Abu Ghraib, Iraq
October 28, 2005 Macon Telegraph
Abu Ghraib means different things to different people. For the people of Iraq, it is where tens of thousands of family members died in Saddam Hussein's death house or were tortured under his regime. Around the world, it is the scene of the infamous prisoner abuse scandal that led to U.S. soldiers doing time for war crimes. For retired Macon firefighter John Wood, it is now home. Before beginning his role as a civilian firefighter working for Wackenhut Services LLC, Wood spent two weeks at Camp Victory near Baghdad, Iraq, to get acclimated to the heat. The prison-turned-military base is home now to some 5,000 detainees, U.S. soldiers and a multinational force that operates a combat supply hospital, Wood said. "It just blew me away," Wood said of his arrival at Abu Ghraib. "I didn't know what to expect, and when I got there, it was beyond my worst expectation."

Afghanistan
December 8, 2009 Rueters
The State Department will not renew the contract of a security company embroiled in a scandal involving the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, where guards were accused of drunken conduct and sexual hazing. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Tuesday Virginia-based ArmorGroup would not have its contract renewed when it expires in June, although it will receive a six-month extension to allow the contract to be put up for new bids. Toner said officials had reviewed the contract and "concurred that the next option year should not be exercised and that work begin immediately to compete a new contract." He said the review included both recent misconduct allegations against ArmorGroup personnel and the company's "history of contract compliance deficiencies." This week a report by the non-partisan Government Accounting Office identified a number of shortcomings in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security including staffing shortage and increased reliance on contractors in high-risk posts. The Kabul embassy scandal broke in September, when a watchdog group accused ArmorGroup of jeopardizing security at the embassy by understaffing the facility and ignoring lewd, drunken conduct and sexual hazing by some guards -- and provided graphic photos as evidence. ArmorGroup North America, now owned by Florida-based Wackenhut Services, was also hit by a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that said it had ignored brothel visits by guards and other misconduct because of what a lawyer said was a "myopic preoccupation with profit" in its five-year, $187 million contract with the State Department. State Department officials said the safety of embassy staff was never in jeopardy. But they subsequently said 12 embassy guards had been removed or resigned, ArmorGroup's entire senior Kabul management replaced and alcohol banned at the group's camp. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered a thorough review of how contractors are used. The GAO report noted that worldwide, the U.S. diplomatic security budget had grown to $1.8 billion in 2008 from just $200 million in 1998, when truck bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people including 12 Americans. The bureau's workforce has also doubled over the same period but is failing to keep pace with rising security threats including those faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, it said. "Staffing shortages in domestic offices and other operational challenges -- such as inadequate facilities, language deficiencies, experience gaps, and balancing security needs with State's diplomatic mission -- further tax its ability to implement all of its missions," the report said. The report urged the State Department to develop a strategic plan to directly address the rising demands of diplomatic security including increased staffing.

September 18, 2009 AP
A top executive of the private security contractor hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan was informed in July 2008 of alleged illegal and immoral conduct by guards, attorneys for a whistleblower suing the company said Friday. The claim contradicts the sworn testimony of Samuel Brinkley, a vice president for Wackenhut Services, the owner of ArmorGroup North America. Brinkley told the Commission on Wartime Contracting under oath on Monday that he and other corporate officials outside of Afghanistan didn't know until a few weeks ago of problems that reportedly included lurid parties and ArmorGroup employees frequenting brothels in Kabul. But in a 10-page letter to the commission, the attorneys say their client, James Gordon, told Brinkley during a meeting on July 15, 2008, of alleged guard misconduct. The meeting took place in Brinkley's office in Arlington, Va., Gordon said in a separate e-mail through the lawyers. Gordon was ArmorGroup's director of operations until February 2008. He says he was forced out of the job after trying to get the company to fix a long list of shortcomings with the $189 million embassy security contract that the State Department awarded ArmorGroup in March 2007. He filed a lawsuit earlier this month in federal court claiming the company retaliated against him for telling the department about the deficiencies. Brinkley and Wackenhut did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a previous statement on the lawsuit, a Wackenhut spokeswoman called Gordon's claims baseless and said he voluntarily resigned from the company. Clark Irwin, a spokesman for the wartime contracting commission, said the congressionally mandated panel is reviewing the letter. At the commission's Sept. 14 hearing on ArmorGroup's performance, Brinkley portrayed himself and other company executives as being blindsided by the misconduct of a small number of employees. "I am not here to defend the indefensible," Brinkley said. "Certain of our personnel behaved very badly." During a series of heated exchanges, commissioners pressed Brinkley to explain why he didn't tell the State Department of reports that guards were behaving inappropriately, potentially putting security of a key U.S. diplomatic outpost at risk. Brinkley said ArmorGroup managers in Afghanistan only told him about an Aug. 11 incident involving nine employees who got drunk at a bar near their living quarters. Those workers were counseled by the on-site manager and a temporary ban on alcohol was imposed. He said the State Department was informed of this incident on Aug. 26. Brinkley said he wasn't aware of the scope and duration of the misconduct until Sept. 1 when a watchdog group released a report with photos showing guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol. The watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, also said guards were subjected to abuse and hazing by supervisors who created a hostile work environment. The letter from Gordon's attorneys says they are concerned Brinkley's testimony did not provide the commission with a "full and accurate understanding of many of the events in question."

September 14, 2009 Government Executive
The State Department should terminate ArmorGroup North America's contract for security services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, witnesses and panelists said during a Commission on Wartime Contracting hearing on Monday. The recent photographs and report from the Project on Government Oversight detailing alleged lewd, drunken behavior by guards at the embassy just describe the latest and most egregious violation by ArmorGroup, witnesses told the panel. State Department Undersecretary of Management Patrick Kennedy testified that the contract has required "extensive oversight and management." Since awarding the contract to ArmorGroup on March 12, 2007, State has issued seven deficiency notices addressing 25 deficiencies, one cure notice and one show-cause notice. Each notice demanded separate correction action plans to resolve contractual issues and several involved serious allegations, including that the contractor had deceived the government in its contract proposal. Despite these problems, State has not terminated the contract with ArmorGroup and has, in fact, exercised an extension of the contract period. State officials said they are awaiting the results of an ongoing investigation into the contractor's conduct at the embassy. Commissioner Clark Kent Ervin pressed Kennedy to pledge State would terminate the contract if the probe validates the allegations made against the contract employees. While Kennedy was hesitant to speculate on a hypothetical situation, he said he could imagine an outcome of the investigation that would lead the agency to terminate the contract. "We're seeing a serious case being made for termination," he said. William Moser, deputy assistant secretary of State for logistics management, told the commission a public hearing was not the proper forum to talk about future contract actions. Regardless, he said the department is discussing potential alternatives and approaching the reevaluation of the contract "with a great deal of seriousness." Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO, said the organization's investigation shows State officials were notified of serious issues relating to the ArmorGroup contract repeatedly, and took limited action. "For the two years of this contract, State's response to whistleblowers' sustained complaints and to its own finding of severe noncompliance consisted mainly of written reprimands and the renewal of ArmorGroup's contract," Brian said. "Simply documenting a problem or even levying a fine is not effective oversight when those same problems continue to occur." Brian said State has been "stubbornly defensive" in not recognizing its own failures, and how those failures have caused misconduct and potential lapses in security. While POGO strongly believes the contract should be canceled and ArmorGroup -- or its parent company, Wackenhut -- should be debarred from doing business with the government, that will not prevent future problems, Brian said. To ensure proper conduct by contractors overseas, State must shorten the rotations of its regional security officers, perform more frequent audits and independent verification of contractor reports of compliance, and prioritize accountability, she said. "This cultural shift will be aided by canceling contracts when the contractor consistently underperforms -- which will have the added benefit of acting as a deterrent to future contractors -- and by disciplining the State Department officials who are responsible for the failed oversight of the ArmorGroup contract," Brian said. Commissioner Linda Gustitus said State already lost authority with industry by not terminating its contract with Blackwater Worldwide in the wake of the Nissor Square shooting incident in Iraq. "That helped to send a message to other contractors that you can do a lot and not have you contract terminated," Gustitus said. Several commissioners joined Brian in urging Kennedy to hold accountable the State employees responsible for managing Armor Group by firing them, withholding bonuses or taking some other disciplinary action.

