I don’t believe that they would have the expertise. A regular physical security specialists, unfortunately, when we 

came out of GSA, there were about 140 different position descriptions. The physical security specialist title actually applies to a 

multiple faceted responsibility. Some—— 

Ms. NORTON. Well, you know, these are people who can adapt 

themselves and get trained, apparently, pretty quickly by the private sector to inspect chemical plants. They must have some core 

knowledge. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Those are LESOs, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Excuse me? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am sorry, we are confusing two different positions here. The people that are at the IP detail that are doing the 

physical inspections of the chemical plants are law enforcement security officers, or inspectors, the same as we would use for the 

BSAs. 

Ms. NORTON. They are law enforcement officers? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Who would be doing work inside the agency if we 

could afford them? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. According to the GAO report—I am now reading directly from the report. I think we just need to get this straight. The 

GAO says that the FPS currently is in the process of training to 

an all-inspector workforce and adding 150 inspectors to the workforce. Is that the case? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Now, that means that you are in the process of converting from a police force, the core mission before this change, to 

a group of inspectors who do not patrol. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I don’t want to disagree with you, ma’am, but 

that is not quite correct, because by going to a 100 percent law inspector security officer force, I then have the flexibility, as opposed 

to before, as I stated, 55 percent of my force being able to do just 

the physical security parts or being overburdened with the physical 

security parts, I can now take 100—— 

32 

Ms. NORTON. But the primary function of the FPS officer is not 

going to be the normal routine proactive patrol that we associate 

with the regular police officer mission throughout the United 

States. Is that not the case? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Part of their time they will be dedicated to 

proactive patrol. 

Ms. NORTON. How much of their time? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Roughly 20 percent. 

Ms. NORTON. So for 9,000 buildings with stationary guards, 20 

percent of the time of the police officer will be spent in patrols. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Or simply responding and all that goes with police 

work. Which? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. No, in proactive patrol. 

Ms. NORTON. In proactive patrol. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Because we will be able to use the LESO in 

both—— 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Wright, let me ask you. A police officer, unlike 

a regular Federal worker, can retire earlier, isn’t that true? Is 

trained to carry a gun and is generally considered a very specialized Federal employee or employee if employed by others, is that 

right? 

Mr. WRIGHT. In the case of FPS, no. FPS police officers, FPS inspectors, neither job classification has law enforcement retirement 

benefits. 

Ms. NORTON. Neither? Sorry, would you speak into the microphone? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Neither law enforcement officers, police officers or 

inspectors, neither job series is entitled to Federal law enforcement 

benefits with the Enhanced Retirement Bill—— 

Ms. NORTON. So when do they retire? When does FPS—do they 

retire at the same retirement rate as everybody else? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes. With the exception of special agents, which is 

another class. 

Ms. NORTON. In your judgment, do you need to be a trained police officer to do the inspector function that has now become the 

primary function of these officers? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. In my judgment, the inspectors—— 

Ms. NORTON. I am asking Mr. Wright. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Oh, I am sorry. 

Ms. NORTON. Then I will ask you. 

Mr. Wright, do you think that your officers—— 

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes. 

Ms. NORTON. And then Mr. Schenkel. 

Mr. WRIGHT. In years past, the inspector position as idealized— 

basically, what you have, the original intent, as I recall—I have 

been here for a while—was a number of FPS police officers handling the majority of proactive patrol and response duties. Like I 

say, this was in years past. We wanted to supplement that core of 

police officers. Whereas, we had unarmed physical security specialists in the past, you develop a cadre of inspectors. So as your police 

officers are patrolling, responding, you had this cadre of inspectors 

who are performing building security assessments, making recommendations for protection and so on, and be available for call. 

33 

Ms. NORTON. So what is the ratio of those doing these building 

assessments and those patrolling, ideally? 

Mr. WRIGHT. That is to be determined by a workload assessment. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, I am talking about the FPS. I am trying to 

get some sense in a Federal facility. 

Mr. WRIGHT. In my ideal world, I would say two to one. 