September 14, 2009 Wayne Madsen Report
At a September 10 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, two former managers for ArmorGroup North America (AGNA), headquartered in McLean, Virginia and a subsidiary of ArmorGroup International (AGI), revealed a litany of contract fraud and abuse charges against AGNA and AGI and provided further details of sexual deviancy among AGNA security guards in Kabul tasked with protecting the U.S. embassy. ArmorGroup is now owned by Wackenhut Services, Inc., headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The two former employees are suing AGNA, AGI, Wackenhut, and Corporation Service Company for wrongful termination, false claims, and conspiracy. John Gorman, a retired Marine Corps veteran who was the camp manager at the security guard force’s Camp Sullivan, blew the whistle on contract non-performance, security pitfalls, and sexual deviancy, and was placed under virtual house arrest in June 2007 by AGNA’s top manager in Kabul, Michael O’Connell, and flown out of the country. Gorman was terminated and confined for some 24 hours, along with two other AGNA managers, James Sauer, a retired Marine sergeant major and Pete Martino, a retired Marine colonel, who filed complaints to both AGNA and the Regional Security Office (RSO) for the U.S. embassy in Kabul, also Marine Corps veterans. Because they told the RSO they feared for their personal safety after bringing the charges against AGNA, he offered them the security of his apartment on the embassy compound, which they turned down only to later have their cell phones and weapons confiscated by AGNA and being confined before their flight out of the country. Gorman said no one at AGNA “ever mentioned or indicated a concern for the actual security at the embassy -- the greatest and only concerns were the profit margin and the bottom line.” Gorman said the project manager for the security contract, Sauer, a man with 35 years of experience as a 30-year career Marine with private security contractor experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, was “ignored, second guessed, and rejected.” Sauer had vehemently objected to allowing security personnel to be deployed to Kabul who had engaged in “lewd and deviant behavior” during their subcontractor training in Texas. After Gorman, Sauer, and Martino made their complaints known to McConnell, the corporate executive replied that ArmorGroup was a publicly traded company and could, therefore, not hire more people “because he had a responsibility to the shareholders.” The effect was the hiring of clearly unqualified personnel for the security guard force. Gorman said that there were people hired as guards who had “no DD214s, driver’s licenses, passports,” including one person who had been fired from a previous security project for pulling a pistol on another employee while drunk. AGNA, according to Gorman, covered up the security contract failures because the firm was “to assume the $187 million a year security contract for the American embassy in Kabul in less than two weeks and they were bidding on the more lucrative $500 million contract for the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. James Gordon, a New Zealand citizen and New Zealand Army veteran who is married to an American, worked for ArmorGroup Iraq as the operations manager, a subsidiary of AGI, also spoke about corporate malfeasance involving AGNA. He later became the business development director for AGNA headquarters in McLean. In 2007, Gordon took over as operations director for the Kabul embassy security contract and attempted to bring the contract into compliance with State Department requirements. Eventually, Gordon was forced out of the company because instead of correcting contract violations the firm’s only goal was to “maximize profits.” Gordon said among AGNA security personnel were unqualified personnel, some of whom had serious criminal records. Some guard recruits had engaged in “disgusting behavior” during their initial training at AGI’s subsidiary’s training facility, International Training Inc. (ITI) of Pearsall, Texas. Sauer, Martino, and Gorman had received reports that some of the AGNA recruits, while undergoing pre-deployment in Texas, had engaged in “lewd, aberrant, and sexually deviant behavior, including sexual hazing, urination on one another and equipment, bullying, ‘mooning,’” exposing themselves, excessive drinking, and other conduct making themselves unfit for service on the contract. The AGNA employees who were later forced out of the company attempted to ensure that the trainees in Texas never arrived in Kabul. Several email exchanges (“e-pong”) show they tried to block the sexual deviants from duty in Kabul. AGNA also misrepresented ethnic Nepalese Gurkha farmers hired as security guards for the Kabul embassy job as Gurkha military veterans of the British and Indian armies. In fact. the Gurkha farmers hired from Nepal and northern India were not proficient in English as required under the State Department contract. In fact, some could speak no English. The language test had never been administered to the Gurkha recruits. When some Gurkha guards walked off their jobs in May 2007 because of poor wages and treatment, Carol Ruart, AGI’s human resources director in London, ordered AGNA management in Kabul to “lock [the Gurkhas] in their rooms until they agree to work for less.” Gordon also stated that AGNA never invested in secure vehicles to transport embassy guards between the embassy and other locations. AGNA used broken down vehicles called “white coffins.” After the State Department released funds to AGNA to buy secure vehicles, the firm never bought the vehicles but transferred the money to AGI in London. AGNA also hired a “rogue” South African program manager for the embassy contract in Kabul, according to Gordon. DuPlessis replaced Sauer. Jimmy Lemmon replaced Martino as deputy program manager. During the tenure of the South African, Nick duPlessis, ammunition went missing from Camp Sullivan where the guards were bivouacked and illegal weapons were stored at the facility. Moreover, duPlessis did not possess a security clearance to receive classified briefings, a requirement for the program manager position. In addition, Gordon stated that the AGNA logistics manager, Sean Garcia, used contract funds to purchase counterfeit North Face and Altama jackets and boots for the security guards from his wife’s company in Lebanon, Trends General Trading and Marketing LLC of Beirut. Gordon said, “the cheap knock-offs could never keep the men warm during the cold winters in Afghanistan.” After Gordon notified the State Department about the contract breach, the order to remove him was ignored and the State Department continues to own sub-par counterfeit material. Gordon sent an email dated September 3, 2007 to duPlessis and his staff in Kabul. Gordon also said that the AGNA armorer in Kabul, responsible for maintaining all the weapons, had to be “forcibly removed” from a brothel in Kabul. Many of the prostitutes working in Kabul, according to Gordon, are young Chinese girls who were taken against their will to Kabul for sexual exploitation. When Gordon ordered the armorer’s immediate termination, he discovered that the AGNA medic, Neville Montefiore, and duPlessis, the program manager, had also frequented the brothels with the armorer. Gordon also discovered that there had been an outbreak of sexually-transmitted diseases among the AGNA guards in 2007 and this was never reported to the State Department as required by the contract. Prostitutes also frequently visited Camp Sullivan. Gordon also discovered that the guard force routinely visited brothels in Kabul and Montefiore’s replacement discovered the improper storage of regulated narcotics at Camp Sullivan’s medical facility, including morphine. “You can rest assured that there is no hiding of information from the DoS [Department of State]. Anyone who thinks that they can get away with this will probably end up in a Federal Penitentiary. It is our duty to report on all aspects of the contract performance and we are required to be transparent and honest in our dealings. Personally I wouldn’t accept anything else.” Gordon’s plans to visit Kabul to conduct an investigation were immediately shut down by ArmorGroup’s parent office in London. Gordon said it is contrary to U.S. law for a foreign company to direct or influence any activities on a classified contract. Moreover, the British parent conducted their own investigation, which resulted in a three-page whitewash. Gordon was denied access to all information about AGI London’s investigation. After the whitewash, Gordon received a report that an AGNA trainee wanted to be hired on as a security guard at the embassy in Kabul because he knew someone “who owned prostitutes there.” The trainee boasted that he could purchase a girl for $20,000 and earn a handsome profit each month. The trainee, according to Gordon, had previously worked in Kabul under duPlessis. Neither AGNA nor the State Department conducted a follow-up investigation of the violations of the U.S. Trafficking in Victims Protection Act by AGNA employees. AGNA responded to Gordon’s warnings by blaming him for all the contract’s failures and he was forced to leave the firm on February 29, 2008. After Wackenhut Services Inc. bought ArmorGroup, after Gordon left the company, he met with Sam Brinkley, the vice president of Wackenhut, to discuss the contract problems. Brinkley promised to remove duPlessis and investigate all the charges of misconduct. On June 10, 2009, Gordon was present during hearings held by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Gordon said that Brinkley and the State Department testified to McCaskill’s subcommittee on contracting oversight that AGNA was “fully compliant” on the security contract for the embassy in Kabul. Brinkley told the subcommittee that he “was proud” of the way the company had been managing the embassy security contract. Gordon said the situation at Camp Sullivan had worsened and the U.S. Embassy was facing a grave security threat. McCaskill and ranking Republican member Susan Collins (R-ME) never heard testimony from any of the whistleblowers on AGNA’s poor security record in Kabul. The only witnesses heard were Brinkley and William Moser, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Logistics Management. Brinkley, in addition to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, has responsibility for the security contract for the U.S. Naval Support Activity in Bahrain, which, according to ex-AGNA sources, may be using untrained Gurkha farmers from the Indian subcontinent as crack veterans of the British and Indian armies. The Gorman/Gordon lawsuit states that on October 10, 2007, the AGNA security force in Kabul was involved in a number of serious incidents, including: detaining a group of Afghan civilians and involuntarily transporting them to the U.S. embassy; verbally and physically engaging in an altercation with Afghan Ministry of Interior policemen and handcuffing the policemen; confronting an Afghan general and several Ministry of Interior policemen; refusing an order from the embassy RSO to withdraw from a checkpoint to defuse a potentially explosive situation. The statements of the two ex-AGNA employees reveal a culture of depravity and unprofessional behavior that Gordon stated still exists to this very day in Kabul.

September 14, 2009 AP
A member of a federal commission investigating wartime spending said Monday that photos showing private security guards in various stages of nudity at drunken parties may be as damaging to U.S. interests in Afghanistan as images of detainee mistreatment at Abu Ghraib were in Iraq. Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon comptroller, made the comment at a hearing Monday held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting on allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct by employees of ArmorGroup North America, the company hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Zakheim said the photos are circulating heavily on the Internet and give Muslims in Afghanistan a negative image of the United States. Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's management chief, acknowledged the department should have been paying closer attention to the activities of the ArmorGroup guards at their living quarters near the embassy. The private security contractor hired to protect the embassy said Monday it erred by not immediately telling the State Department about an alcohol-related incident involving its guards that proved far more serious than company officials first believed. "I am not here to defend the indefensible," said Samuel Brinkley, vice president of Wackenhut Services, the company that owns the contractor, ArmorGroup North America. A manager for ArmorGroup counseled nine guards after they got drunk at a bar near their living quarters in Kabul on August 10. But after photos surfaced showing the guards had been at a party where ArmorGroup employees engaged in lewd and inappropriate behavior, they realized they made a mistake by not alerting U.S. officials. Photos showed guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol. Brinkley said the manager's response, which included a temporary ban on alcohol, seemed adequate at the time. "In retrospect, we were wrong in not notifying the State Department," Brinkley said in testimony before the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting. Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, told the commission the State Department is very concerned about ArmorGroup's delays in reporting its knowledge of any misconduct by its employees. The State Department has been sharply criticized for its management and oversight of the security contract at one of the country's most important diplomatic outposts. In addition to the allegations of misconduct, other problems have included a shortage of guards and inferior equipment. As the department's top management officer, Kennedy said he takes full responsibility for having failed to prevent the problems that reportedly ranged from out-of-control parties to Armor Group supervisors frequenting brothels in Kabul. The State Department has launched an investigation into ArmorGroup's handling of the $189 million contract embassy security contract. Kennedy told the commission that the misconduct "dishonored" the State Department in Afghanistan, where "the success of U.S. objectives depends on the cultural sensitivity of all mission personnel, including employees under contract." But he and other State Department officials said no decision will be made on whether to terminate the contract with ArmorGroup until the investigation is complete. Members of the commission pressed Kennedy to be more aggressive, saying the evidence already available is enough to warrant firing ArmorGroup, which was awarded the contract to protect the embassy in March 2007. "To me, it's just totally out of control and it's been going on for a long time," said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission. Commissioner Clark Ervin asked Kennedy to pledge to terminate the contract if the investigation proves all the allegations prove to be true. Kennedy refused to commit, saying the inquiry needs to run its course. However, Kennedy added, "We are seeing a very, very serious case being made for termination."

September 13, 2009 Washington Post
In 2005, the State Department hired a Northern Virginia company to provide security for the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. Diplomats quickly became concerned about whether the new guards, who barely spoke English, could protect such a sensitive site. "They had serious problems," recalled Ronald E. Neumann, who was ambassador at the time. The department then brought in another security contractor, ArmorGroup North America. But the difficulties didn't cease. In recent days, evidence of ArmorGroup's failings has burst into public view -- photos depicting its guards in semi-naked hazing rituals and official documents showing persistent staff shortages. Harold W. Geisel, the acting inspector general of the State Department, told Congress last week that his investigators are checking for possible criminal conduct by ArmorGroup, and a congressional hearing is scheduled for Monday. Lawmakers and watchdog groups are questioning how the department could have continued to employ a company that, in addition to tolerating bullying and understaffing, failed to ensure that its guards had proper security clearances and sufficient equipment -- or that they spoke English. The criticism is particularly intense because the State Department had promised to improve oversight after a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq involving bodyguards from security contractor Blackwater that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. "State's management of these contracts has been self-evidentially abysmal," said Peter W. Singer, an expert on government contracting at the Brookings Institution. ArmorGroup's efforts to guard the Kabul embassy were troubled from the start, according to congressional hearings, internal State Department documents and interviews. The McLean-based company submitted "an unreasonably low price" in 2007 for the contract, said Samuel Brinkley, an official with Wackenhut Services, the firm's parent company, at a congressional hearing in June. Former ArmorGroup supervisors have said in interviews that the company slashed guard staffing so it could squeak out a profit. State Department officials have expressed outrage about the lewd behavior shown in the photos. Still, they defend their selection of ArmorGroup, saying they are legally required to award such contracts to the lowest qualified bidder and noting that ArmorGroup was well-regarded. They also insist that the embassy was never endangered by the guard problems -- even though internal department documents say it was. "The fact you find something is wrong means something is wrong. But you find it," the department's undersecretary for management, Patrick F. Kennedy, said in an interview. He emphasized that many of the guards' failings emerged in documents written by department officials. "There was oversight present," he said. The troubles at the Kabul embassy raise questions about how authorities will manage what is expected to be a surge in the number of contract guards at U.S. facilities in Iraq as the American military presence declines. The scandal has also given new impetus to a debate over whether too many government wartime jobs are being outsourced. "The State Department should consider whether the security for an embassy in a combat zone is an inherently governmental function, and therefore not subject to contracting out," Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this month. Brian's group released the photos of what it called near-weekly sessions of hazing and sexual humiliation of ArmorGroup guards at their camp. The State Department has for years used local contract guards to secure the perimeters of its embassies, while generally keeping a modest Marine contingent for interior access. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, the department decided not to use local guards because of vetting concerns, officials say. Instead, as the military withdrew forces from around those embassies in recent years, the department turned to contractors such as ArmorGroup. But the department, which suffers from a shortage of contracting staff, has had a rocky history of managing such guard contracts. Each of its three contracts in Kabul has come under fire. The first was awarded to McLean-based Global Strategies, to replace a Marine combat force withdrawing from the U.S. Embassy in March 2005. The department justified the $6-million-a-month sole-source contract by saying it had received late notification of the Marines' departure. But the inspector general found that the Defense Department had given six months' official notice, and scolded the State Department for poor planning. By July 2005, the State Department had signed a contract with MVM of Ashburn, cutting its guard costs to less than $2 million a month, according to the inspector general's report. But MVM could not provide enough guards, partly because it was paying much less than its predecessor, according to Neumann. And, he said, the guards spoke so little English that they could not understand instructions. "We went back to the State Department and said, 'These people are unacceptable,' " Neumann said. State canceled MVM's contract and kept on the Global guards temporarily. MVM's chief executive, Dario O. Marquez, did not return a call seeking comment but told the Wall Street Journal last year that the State Department did not give him enough time to fix the problems. Neumann said the department was handicapped in selecting guard companies because of regulations stipulating that the contract go to a qualified U.S. firm that offers the lowest bid. "People low-bid, and then they're not competent," he said. Finally, in March 2007, the department turned to ArmorGroup. The firm, which also guarded the British Embassy in Kabul, was one of only two bidders deemed technically qualified by the department's acquisition and security specialists. Its price was about $3 million a month, officials say. "ArmorGroup was not a small, undercapitalized, underfunded, fly-by-night organization," Kennedy said. "They put forth a proposal that met every requirement." But within weeks of the company starting work, the State Department sent ArmorGroup a warning that its deficiencies -- including shortages of guards and armored vehicles -- were so serious that "the security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is in jeopardy," according to the House Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight. State Department officials issued eight more warnings to the company over the next two years, including one last September threatening to terminate the contract. Despite the problems, the department stuck with ArmorGroup, agreeing this summer to extend its contract for a year. State Department officials have said that the company appeared to be making progress and that changing firms would be disruptive. A spokeswoman for Wackenhut, which took over ArmorGroup North America last year, declined to comment. In a lawsuit filed last week, former ArmorGroup supervisor James Gordon accuses the company not only of failing to properly staff the embassy but also of lying to the State Department about its capabilities. The operation "was a complete shambles," he said.

September 12, 2009 New York Times
When a security guard at the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, was leaving for breakfast Monday morning, he froze at the sight of a crude poster of a rat hanging on his door. “Warning!” the poster said in stark, black letters. “Rats can cost you your job and your family.” The guard was a whistle-blower who had told of security lapses and lewd, drunken bacchanals by fellow workers, sparking an outcry and enraging Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now he wonders whether he should have kept his mouth shut. “Threats are still running rampant here,” he said in a telephone conversation from Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “So even though it looks like State may finally turn things around, no one’s ready to celebrate yet.” Such skepticism may be warranted. A review of two years of e-mail messages, letters and memos reveals that the State Department had long known of the serious problems with ArmorGroup, the contractor chosen to protect its embassy. The complaints went beyond the lurid pranks that made headlines, the documents show, and included serious understaffing, bullying by management, petty corruption and abusive work conditions. In fact, the deficiencies became so severe that they threatened the security of the compound, the documents show, and State Department officials withheld payments to ArmorGroup as a way to compel it to comply with the terms of its agreement. On a few occasions, government officials warned the company that if it did not correct the most egregious problems it would lose the five-year, $189 million deal. Yet both times the contract came up for renewal, in 2008 and 2009, the State Department opted to extend it, officials confirmed. The troubles with the ArmorGroup contract, and the State Department’s frustrated dealings with the company over two years and through two administrations, illustrate how the government has become dependent on the private security companies that work in war zones, and has struggled to manage companies that themselves are sometimes loosely run and do not always play by the government’s rules. With a stretched military, the government relies on the security companies themselves to vet, train, and discipline the guards, all at the lowest cost. “It’s expensive for the State Department to withdraw a contract from one company, rebid the project and award it to a new one,” said Janet Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who represents one of the ArmorGroup whistleblowers. “So businesses know that once they get a contract, State may ding them around a little bit, but it’s not going to fire them.” The perils of this reliance were most graphically illustrated in Iraq in 2007, when security guards from another contractor, Blackwater, were involved in shootings that left 17 civilians dead on a Baghdad street. But interviews and documents show that the ArmorGroup affair, in its mundane, unsavory details, offers perhaps a more representative look inside the troubled relationship between contractors and the government in war zones. State Department officials acknowledge they had a litany of complaints about the company, none of which, they insist, compromised the security of the embassy. But they profess to being deeply embarrassed by reports of parties where security guards were photographed naked, fondling and urinating on each other. “I’ve been doing this for 37 years; I’m proud of what I do,” said Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management who oversees outside contractors. But, he added, “This is humiliating.” Mr. Kennedy, however, defended the State Department’s overall handling of the contract. The frequent letters of complaint the government sent to ArmorGroup, he said, were evidence that the department was keeping close tabs on the company. The “greatest majority” of the failures cited in the letters were addressed, he said. Part of the problem, officials said, was that the guards are housed in a complex six miles from the embassy, Camp Sullivan, with little oversight by State Department officials. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, the American subsidiary of the Danish company that owns ArmorGroup, referred questions to the State Department, saying only that it was cooperating with the government’s investigation. On Monday, the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan will hold a hearing to examine the State Department’s oversight of the contract. Christopher Shays, a former congressman and co-chairman of the commission, said there was “a serious failure on the part of the State Department in being unable to compel the contractor to fulfill its commitment.” The disclosures, which were originally made by a nonprofit organization, Project on Government Oversight, deeply rattled the State Department. At a staff meeting following the release of the group’s report, senior officials said, Mrs. Clinton vented her anger about the lurid pictures. Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army general who became President Obama’s ambassador to Afghanistan last May, was livid, an official said, because he had never been briefed about the problems. Despite their unease with contractors, officials acknowledged the department had no choice but to keep using them. “In situations where there is a surge of intense security requirements, it is a real challenge,” said Jacob J. Lew, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources. “We cannot reduce the security presence.” The State Department was not in a buyer’s market when it looked for a company to protect its embassy in Kabul. It picked ArmorGroup in March 2007, after its previous choice, MVM, proved unable to marshal the necessary personnel or equipment, officials said. Of the eight companies that bid for the contract the second time around, only two were deemed technically capable. ArmorGroup was the cheapest. The company’s most recent contract extension was granted in June this year, after a Senate hearing in which one of its executives, Samuel Brinkley, a Wackenhut vice president, said in sworn testimony that his company was in full compliance with the terms of its contract, and a State Department official, William H. Moser, a deputy assistant secretary of state, also under oath, said he was satisfied with the company’s performance. In interviews, ArmorGroup whistleblowers said they felt betrayed by the testimony. By many measures, they said, things were worse, not better. After largely uneventful company barbecues morphed into what have been described as scenes from “The Lord of the Flies,” at least a dozen of the men started a document trail of their own, sending e-mail messages and photographs to the Project on Government Oversight. According to interviews and those documents, from July 2007 to April 2009, the State Department issued ArmorGroup at least nine warnings, nearly one every other month, about contract violations that ranged from mundane concerns about the company’s ability to keep accurate personnel logs, to more critical concerns about corruption among company managers and the hardships faced by sleep-deprived, underpaid guards — the majority of them Gurkhas from Nepal — who could not understand simple commands in English. While the Gurkhas were largely the source of the language problems, the lewd hazing rituals were largely the activity of the native English speakers, a mix of Americans, South Africans, New Zealanders and Australians. In 2008, after ArmorGroup was acquired by the Danish company, G4S, Wackenhut informed the State Department it was taking control of the Kabul contract, and promised to fix any problems. Government officials agreed to give the new owners a chance. According to their own correspondence, their optimism seemed to dim fairly quickly. On Aug. 22, 2008, the State Department wrote to ArmorGroup to express concerns that staffing shortages were so severe the company might not be able to provide security after a situation with mass casualties. On Sept. 21, 2008, the State Department deducted $2.4 million in payments from ArmorGroup, warning that its failure to provide a sufficient number of guards “gravely endangers the performance of guard services.” In March 2009, the department again advised ArmorGroup that it had “grave concerns” about staffing shortages, noting that inspectors on a recent tour found 18 guardposts left uncovered. In April, it denied ArmorGroup’s request for a third waiver to the requirement that it teach its foreign guards English. A month later, without much explanation, ArmorGroup told the State Department that deficiencies relating to language and staffing had been resolved. And a month after that, a senior State Department official told the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight that “despite contractual deficiencies, the performance by ArmorGroup North America has been and is sound.” “I sat in the audience that day, and shook my head in disbelief,” said James Gordon, a former ArmorGroup executive who has filed a whistleblower’s lawsuit against the company. He says he was forced out for complaining about the problems. “I knew that conditions at Camp Sullivan were deteriorating, that the contract continued to be understaffed, that the conditions in Kabul were getting more dangerous, and that the U.S. Embassy was facing grave threats.”