Ms. NORTON. Two to one what? 

Mr. WRIGHT. More police officers than inspectors, definitely. 

Ms. NORTON. Would you disagree with that, Mr. Schenkel? If this 

were possible. I understand now the position you are in now and 

the funding, but with all things being equal, if this were possible, 

do you agree that in the post-9/11 world, where we have enhanced 

security here to a fare-thee-well with a 50 percent increase in Capitol police, in this same post-9/11 world, where the Federal employee lives at the two to one ratio, if we could afford it, would 

make sense? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Based on what the GSA/FPS MOA expects for 

that basic security fee, I would say Mr. Wright is probably underestimating the ratio. 

Ms. NORTON. Because of the climate in which we live. 

I am going to go to Mr. Carney, give him a chance. 

Mr. CARNEY. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just a few questions. 

Mr. Wright, since 9/11, how many officers have resigned or retired, gone to do other things? That are outside the sort of normal 

retirement cycle. 

Mr. WRIGHT. As I recall, around 9/11 we had about 1500 employees, and I believe nearly 1200 officers and inspectors. Today, the 

latest figure that I have, which is probably at least a month old, 

we are down to 1,060 law enforcement. 

Mr. CARNEY. Mr. Schenkel, you mentioned RAMP, the program 

RAMP. When is that going to be ready to be deployed? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. The contract is going to be awarded within the 

next three weeks. We should have the pilot on the street in January 2009. 

Mr. CARNEY. Okay. How long is the pilot supposed to last, do you 

know? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. It is not determined yet, but we hope to have it 

in everyone’s hands by the end of 2009 or early 2010, this being 

the reason: because we have six different systems that we are dependent on right now, several of which don’t belong to us. That is 

why we need this system so desperately to make those determinations, as Mr. Wright alluded to, for those workload models and 

studies. 

Mr. CARNEY. Okay, when you talk about your work, Mr. 

Schenkel, with local authorities, you have a deconfliction issue, everywhere, I imagine. What are you doing to provide that 

deconfliction and how much do you actually rely on local law enforcement officials? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. In most areas, a great deal. With the exception 

of some exclusive jurisdictional areas, we depend primarily on local 

law enforcement. Say, for the State of Maine, the State of Maine 

has never had more than three FPS officers or inspectors. To think 

that there would be a commensurate response as there would be, 

say, at 26 Federal Plaza would never happen. So, consequently, we 

34 

depend on these mutually beneficial relationships. We have bomb 

dogs that we work with local law enforcement. We do provide a 

physical security assessment if they need one for a specific event 

or facility. And that mutually beneficial and mutually supporting 

effort has worked out quite well for us. 

Mr. CARNEY. Okay. 

Mr. Wright, what is the state of morale with FPS officers? 

Mr. WRIGHT. As I said in my statement, it is absolutely in the 

tank. I think the Union’s efforts in keeping morale up and assuring 

the employees that things have to get better has been instrumental 

in keeping a lot of individuals around. I lost a lot of good friends 

that have departed for other agencies. Like I say, other than that, 

it is in the tank. 

Mr. CARNEY. Mr. Schenkel, given a reasonable estimate, if you 

could have the resources you needed—and I am not talking about 

the gold plate and everything here, I am talking about just the resources to do the job—how much more money do you need, do you 

think? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. The decision has to be made first on what our 

customer agencies have to expect for that basic security fee. Like 

I said, if it is 24 hour response, we would need 45,000 police officers to have 24 hour coverage at every one of our 9,000 facilities. 

Right now, that basic security fee gives an expectation that Maine 

will have the same kind of response in police presence as 26 Federal Plaza or NCR here, which is limited on resources as well. So 

to throw a dollar out without that starting point I think would be 

unfair. 

Mr. CARNEY. Okay, well, let’s make it fair. How close are we to 

assessing that need? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Well, we are entering the negotiations right now 

with GSA on our next MOA, so I think this is what the accountability report stresses, is that there has got to be a starting point 

and a fairness or equitable adjustment, if you will, on what the 

basic security responsibilities of FPS are for all 9,000 buildings, 

and then those that are level IV, say, for instance, that require a 

greater level of attention or a greater police presence. 

Mr. CARNEY. This will be my final question, Madam Chair. 

If you were someone who was intending to do the Country harm, 

would you be happier today or more concerned? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I would be less concerned than I was a year ago, 

but I am always concerned; that is why I am in this business. The 

reason I say that is I think because we have been focused now on 

that contact guard oversight, on that countermeasure implementation, and the requirements that our customers expect, I think that 

our buildings are in better shape than they perhaps were a year 

and a half ago. But I think there is always room for great improvement. 

Mr. CARNEY. Mr. Wright, care to comment? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Personally, I believe that we are more at risk today 

than prior to 9/11, similar to the days prior to the Oklahoma City 

bombing. 

Mr. CARNEY. No further questions. 

35 

Ms. NORTON. It is very hard to understand how things get better 

with the fewer staff you have patrolling buildings. Maybe I live in 

another kind of world. 

Mr. Schenkel, you spoke about in negotiation with GSA on the 

fees. It hasn’t seemed to have gotten us very far, but it might if 

OMB were to take the lump sums that had been agreed upon and 

if they became an indirect appropriation in a lump sum. That 

would seem to be a common sense way of doing this. Could we ask 

that that be done? Is there any reason why that could not be done 

to try to at least clear up the getting the fees where they are supposed to go? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I think that would be a good start because that 

would give that baseline appropriation, if you will, for those basic 

security requirements that FPS could offer, and then there would 

be that additional charge for any other building-specific charges 

which should include additional police presence in some buildings. 

Ms. NORTON. Now are you willing to make that recommendation 

to OMB? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I have already discussed this with them, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. What has OMB said about this? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. They haven’t said much. I haven’t got a response. 

Ms. NORTON. The Committee, we are just looking for a more efficient way to get at the fees question. They seemed to work when 

they were at GSA. This is very bothersome that the switch, where 

now it looks like appropriated funds come into the picture, and we 

get serious budget problems in the agency that weren’t there before. 

Mr. Wright, do you have any view on this? One lump sum? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes, that would be an absolute great first step. We 

have to make those fees invisible to the agencies because, as we 

speak, agencies are stepping away from FPS and forming their own 

physical security programs. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, how are they able to do that? You mean they 

are taking what they otherwise would give, what they used to give 

to GSA, for example, and simply not giving the money at all? 

Is that true, Mr. Schenkel? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Well, the taxpayer is paying it twice is what is 

happening. GSA is moving forward with a physical security program that basically duplicates what FPS is doing. 

Ms. NORTON. Why have you delegated them the authority to do 

this? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. We have not. We have not delegated them the 

authority, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, how are they able to? 

How many agencies in this area, in the D.C. metropolitan area, 

have what amount to must be some kind of implied delegation authority to move away? 

Do you know of any who are, in fact, moving away, Mr. Wright? 

Can you name any? 

Mr. WRIGHT. The main one that causes me concern is the U.S. 

Marshal Service and Administrator of the Courts. We now have a 

pilot program in place which the Marshal Service has taken over 

perimeter security or they are scheduled to here in the next couple 

of months, taking over perimeter security at Federal courthouses. 

36 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Schenkel, that clearly could not have happened 

without an MOU from FPS or somebody. You can’t just step in and 

say, okay, we are doing your job now. 

And, by the way, I am worried about this being paid twice. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Right. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Mr. WRIGHT. I will say on FPS’s behalf, there is tremendous 

pressure from the judiciary and the Administrator of the Courts on 

these issues. 

Ms. NORTON. Again, here, we get back to GSA not doing its job 

because the courts then run the FPS or whoever are the guards. 

This is going to require Congress to look. This, of course, is also 

in our jurisdiction because the courts are. 

This is going to require really, once again, our trying to get a 

hold of courts who also tried to build their own buildings until we 

got a hold of that, and now they are trying to guard their own 

buildings. This, obviously, complicates these negotiations you are 

in. 