September 10, 2009 New York Times
Two former employees of a private contractor hired to provide security at the United States Embassy in Afghanistan charged that State Department officials were aware as early as 2007 that guards and supervisors were involved in lewd conduct. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, one of the former employees, James Gordon, a native of New Zealand who served as director of operations at the contractor, ArmorGroup North America, charged that he had spoken numerous times with State Department officials about significant problems that threatened security at the embassy. Among other things, he said that ArmorGroup hired guards who could not speak English and had no security experience; that the company employed fewer guards than needed and worked them for longer hours than at other embassies to cut costs; and that it allowed managers and employers to hire prostitutes. “Their goal was to perform the contract as cheaply as possible,” said Mr. Gordon, speaking by telephone from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, where he is now employed by another private security contractor which he declined to name. “Their goal was to do everything they could to prevent the State Department from discovering their multiple contract violations and operational shortcomings. Their goal was to provide a fig leaf of security at the embassy, and to pray to God that nobody got killed.” Mr. Gordon and another former supervisor, John Gorman, said they warned State Department officials in Kabul several times that ArmorGroup was plagued with problems and that it was determined to cover them up. They said that as a result of their efforts to correct the problems and to make the government aware of the issues, ArmorGroup forced them to leave their jobs. As evidence to support his assertions, Mr. Gorman provided a packet of memos and e-mail messages that he said he and two other former employees gave State Department officials in June 2007, including a three-page memo in which he outlined an array of contract violations. Among them, he wrote: “The training program run for new hires has been plagued with hazing and intimidation of students by students. This included physical threats and perversions.” Senior State Department officials said they were unaware that guards had engaged in that kind of activity at their living quarters at a base in Kabul. The officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak about a continuing investigation. The charges echoed those in a report released last week by an independent group, the Project on Government Oversight, which accused the guards and supervisors of deviant behavior. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered an investigation, and about 16 guards and supervisors were fired or have resigned. ArmorGroup North America, based in McLean, Va., was acquired in 2008 by a Danish security company, G4S, and its American subsidiary, Wackenhut Services Inc. In a written statement, Wackenhut described Mr. Gordon’s allegations as “overstated, ill-founded, not based on any personal knowledge or otherwise lacking in legal merit.”

September 10, 2009 AP
A former manager for the security contractor protecting the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan says the company lowballed its bid for the work and then failed to hire enough guards or fix faulty equipment. The allegations come after an independent watchdog group said last week that ArmorGroup guards were subjected to abuse and hazing by supervisors who created a climate of fear and intimidation. On Thursday, James Gordon, former director of operations at ArmorGroup North America, alleged the company bid too low in order to win the contract and then cut corners to keep profits up. Gordon says he was fired for reporting the problems. He also claims ArmorGroup withheld from Congress information about employees who went to brothels. Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, had no immediate comment.

September 8, 2009 Government Executive
A contract employee in Afghanistan claims he was forced to resign or risk being fired outright in retaliation for his role in exposing alleged lewd and drunken behavior of security guards at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Terry Pearson worked for 16 months as an operations supervisor for RA International, a Dubai-based food service provider at Camp Sullivan, the off-site base that was home to the ArmorGroup North America security guards alleged to have participated in the incidents reported last week by the Washington watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight. A native of Great Britain, Pearson said he was disgusted by the behavior of some guards, including one episode in which an apparently drunken supervisor allegedly accosted a young Afghan employee. Pearson reportedly complained about the incidents to RA International and ArmorGroup -- the prime contractor on the $187 million State Department embassy contract -- but when the two companies failed to address his concerns, he contacted a Washington law firm. Internal company e-mails obtained by Government Executive show that RA International executives suspected Pearson was a whistleblower. In one of the messages, RA International Chairman Soraya Narfeldt asked Pearson to admit that he was the source of the complaint about the guards. Narfeldt also questioned Pearson in two separate e-mails about calls to the Washington attorney. "They have stated that a staff member of RAI reached out to another law firm in D.C. regarding information pertaining to AGNA," Narfeldt wrote. "I cannot see how they could have this information if it was not true and if you have reached out using the RAI e-mail address then this is quite serious. How can a D.C. firm pluck RAI out of thin air to call with no information? Makes no sense." Narfeldt punctuated the e-mail by noting that ArmorGroup "is our client" and what the company "does within themselves is not our concern." Shortly after receiving the message, Pearson gave his 30-day notice of resignation. Five hours later, he rescinded his resignation, but Scott Fardy, the firm's country manager in Afghanistan, told him to have his personal property removed from Camp Sullivan by the end of the day, e-mails show. Pearson later told the Project on Government Oversight that, "This is definitely a case of get rid of the whistleblower." RA International, however, insists that Pearson left the company voluntarily for reasons that were "not associated" with the guard controversy. "The employee independently made the decision to leave the company," Fardy said in an e-mail to Government Executive. "His notice was received on Sept. 1, 2009. We have very clear [human resource] procedures in place both for dealing with grievances and issues -- in confidence if necessary -- and for ensuring that an employee's decision to leave the company is validated. There was no coercion leading to his resignation and, in fact, RA International's response highlighted that he was welcome to reapply to the company for positions in the future." Fardy said he spoke with Pearson twice following his resignation "to check that he felt he was making the right decision." Once Pearson made up his mind, Fardy said, the company had to move on. RA International has more than 1,000 employees worldwide and, in addition to Afghanistan, holds reconstruction assistance contracts in Darfur, Sudan; and the Central Republic of Chad. Pearson was among the first to blow the whistle on alleged hazing and alcohol-filled debauchery of ArmorGroup guards, much of which was caught on camera and video. On Aug. 1 an ArmorGroup supervisor and four others reportedly entered a Camp Sullivan dining facility that was run by RA International wearing short underwear and brandishing several bottles of alcohol. Before leaving the facility, the supervisor allegedly grabbed the face of a young Afghan national employed by RA International, and began abusing him with foul and sexual language, according to a complaint filed by the employee. Pearson was in charge of taking the statement from the Afghan national. POGO investigators said Pearson was punished for speaking out and that if he had been fired, he would have had difficulty finding work elsewhere as a security contractor. By resigning, however, he can find work with another company. During an interview with CNN over the weekend, Pearson said he does not regret his decision to speak out about the scandal. "If I had the chance to turn back the clock and do something different, I don't think I would," he said. "I would still end up doing exactly the same thing because people's dignity at work and respect at work are more important than the job itself." Meanwhile, other embassy whistleblowers have reportedly been threatened for coming forward with their accusations. POGO said posters were produced and distributed at several locations in Afghanistan calling the whistleblowers "RATS" and warning them that if they continued revealing negative information, then they could be in danger. POGO brought the posters to the attention of the State Department, which has since reportedly put up its own posters stating that, "Threats and/or intimidation are completely unacceptable and should be reported immediately." The posters include the name and phone number of a special agent for the embassy for whistleblowers to contact. On Friday, the State Department announced it had fired eight ArmorGroup contractors who appeared in the photographs. The embassy originally reported that two other guards had resigned their positions. But, POGO said the State Department later rescinded those resignations and fired the employees. State's inspector general office is investigating the conduct of the ArmorGroup guards. RA International is cooperating with the probe, Fardy said.

September 4, 2009 Government Executive
The State Department on Friday announced it has fired eight security contractors assigned to guard the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, after photos surfaced of the men involved in lewd and embarrassing behavior. The guards from ArmorGroup North America left Afghanistan on Friday, according to a statement from the embassy. In addition, the company's senior managers in Kabul are "being replaced immediately," the statement said. The embassy did not release the names of the dismissed employees. "The embassy security office continues its interviews of every one of the ArmorGroup guards," the statement said. The embassy originally reported that two other guards who appeared in the now infamous photographs had resigned their positions. But, sources told the Project on Government Oversight, the watchdog group that broke the scandal, that the State Department rescinded their resignations, fired them and revoked their security clearances. That essentially will prevent them from finding work with another security contractor. But, POGO is concerned that some of the employees who lost their jobs were young recruits who might have been pressured to participate in the sexual and alcohol-fueled escapades captured in the photos. "We have been told people are being fired for simply being in the photographs," POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian said. "We do know a number of those were unwilling participants. We also want to hear that the supervisors who were responsible for this debacle are being held fully accountable and not simply allowed to resign and go to another contractor." A team from the State Department's inspector general office arrived in Kabul this week and is conducting an investigation of the allegations. On Thursday, POGO learned that one of the whistleblowers who helped expose the guard scandal allegedly was forced to resign. The whistleblower's company, RA International, is a Dubai-based food service provider at Camp Sullivan, the off-site base where the guards lived.

September 2, 2009 The Guardian
Pictures have emerged showing private contractors at the embassy holding 'deviant and lewd' parties. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has ordered an investigation into allegations that private contractors employed to protect the American embassy in Afghanistan were engaged in "deviant and lewd" parties that have been compared to Lord of the Flies. The decision to launch the inquiry came after an independent group sent her a 10-page dossier yesterday claiming that the security guards at the embassy had been engaged in drunken parties involving prostitutes and the kind of ritual humiliation associated with gang initiation. Pictures and video footage were attached to the dossier. The dossier, compiled by the independent investigative group Project on Government Insight, includes an email allegedly from a guard currently serving in Kabul describing scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity". The allegations are an embarrassment at a time when the Obama administration is struggling to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and the Muslim world in general. It comes against the backdrop of the continuing controversy over the widespread use by the US of private contractors in war zones, of which the most notorious was Blackwater, now named Xe. The group at the centre of the new allegations are the ArmorGroup, part of the Florida-based Wackenhut group, one of the biggest private security organisations in the US. The organisation did not respond immediately today to the allegations. The Project on Government Insight, which was established in 1981 to track military procurement and bring to light evidence of any corruption, described the environment at Camp Sullivan, where the guards were housed outside Kabul, as comparable to the anarchy in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It said about 300 of the 450 ArmorGroup guards are Gurkhas and the rest are a mix of Australians, South Africans and Americans. In the dossier, it said that guards were "engaging in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates" . It claimed that some guards had barricaded themselves in their rooms out of fear that the alleged hazing might harm them physically. It further claims that guard force supervisors "made no secret that, to celebrate a birthday, they brought prostitutes into Camp Sullivan, which maintains a sign-in log." According to the report, Afghan nationals, as Muslims, were humiliated by the behaviour and the apparently free-flowing use of alcohol. The pictures could be picked up by the Taliban and used as propaganda against the US and its allies. But the Project on Government Insight stressed that comparisons should not be made with the pictures of abuse at the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, because no allegations of torture are being made. The report says that the general breakdown in discipline poses a threat to the security of the embassy. Ian Kelly, the state department spokesman, said of the reports of wild, anarchic partying: "These are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way." Clinton has "zero tolerance" for the behaviour described and has directed a "review of the whole system" for farming out security to private contractors that may have threatened the safety of embassy personnel, Kelly said. The embassy said today: "Nothing is more important to us than the safety and security of all embassy personnel - Americans and Afghan - and respect for the cultural and religious values of all Afghans." It added: "We have taken immediate steps to review all local guard force policies and procedures and have taken all possible measures to ensure our security is sound." Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who heads a subcommittee on contractor oversight, wrote to the state department calling for the inquiry in the light of the report. McCaskill's committee earlier this year conducted its own hearings on the involvement of ArmorGroup in Afghanistan.