But I need to know where the authority is coming and, Mr. 

Schenkel, within 30 days, I need to know the names of any agencies which are now doing their own security outside of the now— 

I was about to say GSA—the FPS-administered security. That is 

number one. 

I want to know how many, who are they and by what authority 

within 30 days, would you please submit to this Committee? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. We have already just completed an 

inventory, and so we have that. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you. 

But you don’t know what the authority has been for doing that? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Prior to FPS coming to the Department of Homeland Security, these delegations of authority were granted fairly 

easily by the GSA. We have not granted. 

Ms. NORTON. You think all of these are old authorities and none 

of them have recently come? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. None of them have been recent, no, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. They could be pulled back, however. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, it is very important to get that information 

because this Committee has jurisdiction over the courts, whomever 

it is who has done this. 

Let me ask you, Mr. Schenkel, how has placing FPS in ICE improved the performance of FPS? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. In the financial realm primarily because we deal 

with 800. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, of course, not until we got together because 

there was quite a shambles there. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. That is absolutely correct. Yes, ma’am. But, as 

you know, we deal with about $800 million in contracts a year. We 

are not staffed to handle that kind of a financial challenge. 

Ms. NORTON. It would appear—and you may tell me different 

and I would be glad to hear it—that infrastructure and the Office 

of Infrastructure Protection may have a more closely related mission, and they could handle the overhead issues that FPS isn’t 

equipped to handle? 

37 

Why was ICE chosen? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Ma’am, that happened long before I got here. 

Ms. NORTON. But you would think that the mission would be understood enough to know why we are here rather than there. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. The mission aligns itself. However, Infrastructure Protection does not have the law enforcement authority. I can 

only surmise that were put in ICE. 

Ms. NORTON. Border Control has law enforcement authority, but 

it is altogether different from what FPS does, and those distinctions are made even in the officers and in their benefits and every 

other way, apparently. 

So just putting things together, they call themselves police forces, 

and that is what we fear. Is that how they got put together? 

Is the overhead problem dealing with that problem, why FPS is 

not a stand-alone agency? Couldn’t DHS then handle these overhead problems, filling out the forms and the payroll? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am talking primarily on the contract side, 

ma’am. The HR system could certainly support our officers and our 

mission support. 

Ms. NORTON. Oh, I see. You mean the contract officers. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am, and the contracts themselves. We 

would have to have some kind of deep support system to support 

our minimal mission support staff when dealing with these contracts. 

Ms. NORTON. Has going to an inspector-based force done anything about staffing except reduce it, anything about funding except reduce it? Indeed, has it even allowed the security assessments to be performed in a timely manner? 

I am trying to find some benefit for having gone to this inspectorbased workforce. 

Yes, Mr. Schenkel. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am, it has because we have been able to 

now complete all of the overdue basic security assessments. We 

have been able to work a work plan. 

Ms. NORTON. But the GAO does not say so. They say it is not 

on a timely basis. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I would have to refute that, ma’am, and I have 

the documentation to show it. 

Ms. NORTON. Okay. We are going to ask you to submit that within 30 days. That is the kind of thing we want, if you disagree with 

the GAO report, we will be pleased to get that assessment. Go 

ahead. 

You go to an inspector-based workforce and immediately, look 

what happens. You reduce the staff. You make up for your funding 

shortfall, and it is hard for us to see any other benefit and certainly any other benefit to law enforcement as such. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Well, the benefit to law enforcement, as Mr. 

Wright has already discussed, we don’t have 6c coverage. We don’t 

have a law enforcement retirement. 

By moving our police officers to a LESO position, an inspector 

position, we give them the opportunity to have a career path where 

they can, instead of topping out at a GS-7 or 8 police officer, they 

can be promoted up to a GS-12. That is attracting some or many, 

I should say, not just some of our police officers. 

38 

Ms. NORTON. Well, Mr. Wright, is that true, the retirement benefits? Do any other benefits enhance by moving? 