September 1, 2009 Washington Post
Private security contractors who guard the U.S. embassy in Kabul have engaged in lewd behavior and hazed subordinates, demoralizing the undermanned force and posing a "significant threat" to security at time when the Taliban is intensifying attacks in the Afghan capital, according to an investigation released Tuesday by a government watchdog group. The Project on Government Oversight launched the probe after more than a dozen security guards contacted the group to report misconduct and morale problems within the force of 450 guards that lives at Camp Sullivan, a few miles from the U.S. embassy compound. In one incident in May, more than a dozen guards took weapons, night vision goggles and other key equipment and engaged in an unauthorized "cowboy" mission in Kabul, leaving the embassy "largely night blind," POGO wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlining the security violations. The guards dressed in Afghan tunics and scarves in violation of contract rules and hid in abandoned buildings in a reconnaissance mission that was not part of their training or mission. Later two heads of the guard force, Werner Ilic and Jimmy Lemon, issued a "letter of recognition" praising the men for "conspicuous intrepidity (sic)" with the U.S. State Department logo on the letter head. "They were living out some sort of delusion," one of the whistle-blower guards said Tuesday in an interview with The Washington Post from Kabul. "It presented a huge opportunity for an international incident," said the guard who spokes on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. The report recommends that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates immediately assign U.S. military personnel to supervise the guards and remove the management of the current force. It also calls on the State Department to hold accountable diplomatic officials who failed to provide adequate oversight of the contract. The report also found that supervisors held near-weekly parties in which they urinated on themselves and others, drank vodka poured off each other's exposed buttocks, fondled and kissed one another and gallivanted around virtually nude. Photos and video of the escapades were released with the POGO investigation. "The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security," POGO said in the letter to Clinton. The guards work for ArmorGroup, North America, which has an $180 million annual contract with the State Department to secure the embassy and the 1,000 diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals who work there. The State Department renewed the contract in July despite finding numerous performance deficiencies by ArmorGroup in recent years which were the subject of a Senate subcommittee hearing in June. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, Inc., the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. company that owns ArmorGroup, declined to comment on Tuesday's POGO report. Conduct of contractors providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan has been the subject of controversy and other investigations in recent years. The government relies heavily on such contractors for security and other needs. A new Congressional Research Service report has found that as of March, the Defense Department had more contract personnel than troops in Afghanistan. The 52,300 uniformed U.S. military and 68,200 contractors in Afghanistan at that time "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD [Defense Department] in any conflict in the history of the United States," the report said. Some 16 percent of the contractors are involved in providing security, a much higher percentage than the 10 percent that were used in Iraq. Although contractors provide many essential services, "they also pose management challenges in monitoring performance and preventing fraud," according to Steven Aftergood, who first disclosed the congressional report on his Secrecy News Web site.

September 1, 2009 AP
Guards hired by the State Department to protect diplomats and staff at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan live and work in a "Lord of the Flies" environment in which they're subjected to hazing and other inappropriate behavior by supervisors, a government oversight group charged Tuesday. In a 10-page letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Project on Government Oversight contended the situation has led to a breakdown in morale and leadership, compromising security at the embassy in Kabul where nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work. The group is urging Clinton to launch an investigation of the contract with ArmorGroup North America. It also recommends that she ask the Pentagon to provide "immediate military supervision" of the private security force at the embassy. The oversight group's findings are based on interviews with ArmorGroup guards, documents, photographs and e-mails. One e-mail from a guard describes lurid conditions at Camp Sullivan, the guards' quarters a few miles from the embassy. The message depicted scenes of abuse including guards and supervisors urinating on people and "threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity." Multiple guards say these conditions have created a "climate of fear and coercion." Those who refuse to participate are often ridiculed, humiliated or even fired, they contended. The group's investigation found sleep-deprived guards regularly logging 14-hour days, language barriers that impair critical communications, and a failure by the State Department to hold the contractor accountable. Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, had no immediate comment on the allegations. The State Department also had no immediate comment. The State Department has been aware of ArmorGroup's shortcomings, the letter says, but hasn't done enough to correct the problems. It cites a July 2007 warning from the department to ArmorGroup that detailed more than a dozen performance deficiencies, including too few guards and armored vehicles. Another "cure notice" was sent less than a year later, raising other problems and criticizing the contractor for failing to fix the prior ones. In July 2008, however, the department extended the contract for another year, according to the notice. More problems surfaced and more warning notices followed. Yet at a congressional hearing on the contract in June, State Department officials said the prior shortcomings had been remedied and security at the embassy is effective. The contract was renewed again through 2010. Nearly two-thirds of the embassy guards are Gurkhas from Nepal and northern India who don't speak adequate English, a situation that creates communications breakdowns, the group says. Pantomime is often used to convey orders and instructions. On the Net: Project on Government Oversight: http://www.pogo.org/

Altcourse Prison, UK
December 17, 2009 Liverpool Daily Post
A LIVERPOOL prison is among five in the country allowing its inmates to watch satellite television. More than 4,000 prisoners enjoy the privilege in private jails nationwide. Altcourse Prison, in Fazakerley, is among the contractor-run prisons allowing access to a “limited number” of satellite channels. The number of prisoners allowed to watch satellite varies according to behaviour. But Justice minister and city MP Maria Eagle revealed the number was currently around 4,070. The Garston MP was responding to a written question from Tory MP Philip Davies. She said no inmates in public sector jails have access to satellite in their quarters. But they do at Altcourse and other GS4-run prisons in South Wales and Warwickshire. The other private prisons offering satellite television are run by Serco in Staffordshire and Nottingham. Ms Eagle said: “In these establishments, satellite television in cells is generally only available to prisoners on the enhanced or standard level of the incentives and earned privileges scheme.” There are 84,500 prisoners in England and Wales, meaning around one in 20 has access to satellite TV.

November 5, 2009 Liverpool Echo
PRISONERS in a Liverpool jail are commanding their organised crime empires using mobile phones. A damning report into HMP Altcourse slams the authorities for not investing in jamming technology that would make mobiles obsolete. Independent inspectors say prison officers at the jail have to conduct laborious yard searches and intelligence gathering exercises in vain attempts to crack down on the phones. The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) – a national body which inspects prisons for the Government – says buying a signal deviator is an “urgent requirement”. Its report adds: “This Board is tired of being fobbed off with excuses from the prison service and ministers alike concerning the progress as to installation of mobile phone deviators.” An IMB spokesman also said: “The current situation is having profound implications, particularly in terms of allowing prisoners the opportunity to organise both the availability of drugs within the prison and to control criminal activity outside the prison.” The situation is becoming more critical as inmates are better connected than ever as handsets get more high-tech. Altcourse inmates could use web-enabled smartphones to transfer money, the IMB warns. The category B jail, which has a maximum capacity of more than 1,320, is run by private outfit G4S. Some of the prison officers there are represented by the Prison Officers Association (POA). POA spokesman Glynn Travis told the ECHO: “I believe deviators should be used. There would be no need for mobile phones within the establishment at all. “It would stop the drug trafficking, the bullying and the violence that goes with the mobile phones.” He said they are also used to taunt victims and their families. Mr Travis said mobiles are hot property inside and are worth up to £200 and can be rented out for £150. But they are contraband and if a rented mobile is confiscated owners often dish out harsh punishments and fines – on top of those handed out by the prison authorities. Mr Travis added: “It’s a real problem. On average there’s one mobile for every 10 prisoners. “If every cell was fitted with a phone, would prisoners use it? No – because they want to use them for illicit activity.” The IMB report also expressed concerns about the transfer of inmates to Altcourse from the West Midlands. There has been an influx from HMP Hewell, in Redditch, to ease overcrowding. Around half have been near the end of their sentence, which the IMB says shows little regard for their “human care”. Altcourse also houses around 120 foreign criminals. But some of them are being kept there well over the end of their sentence as immigration papers are processed. The IMB say they deserve a more “humanitarian service”. A Prison Service spokesman said: “We thank the IMB at HMP Altcourse for their report which is being fully considered by ministers. We will be responding in due course.” A spokeswoman for G4S added: “It’s up to the Ministry of Justice whether they give deviators to prisons. We just do the best we can to try to stop mobile phones coming in with searches and the like.”

Alexander Youth Services Center, Alexander, Arkansas
(AKA Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center)
January 26, 2008 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The state's youth detention center near Alexander has been accredited for the first time by a national correctional association. But while officials expressed optimism that the center's beleaguered past was nearing an end, two days later they were explaining a Jan. 19 incident involving mistreatment of a teenager that resulted in the firing of three staff members. The private Virginia-based company, G4S, operates the 140-bed detention center under a contract with the state Youth Services Division. Officials said Wednesday the American Correctional Association inspected the quality of life, security, food service, medical care and educational programs in November at the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center, and later accredited the facility. Center administrator Todd Speight said he viewed accreditation as a sign that the center was making progress. "I see this as turning a corner," Speight said. "We've got a long way to go, but we're making good progress." The previous contractor, Houston-based Cornell Companies Inc., was fired in late 2006. G4S has run the center for about a year. Previously known as the Alexander Youth Services Center or the Alexander Juvenile Correctional Facility, the center is the state's largest youth residential treatment facility. Two days after announcing the accreditation, officials said one staff member lost his job for using inappropriate physical force and two others were fired for trying to protect him. Speight said a male employee physically restrained a 17-year-old boy in a dormitory in a manner that was "completely inappropriate." He said two others were fired for misleading investigators because the original report attempted to conceal the nature of the scuffle. Speight, who did not disclose the employees' names, said he was disappointed by the firings, but stressed that center employees are hard workers who try to do their best. "These three did something inappropriate and were held accountable," he said. The Bryant Police Department and the Arkansas State Police are investigating. Scott Tanner, a state ombudsman for juvenile justice issues, said the teenager apparently suffered a sore ankle but his safety was not an issue. "This doesn't seem to be standard operating procedure, but something out of the ordinary," Tanner said. The center's history includes incidents of abuse, mismanagement and educational shortfalls. In 2003, the state and the U.S. Justice Department signed a court agreement to improve shortcomings in fire prevention, suicide prevention, religious policies and educational programs.

July 25, 2007 Arkansas News
The state is developing a plan to improve special education programs at an embattled state lockup for troubled youth, officials told lawmakers Tuesday. Special education at the Alexander Juvenile Correction Facility were found lacking in a report last month. "Yes, we intend to fix the problems out there," former state Rep. Steve Jones, now deputy director of the state Department of Human Services, told lawmakers at a meeting Tuesday. DHS oversees the Division of Youth Services, which runs the Alexander unit and other juvenile facilities in the state. During the meeting, legislators expressed concern with a June report by the state Department of Education, which found that DHS is not in compliance with several state and federal regulations regarding the Individuals with Disabilities Act. The report found procedures for the evaluation of specific learning disabilities were lacking at the Alexander facility, which houses some of the state's most violent youth offenders. Other problem areas included individualized education programs and, in some cases, children were advanced a grade even though DYS was not providing an appropriate education to them. Also, parents of the children were not being informed of their rights regarding special education programs. "Just because a kid is in jail doesn't mean they don't deserve a good education," said Sen. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette, upset with DYS. About 500 children a year stay at the 143-bed facility in Saline County. Marcia Harding, associate director of special education for the state Department of Education, told lawmakers DYS is supposed to present a correction action on how it plans to deal with some of the problem on Aug. 1. A plan to address the rest is due Sept. 15. The officials addressed a joint meeting of the Senate Committee on Children and Youth and the House Committee on Aging, Children and Youth, Legislative and Military Affairs. Also during the meeting, Hendren and other lawmakers said they did not understand why the special-needs education deficiencies identified in a study two years ago have still not been addressed. "Who is in charge of getting this mess fixed?" Hendren asked, saying he did not want to "beat this up time and time again." DHS Director John Selig agreed the problems should have been addressed, but he said a variety circumstances, including the firing of the facilities management, Cornell Cos. Inc., in November, and the hiring of G4S Youth Services in January, were partially to blame.

June 19, 2007 The Morning News
A new report identifying problems in the special education program at the former Alexander Youth Services Center -- some of which were previously identified in a 2005 study -- drew frustrated comments Monday from legislative panels that oversee the state's youth lockups. "It seems we're planning ourselves to death but we're not getting anything accomplished," said state Rep. Bobby Pierce, D-Sheridan, during a joint meeting of the House and Senate committees on children and youth. In a report released this month, the state Education Department cites about 50 practices at the facility, now known as the Arkansas Juvenile Assessment and Treatment Center, that don't comply with state and federal regulations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The department has directed the Division of Youth Services to develop a plan of action for correcting the problems. Sen. Sue Madison, D-Fayetteville, said that on visits to the facility in Saline County she has been "extremely unimpressed" with the educational practices she saw, which she said seemed to consist of youths playing on a computer. "Do we have any way of determining if they're really learning something, or if we're just letting a computer baby-sit them?" she asked. The House chairwoman, Rep. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, said a lack of sufficient information gathering is one of the problems highlighted in the report. Chesterfield said scrutiny is needed for the educational services the state provides to all youth in custody, not only those in need of special education. Scott Tanner, ombudsman coordinator for the state Public Defender Commission, testified that the Division of Youth Services has had chronic problems with its education system at least since 2000, the year he became an ombudsman. Education services at the facility are provided by Group 4 Securicor, the private company that took over operation of the facility in January. The state fired the facility's previous operator, Cornell Companies, in November after a state investigation found evidence that psychotropic drugs may have been administered improperly to some youths as a restraint. The facility also was investigated in 2005, after 17-year-old Lakeisha Brown died from a blood clot in her lungs two days after complaining to staff that she felt ill. Cornell was ordered to revamp some of its policies as a result of that investigation. Madison asked Monday whether it would be more appropriate for the education of youth in custody to be undertaken by the state rather than a private company. Education Department attorney Scott Smith said he did not believe it would. Trying to incorporate students in custody into the state's public education system would require compliance with numerous state and federal mandates that currently are waived, he said. "The reason I ask is, there's something wrong with the picture in my mind when you have state agencies ..... firmly committed to a free public education, and then we turn around and hire a private company to deliver that," Madison said. "I just have a hard time thinking that that's a good idea." Steve Jones, a former state representative who recently became deputy director of the Department of Health and Human Services, told the committee the Division of Youth Services is working on a plan to correct the problems. Rep. Dawn Creekmore, D-Hensley, noted that the division developed a plan of action previously, after a 2005 report cited problems with the facility's educational system. "It's time to quit putting plans of action on paper and time to bring something to the table, take some action, physical action, for improvement. These children are still here, and we're just letting them down continuously, year after year after year," she said. "It is children that the state Department of Education is all about, and it is children that DYS is all about," Chesterfield said. "Somewhere the bureaucratic -- we're not going to use the alliterative -- the bureaucratic stuff, if you will, has got to be overcome for the children." Jones assured the committees the division would achieve real results.

April 21, 2007 AP
Two employees at the Alexander Juvenile Correctional Facility have been fired after allegations that they physically abused a 15-year-old girl, the lockup's administrator said. Todd Speight, facility administrator, said two employees were fired because of an incident involving the girl, but emphasized there are many more employees who are trying hard to be a positive influence on the youths. "Our philosophy is we will treat kids right. We truly believe we will turn Alexander around. Not a doubt," Speight said. "We understand there are going to be some negative things at a program that large but we are all about correcting those things with oversight and supervision." The girl, who had been at Alexander for about four months, called advocacy group Disability Rights Center in early April to report the abuse. The teen told the group's investigator that on March 25 she lost consciousness while she was restrained on the floor of her dorm, according to a report released by the Disability Rights Center. While the group was investigating, the girl's family called and reported that she had bruises on her body from another restraint on April 10. This is the fourth incident at Alexander investigated by the Disability Rights Center, which has released reports on the allegations of abuse to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "It's not just one bad thing that we can say, 'It happened but we fixed it,' and can go on," said Dana McClain, a senior attorney with Disability Rights Center. "It's an ongoing thing." The center is run by G4S Youth Services, which took over after the state fired the previous contractor, Cornell Cos. Inc. Cornell was fired after allegations that nurses inappropriately gave anti- psychotic medications to calm bad behavior. Julie Munsell, a spokeswoman for the state's Department of Human Services, said the agency is closely watching G4S' work at Alexander. "We want to send a very clear message that change is still going on out at Alexander, very positive change," Munsell said. "We've seen a change in the demeanor not only of the staff but also of the campus as a whole."

March 16, 2007 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Advocates investigating a claim of abuse by a teenager at the Alexander Juvenile Correctional Facility say employees failed to help the boy even as his screams could be heard behind a closed door in an office without a surveillance camera, according to a report released to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Thursday. In its eight-page report, the Disability Rights Center claims the 15- year-old boy was restrained on the ground for too long during an obscenity-laced encounter with staff members. The advocacy group released its report to the state and to G4S Youth Services, the company that runs the facility, and is calling for disciplinary action against some employees. G4S is investigating the incident with renewed vigor, said John Morgenthau, the company’s chief operating officer and vice president.

January 18, 2007 KATV
Lawmakers said Thursday they plan to study the future of the Alexander youth lockup--and whether they should continue using private companies to run the facility. The Joint Budget Committee reviewed a $4.9 million contract for G4S Youth Services of Virginia, which will take control of the Alexander juvenile facility beginning Sunday. John Selig, director of Department of Health and Human Services, told lawmakers he's confident the company will provide better management than Cornell Companies, which was fired last year for inappropriately injecting children with antipsychotic medications. State Senator Shane Broadway, a Democrat from Bryant, says he wants the Legislature to have more oversight of the youth facility. Broadway says he hopes there is further discussion on the future of the lockup.

January 11, 2007 Arkansas News Bureau
The state Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to enter into a short-term contract with a company to operate the troubled Alexander Juvenile Correctional Facility in Saline County, agency officials said Wednesday. The agency has signed a $4.5 million contract with G4S Youth Services in Richmond, Va., a division of the British-based Group 4 Securicor, for the company to operate the facility from Jan. 21 through June 30, DHHS spokeswoman Julie Munsell said. The contract is pending approval by the Department of Finance and Administration. At the end of the six-month period, the state will have the option of renewing the contract for an additional year, Munsell said. Munsell said no bids were taken because the agreement was reached under emergency procedures. The agency considered the situation an emergency because of safety and welfare concerns for the 143 youths at the facility, she said. The state fired Cornell Companies, the Pennsylvania-based company that previously ran the facility, in November after a state investigation indicated psychotropic drugs may have been administered improperly to some youths to restrain them. Munsell said Cornell is still at the site, but the state has been in charge since Nov. 3.

Arkansas Nuclear One, Arkansas
May 16, 2005 Courier News
After Friday’s negotiations between Arkansas Nuclear One security force representatives and Wackenhut Corp., there’s a good chance no strike will occur at the plant. According to Darrell Williams, president of the United Government Security Officers of America Local 23, the second meeting between the two parties was more productive than the first. However, the final decision on whether Friday’s revised contract will be accepted is up to the 79 unionized security guards. That decision will be made later this week when Williams and his negotiations committee present the new information. “I really think the new contract will be accepted,” Williams said. “We’ve done all we can do without going to even more drastic measures, so hopefully we will have a contract by the end of (this) week.” After the guards’ threat of a strike in mid-April with claims of low wages and poor benefits, Wackenhut, who has contracted with Entergy since 1991 to guard Arkansas’ only nuclear power plant, brought some new contract plans to the table.

Baxter Immigration Facility, Australia
June 5, 2005 The Advertiser
SECURITY guards have been moved on to the grounds of Glenside Mental Health Service to watch over nine Baxter detainees receiving treatment. The guards, employed by the Baxter Detention Centre operators, are costing an estimated $150,000 a month. Effectively, two guards have been assigned to each detainee. They operate out of a hired demountable hut which was recently delivered to the grounds of the hospital. State health officials have made it clear the guards are not welcome. Director of Mental Health, Learne Durrington, said she has approached the Immigration Department about the impact of the guards on other patients. "We're running a hospital here and it needs to be managed as a hospital," Ms Durrington said. "I've proposed that we get rid of the guards and replace them with our own staff who are better trained in mental health care." The Baxter guards are employees of Global Solutions Limited (GSL) subsidiary Group 4, the security company that has the contract to operate the Baxter Detention Centre. "We've taken additional troops from another part of our company," the spokesman, who did not wish to be named, said. "As a result we've got staff shortages and we're recruiting more people – mainly for our Baxter contract." One of the guards told a visitor to Glenside hospital the demountable was hired at a cost of $300 per day. Figures from the Miscellaneous Workers Union show the salary costs of the 54 daily eight-hour shifts to be more than $150,000 per month. A spokesman for the Glenside hospital confirmed two guards were allocated for each detainee. "That's 18 guards on three eight-hour shifts, making a total of 54 guards on a daily basis," he said. The increase in numbers of detainees needing mental health treatment has occurred subsequent to the Cornelia Rau case where an Australian resident suffering psychosis was wrongly detained in Baxter until her real identity was discovered in February this year. Health officials have confirmed that in the year prior to the Rau case only one person had been referred to Glenside, but now nine people were in treatment. Glenside hospital officials are still waiting for a response from the Commonwealth on the presence of the Group 4 guards. Meanwhile, the legal team assisting the Rau family's submission into the Palmer inquiry has questioned the timing of an internal Baxter memo about the identity of a detainee. A story in the Sunday Mail of November 21, 2004, described a missing woman as 168cm tall, 58kg, with dark blonde hair, brown eyes and a brown mole on her left cheek. It subsequently turned out to be Cornelia Rau. It's since been revealed that an internal memo dated November 24 raised the possibility a detainee was an Australian citizen. Legal representatives for the Rau family will ask the Palmer Inquiry to check if the memo was sparked by the article in the Sunday Mail.