Do your officers prefer this new dual structure? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Benefits are not enhanced. They are offered the career opportunity to top out at a GS-12 and potentially a career 

track to 13, 14, 15. 

Ms. NORTON. So there is some benefit to the employee. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Correct, but it is not, as we call in law enforcement, 

6c or 12d benefits is not included in that 

Ms. NORTON. What is the reluctance to make the Federal Protective Service Officer equivalent of other officers? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. There is no reluctant, ma’am. We would love to 

have 6c coverage. 

Ms. NORTON. I can’t understand the difference between the Capitol Police. I can’t help but to make this invidious comparison between the various police forces. I am not sure I like what I see 

here. 

Mr. WRIGHT. I think historically it has been tied to the language 

of the law. As it was developed initially, to my understanding, it 

was aimed towards criminal investigators. Long-term investigations being a requirement of that original law. 

Ms. NORTON. Which original law? I am sorry. Which original 

law? 

Mr. WRIGHT. I would have to submit that to you. I can look up. 

Ms. NORTON. I am sorry. I didn’t hear. Would you start again because I didn’t understand the distinction you were making? 

Mr. WRIGHT. The reluctance for giving Federal Protective Service 

the 6c-12d law enforcement officer benefits, it has always been disputed by OPM, number one. 

The definition of our law enforcement, our police officers never 

fit the definition given in 6c and 12d because that law, that original law focused on long-term investigations. It was designed for 

criminal investigators and special agents. 

As it has developed throughout the years, that law has incorporated everything from detention to protection of public officials, 

basically everything but a first responder. 

Ms. NORTON. Initially, you say there were criminal investigations. Like investigators and nothing more, is that it? 

Mr. WRIGHT. The history that I understand as to how that law 

was developed was aimed toward criminal investigators. 

Ms. NORTON. But these are peace officers, carry guns and do 

whatever else other peace officers do. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Absolutely. 

Ms. NORTON. You heard our concern, Mr. Schenkel, about these 

MOUs and, by the way, we heard your testimony about the mutual 

relationships that have been developed in some places where there 

are shallow Federal facilities. In the first place, I think that is very 

efficient and commend the agency for that. 

But, of course, the cities or jurisdictions we were talking about, 

the 50 that were to lose all FPS officers, had them before and 

didn’t have mutual relationships. You heard the testimony that not 

only were there no MOUs, some of them had not heard of MOUs. 

They weren’t in these other relationships you described earlier with 

Mr. Carney. 

39 

For all intents and purposes, in these 50 cities, do any kind of 

formal relationships of any kind exist between the local police department and the agency, the Federal Agency? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. As far as an MOU or an MOA signed with a law 

enforcement? 

Ms. NORTON. Or any other thing you can cite. So informal relationships doesn’t mean anything that the Federal employee and the 

agency can rely upon? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Other than the fact that 81 percent of the 9,000 

buildings are leased properties. So, consequently, local law enforcement is obligated to respond and to protect those facilities. 

As far as an MOU or an MOA, we do not have those. 

Ms. NORTON. Well, how is it that the testimony was that they 

had not understood that they were to respond to those properties? 

It might be a leased property, but if it is a Federal Agency called 

the XYZ Agency and you are a local officer, you think it is the XYZ 

Federal Agency. Unless you know that you are supposed to respond, the fact that it is leased to a Federal Agency doesn’t mean 

it isn’t Federal property. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am not disagreeing with you at all, ma’am, because I didn’t even the Federal Protective Service existed when I 

was with the Chicago Police Department, but I think that is indicative of the paucity of the agency. It is not that people are ignoring 

the Federal Protective Service, but because they have always responded to those facilities, whether they be Federal or not, they 

didn’t even know we existed. 

Ms. NORTON. Are you telling me that the Chicago Police Department responded to Federal facilities? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Schenkel, name the kinds of Federal facilities 

that the local police department felt they should respond to in Chicago. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Any other than the main Federal buildings and 

courthouse downtown. 