February 9, 2005 The Age
The detention centre where mentally ill Australian Cornelia Rau was wrongly held was not visited by a psychiatrist for at least three months last year, documents filed in Adelaide's Federal Court suggest. South Australian Legal Services Commission lawyer Claire O'Connor claimed in documents that Group 4 Falck, the company that runs Australia's detention centres, and the Department of Immigration had breached their duty of care by failing to provide adequate psychiatric care for three mentally ill Iranian men at the Baxter detention centre. Outside the court, she said there were parallels with the Rau case. "Cornelia was sick and wasn't treated, my clients are sick and they are not being treated," Ms O'Connor said. "She is no different to people in there." In documents supporting her attempt to get urgent psychiatric treatment for the men, Ms O'Connor said the centre's suicide and self-harm unit did not employ a psychiatrist. "It is believed there has been no psychiatric visit . . . since about August 2004 and certainly none since November 2004," she said in an affidavit. Ms O'Connor said the problem of the lack of psychiatric care at Baxter was compounded by the fact that the centre itself was contributing to the poor mental health of detainees. She said psychiatrists visited Baxter infrequently and were forced to deal with a series of seriously ill people in a short time. "All they can do is medicate them, they just keep renewing the prescriptions," she said.

February 7, 2005 The Age
Only a full judicial and public inquiry would be sufficient to establish the facts about the detention of a mentally ill Australian woman, her sister said today. Cornelia Rau, a 39-year-old former flight attendant who was released from Baxter immigration detention centre last week after spending 10 months locked up, has caused a national debate over services for the mentally ill. Her sister, Christine Rau, said an inquiry independent of the government and open to public scrutiny was necessary to get to the bottom of the case. Adelaide public defender John Harley, who represents mentally ill people, said he had grave concerns for the fate of other people suffering mental health problems imprisoned by the immigration system. "This is not isolated at all," Mr Harley told ABC radio. "I was informed that (Ms Rau) was in solitary confinement and that involves her being under lights 24 hours a day (with) closed circuit television. "She was allowed out of her room six hours a day, but in some occasions it required four men in riot gear to remove her back into her cell," he said.

February 7, 2005 Herald Sun
THE Federal Government will hold an inquiry into the detention of a mentally ill Australian women at the Baxter centre for illegal immigrants. Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said it was regrettable Cornelia Rau was held in custody for three months in Baxter and before that six months in a Brisbane jail. "Obviously it's . . . a very regrettable incident," Mr Howard said. Ms Rau, a 39-year-old former Qantas flight attendant, was released from Baxter in South Australia on Friday. Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the Government should not be trusted to investigate its own actions. "It is bad enough that Ms Rau was being held in an immigration detention centre," Senator Allison said. "But why did she spend six months in a women's prison before that? Senator Allison said state and federal governments had allowed prisons and detention centres to become "the new psychiatric asylums".

February 5, 2005 The Age
A family snapshot of Cornelia Rau, detained as a suspected illegal immigrant. A mentally ill Australian woman found by Aborigines in a remote Cape York township has been mistakenly held in immigration detention for nearly a year while her distressed family thought she was dead. Cornelia Rau, 39, who suffers from schizophrenia, was last seen in March after she escaped from the psychiatric unit of Sydney's Manly Hospital. The Immigration Department confirmed last night that Ms Rau, who was speaking German and some English, had been held in a Queensland women's prison until September when she was transferred to Baxter detention centre. Ms Rau's sister, Chris Rau, a Sydney journalist, read an article from The Age last Monday about a mystery German-speaking woman held at Baxter, known only as "Anna". Baxter authorities faxed her a photograph, which showed her missing sister. "We're just relieved that she is alive," Chris Rau said. They were also bewildered why the department could not establish her identity when police had her details. Ms Rau was first taken into detention in April. She had been staying near an Aboriginal camp at Coen, in far north Queensland. The Aborigines became concerned that she was sick and brought her into Cairns police. A spokesman for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the woman was handed over to the Department of Immigration by police in April 2004. She was held in a Queensland women's prison until September when she was transferred to Baxter. Greens senator Kerry Nettle last night called for an inquiry into "this staggering case of mismanagement and abuse". During her three months in Baxter, Ms Rau was kept in isolation for a week, then in a high- security unit locked in a room on her own for 18 hours a day, refugee advocate Pamela Curr said. She said her sister had "been through hell". "We don't know what the implications are going to be for her future condition or her treatment."

December 13, 2004 The Age
The immigration department today accused refugee advocates of inciting incidents within the Baxter detention centre by exaggerating reports of a detainee hunger strike. Refugee support group Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) today said 27 Iranians within the South Australian centre were participating in the hunger strike, now into its second week. Among those were five men who had sewn their lips together and three who were staging a protest on the centre's gymnasium roof, RAR spokeswoman Kathy Verran said. She said those on the roof had been denied water since last night, after guards stopped other detainees bringing water to the men. Ms Verran said detainees had also reported the guards were bouncing balls against the ceiling of the gym, underneath the detainees, to prevent them from sleeping.

December 3, 2004 The Age
Four Sri Lankan men have been hospitalised after refusing food for up to 10 days in a hunger strike at South Australia's Baxter detention centre. Two of the men had also been admitted overnight earlier this week, she said.

December 1, 2004 The Age
Eleven Sri Lankan men at the Baxter detention centre have stepped up their hunger strike and are now refusing medication, a refugee advocate said today. The detainees were determined to continue their hunger strike until death, in a last bid to be granted refugee status in Australia, according to Rural Australians for Refugees spokeswoman Mira Wroblewski. Ms Wroblewski said other hunger strikers were angry that the pair, after their release, had been forced to walk from the detention centre medical facility to their compounds in pouring rain. "It (forcing them to walk in the rain) has just strengthened their resolve.

September 20, 2004 The Age
A hunger strike, a High Court action and a direct appeal to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone are among last-ditch efforts to stop the forced return of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka. The man on hunger strike, who is 34 and was detained after his visa expired, was put into Baxter's management unit on Thursday and forcibly fed. He resumed his hunger strike on Saturday, Ms Wroblewski said. Eleven other Sri Lankans held at Baxter yesterday entered the fifth day of a peaceful sit-in at the compound.

August 20, 2004 The Age
A food sample from South Australia's Baxter detention centre will be presented to health authorities for inspection after detainees complained they had been served a meal crawling with maggots. The Immigration Department last week said one maggot had been found in food and an investigation was under way. South Australian Greens MP Kris Hanna said he would today present a sample of meat and rice to the state Environmental Health Department for examination. Mr Hanna said the food sample was smuggled out of Baxter following frustration among detainees about the situation. "According to reports in the centre, the food was crawling with live maggots," Mr Hanna said. Detainees at the Baxter centre last week upturned rubbish bins in protest after complaining about maggots in their food.

November 1, 2004 BBC
An investigation is being carried out at a Warwickshire prison after two inmates finished a rooftop protest. The men came down from the roof of a shed at Rye Hill prison near Rugby at just after 9.30pm on Saturday evening.  It is not clear what the demonstration at the jail, which is run by Global Solutions Ltd, was about.

Inmates of Baxter immigration detention centre took control of a compound yesterday morning and barricaded themselves in. About 50 guards in riot gear surrounded the compound and forced open the door. A spokesman for the Immigration Department confirmed that there had been a disturbance at Baxter. (The Age, March 18, 2004)

Bicester Detention Center, Oxford, UK
June 11, 2008 Mail on Sunday
The Home Office squandered £29million of taxpayers' money on a flagship giant asylum centre which was never built - including hiring in a 'financial advisor' who charged almost £16,000 a month. A scathing report from MPs exposes a catalogue of costly blunders and lambasts the failing department for a 'startling absence of common sense' in one of its most embarrassing fiascos of recent years. Seven years after officials started working on the ambitious plans to house thousands of asylum seekers on a former RAF station at Bicester, Oxfordshire, the site remains empty and derelict with 'no benefit' to the taxpayer. Vast sums were paid to consultants, private advisors and contractors and when ministers pulled the plug on the entire project in 2005 they were forced to hand over millions more in cancellation fees. Officials failed to understand how fierce local opposition and legal challenges would drag out the process, and made no attempt to plan for future uses of the site or the risk that other immigration policy changes would scupper the scheme. Last night the Home Office claimed the disaster had led to an 'overall positive impact for the public' because officials had learned important lessons. Former Home Secretary David Blunkett announced the scheme in 2001, as part of a strategy to speed up and streamline the creaking asylum system by housing applicants in a series of huge accommodation centres across the country. Thousands were to be placed in the first centre at an isolated site outside Bicester, but crucially it would not be secure and the immigrants would be free to come and go as they pleased. The plans brought a storm of protests, not only from local residents but also from refugee support groups who claimed leaving so many asylum seekers to languish at a remote site, far from any local community, was a disastrous plan. Planning inspectors rejected the plans, but John Prescott used his powers to overturn their decision, further infuriating locals. Finally ministers realised in 2005 that the centre was unnecessary and unworkable, but not before almost £30million of public money had been wasted. The PAC report reveals how the Home Office hired a Financial advisor at a cost of £15,743 per month, and a procurement advisor who was paid £15,559 per month, because no civil servants were judged to have the right expertise. The pair, who have not been named, were paid more than £1.1million for less than three years work, on top of £6.3million paid out to consultants. MPs complained that the Home Office was unable to show whether the highly paid consultants 'added value'. Private contractors Global Solutions Limited were paid £7.6 for design work, but claimed almost £8million in termination fees when the Bicester scheme was axed. PAC chairman Edward Leigh said the project 'embodied lack of foresight, poor business planning and a startling absence of common sense.' He said the scheme was 'always going to provoke opposition in the local community' but the Home Office took no account of that, or of objections from refugee groups, and made no effort to make contact with local interest groups or MPs to discuss objections. Nor did the department realise - until it was too late - that a decline in the number of asylum seekers and some success in speeding up the system meant the centre was increasingly pointless. Last month the Home Office announced plans to build a secure immigration detention centre on the Bicester site, although it will not be open until 2012 at the earliest and will require planning permission. Shadow Immigration Minister, Damian Green, attacked the Bicester debacle as 'a symptom of long-term incompetence by immigration ministers, who failed to notice that asylum numbers were dropping just when they were planning this new centre. 'Their latest plan is to turn the derelict site into a detention centre. I hope they have done their homework better this time.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'At the time, we believed accommodation centres to be the right decision but as circumstances changed and the project was delayed, we reviewed that decision. 'Our experience with this project has taught us some important lessons, and this, along with the other improvements put in place, has led to an overall positive impact for the public.'