Ms. NORTON. So, in point of fact, you believe that they have a 

responsibility to respond and they will respond, and you don’t need 

to have FPS officers associated with these structures. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I didn’t say that, and I would never say that. I 

think we do need Federal police officers or Federal law enforcement 

security officers involved because that builds those relationships 

and provides that in-depth knowledge and that leveled security, if 

you will. 

Ms. NORTON. So you are then? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am a proponent of Federal law enforcement. 

Ms. NORTON. Then you think that these 50 cities or jurisdictions 

should be covered? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. If we have the resources, absolutely, yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Can you testify here today who can be expected to 

respond in those 50 jurisdictions which are now not covered by 

MOUs or in any other formal way? 

Do you know for a fact that the local police would respond? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I would have to go city by city, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Have you gone city by city? 

40 

Mr. Schenkel, it seems to me that there is an affirmative duty 

here. Given the GAO report that tells us that these local police officers don’t understand that there was to be an MOU or that they 

were to respond, there is now an affirmative duty on the part of 

FPS to make sure that these 50 jurisdictions are covered. How are 

you making sure they are covered? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Because I rely on the 81 percent of Federal properties that are leased, and then we have to. Our entire knowledge—— 

Ms. NORTON. See, we are going in circles now because the testimony from the GAO was that these people didn’t even know that 

there were supposed to be MOUs, and you are relying on the fact 

that they know that they are supposed to go in. You see why I 

would be nervous if I were in those 50 jurisdictions, to hear the 

contradiction between you and the GAO on that score? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I am not trying to contradict. I am just trying to 

add, I guess, a sense of perspective here is that local law enforcement patrols, responds to nearly all of the facilities, whether they 

be Federal or not, in their local jurisdiction. It certainly could be 

enhanced by the presence or an increase in numbers of Federal law 

enforcement officers. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Schenkel, the Subcommittee is going to have 

to ask you to submit evidence within 30 days that in those 50 jurisdictions, local law enforcement has been informed that they may 

enter a Federal facility. 

This is very important to note. We had some testimony from the 

GAO that the FPS opened the facility and let in the local law enforcement officer, thereby apparently giving them permission. 

But you are telling me they have permission and they should 

know they have permission and they should know that you are relying on them if there is a call and, moreover, that these Federal 

facilities know that who they are supposed to call is the local police 

department. That is your testimony here today? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. No, ma’am, not at all. The Federal facilities know 

to call the mega center if there is an alarm or if there is an intrusion or if there is a problem and then based on availability of Federal police officers. 

Ms. NORTON. There are no Federal police officers, we now know, 

in those 50 jurisdictions, Mr. Schenkel. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Then the mega centers contact local law enforcement, and local law enforcement makes the response. 

Ms. NORTON. So it seems to me if that is the case and I am in 

a Federal building, a Federal courthouse or something, I think I 

want to call the local cops myself rather than to use you as the 

pass-through. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. In many cases. 

Ms. NORTON. Because you won’t have any help to give to me and 

only the local law enforcement? Do you realize how chaotic this is, 

Mr. Schenkel? 

Mr. Schenkel, I need to know. This Subcommittee needs to know 

within 30 days who the 50 jurisdictions are, whether they understand and whether you have informed them that they are principally to rely on local law enforcement, whether the local law enforcement knows that they have been informed and that they have 

41 

permission to enter Federal facilities. Within 30 days, we need that 

information. 

We will not close this session in this state of affairs, just not 

knowing. There have been too many questions raised by the report. 

We need to know, particularly in those 50 jurisdictions, do they 

know that they are not covered because there is not Federal police 

there? 

Do they know? Therefore, have you informed them? Therefore, 

you obviously should inform them that they must call the local police. 

The local police, you will have to inform that the local police 

know and understand that they are to respond to these calls. You 

will have to inform us that they have permission and understand 

they have permission to enter a Federal facility. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I don’t think that can be done, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Excuse me? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. I don’t think that can be done. 

Ms. NORTON. Why? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Because it would be dependent literally on each 

and every individual facility within each and every—— 

Ms. NORTON. They all come out of your jurisdiction. We are talking about FPS jurisdiction. Where you used to have officers, you 

don’t have officers now, and you are telling me that you are depending upon the fact that they are leased buildings and they can 

call the local cops if they only call you first. 

Now I am trying to find out whether we can get together a system that would work there and would make us feel that these employees are being protected. 

We don’t have any testimony from you that the locals will respond. Your testimony is based on the fact that these are leased 

buildings. This leaves us in a totally problematic position here with 

respect to at least those 50 positions, and we would hate to move 

from others where there may be only 1 or 2 FPS officers. 

I don’t know what to tell you. I think you need to come in and 

talk to staff because either you have to work out a system whereby 

they know they are supposed to respond or you have to respond. 

You have the authority if it is a Federal facility. There is no way 

to get away from your responsibility. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. If you put a note—— 

Ms. NORTON. If you are here testifying you are not going to accept that responsibility, you then have the responsibility to make 

sure that somebody will. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. In that context. 

Ms. NORTON. We have no reason to believe that the local police 

officers or the local police understand or have been informed that 

they have permission to enter and that they are being depended 

upon to enter. I don’t even know that you have the authority to do 

it, to tell you the honest to goodness truth. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Okay. 

Ms. NORTON. You see my problem, Mr. Schenkel. I am going to 

have staff be in touch with you. This is a dangerous situation, sir. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Finally, liability, just before I run to vote, I can 

vote in the Committee as a whole. 

42 

Liability, a confused notion that we could have people, contractors who have obviously have been contracted by the Federal Government but believe they cannot do part of their job because they 

personally would incur liability. Would you explain, please? They, 

the contractor. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Other than with the GAO report, that is the first 

I have heard of that, but they are held to responsibilities to retain 

and to react, the contractors and the contract guards. So we have 

to address that on a case by case basis on that individual contractor which we will be more than happy to do if the GAO provides the names of the contractor. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Wright, do you know anything about this? 

Mr. WRIGHT. Yes. It has been pretty historical. 

I think, as I testified last year, each security company, each security guard has differing commissioning requirements. So, if he is a 

guard in Kansas City, he has to go to Kansas City PD and get a 

commission. That commission sets his authority on what he is able 

to do on any property, to include Federal property. 

That being said, contractors are private companies. I am not 

anti-free enterprise, but companies and individuals acting in that 

capacity, they don’t have a career, a Federal career to worry about. 

They don’t have the backup of the U.S. Attorney or the Department 

of Justice. 

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Wright, I understand that. I am a lawyer, and 

that is why I understand that this could be corrected. I understand 

what you are saying. They are State-regulated. 

Mr. WRIGHT. Right. 

Ms. NORTON. We hire them, we, the Federal Government. It is 

something called Federal Supremacy. The notion that a Federal 

contractor might not perform his stated duties because of liability 

is a clear and present danger to the assignment he has. 

Mr. Schenkel, I am going to ask you within 30 days to have your 

General Counsel. Would it be the General Counsel of ICE? 

Mr. SCHENKEL. OPLA, they call it, Office of Principal Legal Advisor. 

Ms. NORTON. The General Counsel, to get us a clarifying memo. 

I want him to read the GAO examples of where contractors felt 

they could not move forward to perform the duties in their contract 

for fear of liability, and I would like a legal memorandum describing that situation and what they propose to do about it. 

Mr. SCHENKEL. Yes, ma’am. 

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much for this. This has been very 

important testimony to a hearing that will require us to take some 

action, some action before this session of Congress closes. We must 

take the action because the Committee now is on notice. 

We have cross-examined the witnesses. You have done the best 

you could in answering it. Some of it is not in your control, and 

we understand. Some of it has to do with funding. Some of it has 

to do with management. All of it will have to do with everybody’s 

responsibility if we leave this session of Congress without doing 

something about it. 

I thank you very much for this testimony, and this hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, 3:45 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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