November 8, 2007 The Guardian
A Home Office decision to abandon plans for an asylum accommodation centre near Oxford because of local opposition cost it £28m, including "termination payments" of £7.9m to the private contractor, Whitehall's spending watchdog reveals today. The National Audit Office says that some of the problems faced in trying to open Bicester accommodation centre could have been foreseen - and money saved - if the Home Office had worked in a "more coordinated and joined-up way". The report also discloses that despite a four-year battle by local residents against the project, it is still being considered whether the site can be used as a detention centre for failed asylum seekers who face deportation. The plan to set up a 10-strong network of purpose-built accommodation centres holding 3,000 asylum seekers was announced by the then home secretary, David Blunkett, at a time when asylum applications were at a record high, as part of a plan to disperse them from London and the south-east of England. Bicester was earmarked as one of the first but it met fierce local opposition and planning permission was not secured until November 2004. By then, the number of asylum seekers coming to Britain had halved. The Home Office accounting officer advised that it was no longer economically viable and the project was cancelled in June 2005. The NAO inquiry found that £33m had been spent in total on the accommodation centres, including £28m on Bicester alone. The report reveals that the successful bid by GSL, formerly Group 4, for the contract to build the 750-bed centre for £59.9m was nearly £25m cheaper than the bid from rival private security company UKDS. After the project was cancelled GSL was handed "termination payments" of £7.9m. It had already been paid £7.6m for design work. Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said that £28m had been spent on "the asylum centre that never was". Mr Leigh said: "The Home Office drove ahead with a project to build a network of asylum accommodation centres without an eye on what was happening to the numbers of those seeking asylum in the UK.

Brook House, Sussex, UK
June 13, 2009 BBC
A fire was started and "disorder" broke out at a wing of an immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport, Sussex police said. Officers said there were reports of minor damage and a blaze in the exercise yard at Brook House, which houses 312 people awaiting deportation. No-one is believed to be hurt and the fire is said to have burnt itself out. The force said "disorder" involving 30 detainees started at about 2250 BST and was confined to one wing. Officers were called in to support security firm G4S. 'No risk' -- G4S, with the help of HM Prison Service, currently manages the welfare of detainees inside the centre, the police said. Ch Insp Ed Henriet, of Gatwick Police, said: "Sussex Police is supporting the security arrangements. All detainees are accounted for and there is no risk to the wider community." A second fire, that was unrelated to the first, according to a spokesperson for G4S, was also started by "one of the detainees setting fire to his bedding" on Saturday afternoon. It was extinguished using sprinklers and fire extinguishers. The spokesperson added that a detainee who assisted in putting out the fire was "slightly injured" and the fire had delayed some detainees being fed. The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith opened Brook House, which can house up to 426 people, in March. It is situated next to Tinsley House, a 136-bed detention centre.

Border Patrol (US)
October 24, 2009 San Diego Union-Tribune
A contract worker for U.S. Customs and Border Protection was sentenced to 18 months in prison yesterday for trying to release an illegal immigrant from custody in exchange for money. Christopher Saint-Lucero, who had earlier pleaded guilty to a charge of transporting illegal immigrants for financial gain, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller. Saint-Lucero worked as a sergeant for Wackenhut Corp., which contracts with the agency to transport illegal immigrants to Mexico after they are captured. He worked at the Border Patrol station in Chula Vista. Prosecutors said that on June 1, 2008, Saint-Lucero tried to release an illegal immigrant who was in agency custody in exchange for $2,500 in cash.

June 4, 2008 San Diego Union-Tribune
Two Border Patrol contract workers were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to shuttle illegal immigrants from San Diego to Los Angeles for $2,500 apiece instead of returning them to Mexico. Christopher Saint Lucero and Manley Lamont Smith work for Wackenhut Corp., which holds a Border Patrol contract to escort illegal immigrants to Mexico after they are captured by agents in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. According to court documents, Saint Lucero told a colleague that he had been involved in about 10 smuggling attempts. The men were arrested Sunday after Saint Lucero allegedly escorted a group of illegal immigrants from the Border Patrol's Chula Vista station to the border in Tijuana. According to a statement of probable cause, Mexican authorities refused to admit two who identified themselves as Salvadorans. One was an undercover agent. Authorities say Saint Lucero then brokered the deal to get the two men to Los Angeles. Smith allegedly met them at the Border Patrol station in his Wackenhut jeep and offered to hide them. Saint Lucero and Smith were expected to make an initial court appearance today, said Debra Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego. The charge against them, conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants, is a felony.

June 3, 2008 AP
A Border Patrol contractor says 2 of its employees have been arrested for investigation of releasing illegal immigrants from federal custody. Wackenhut Corp. says the employees were arrested Sunday in the San Diego area and are in jail facing felony charges. For about two years, Wackenhut has held a contract to return illegal immigrants to Mexico after they are captured by Border Patrol agents. A senior vice president, Marc Shapiro, told The Associated Press Tuesday that this is the first time Wackenhut employees have been arrested for allegedly releasing immigrants. He said his company has returned more 1 million illegal immigrants to Mexico. Shapiro declined to name the suspects. A Border Patrol spokesman had no immediate comment.

Broward County, Florida
November 13, 2008 Miami Herald
The Wackenhut Corp. overbilled Broward County thousands of dollars for airport security guards, and collected hefty payments for unauthorized overtime work by library guards, according to a county auditor's report. But those irregularities could be just the tip of the county's problems with the Palm Beach Gardens-based security company. County Auditor Evan Lukic also found poor spending controls at nine county agencies that paid Wackenhut $5.8 million last year. The County Commission will discuss the report Thursday, as Lukic vowed a more in-depth look at the billings. 'If we'd found little chance of risk we'd say, `Case closed,' '' he said. ``This has opened the door to look some more.'' A spokesman for Wackenhut downplayed the auditor's findings, noting that the amount in question totals less than one percent of the money the company was paid last year. ''We are pleased and proud of not only our long-term relationship with Broward County, but also of the high degree of safety and security we provide to the residents,'' Bruce Rubin said. Rubin said Wackenhut has worked closely with the county ``to ensure compliance and improve processes.'' County Administrator Bertha Henry reviewed the report and told commissioners she agreed with its findings, and had begun implementing fixes. Broward launched its audit last spring following reports in The Miami Herald about problems in a Miami-Dade contract involving the company. There, the county reported that Wackenhut overbilled as much as $6 million over three years for phantom security guards at county transit stations. Miami-Dade auditor Cathy Jackson said the company relied on inaccurate and falsified records to try and cover up the billing. ACCUSATIONS DENIED -- Wackenhut denied the accusations and supplied the county with paperwork seeking to refute them. Miami-Dade has not yet responded, and the company continues to supply guards for Metrorail under a contract that runs through November 2009. Broward signed a three-year security contract, including two one-year renewal options, with Wackenhut in June 2005. In the first three years, the firm was paid $14.9 million. Lukic's audit found that most county agencies doing business with Wackenhut failed to review and validate daily entries on security logs that documented hours worked by guards. Also, they didn't compare the hours Wackenhut billed with the hours reported on the security logs. Likewise, little checking was done to ensure that some highly qualified guards Wackenhut billed the county for actually carried those special qualifications. AVIATION DEPARTMENT -- The one department that did check: Broward County Aviation, where officials said Wackenhut overbilled nearly $19,000. Those overcharges were recovered last year, the audit said. In contrast, the report said, the library division paid Wackenhut overtime for 14 branch guards even though OT wasn't properly pre-authorized or substantiated by payroll records. In one week alone in September 2007, the auditor found 233 hours of unauthorized overtime costing $1,655.

November 11, 2008 South Florida Business Journal
Broward County auditors are raising red flags over how county agencies kept tabs on nearly $6 million in billings by Wackenhut Corp. for security services last year. In a report to be presented to county commissioners on Wednesday, county auditors noted several problems with the way Wackenhut invoices have been processed. Specifically, the report noted that county personnel were not reviewing and validating daily entries on security logs that document hours worked by guards. The audit also found that there was no evidence that hours billed were hours actually worked. County Auditor Evan A. Lukic said the decision to review the county’s oversight of Wackenhut grew out of news reports earlier this year that alleged the Palm Beach Gardens-based security company was overbilling Miami-Dade County for services that were not performed. “We were concerned about the allegations we heard and whether we were possibly experiencing the same thing here,” he said. “We wanted to look at it from how are we controlling the contract and administering it.” At this point in the auditing process, Lukic said, there was no evidence Wackenhut engaged in any wrongdoing. However, based on the audit’s findings Lukic said his department will take a closer look at payments to “make sure that guards who we are paying for are present.” In June 2005, Broward County entered into a three-year agreement with Wackenhut to provide security services. Payments for fiscal years 2005, 2006 and 2007 totaled more than $14.8 million. In fiscal 2007, Broward County’s Aviation Department topped the list with $2.1 million in security services billings by Wackenhut. The county’s facilities maintenance division paid out $1.66 million to Wackenhut, and the county’s library division was billed nearly $633,000. The report found that during a one-week period, the libraries division paid 233 hours of overtime for security guards and found no evidence that Wackenhut provided the required written notification and payroll documentation to substantiate the overtime payments. When queried by the South Florida Business Journal about the auditor's findings, Wackenhut issued the following statement: "We've worked closely with facilities management through the audit department to insure compliance and to improve our processes." Questions also have been raised about matching guard qualifications to pay rates. In some instances, the audit raised concerns about guards with lesser qualifications billing at a higher rate, resulting in overcharges. In an Aug. 22 letter, Broward’s director of the facilities maintenance division advised Wackenhut President Drew Levine that he would now require the company to provide documentation that links guards’ qualifications with their job classifications. In the meantime, Lukic is asking the Broward County Commission to direct the county administrator to come up with procedures to ensure that billings are validated, that the guards’ qualifications match their job descriptions and that overtime charges are substantiated. In May, a Miami-Dade County audit found that Wackenhut overbilled the county by as much as $6 million over three years for services it did not provide to Miami-Dade Transit, and then falsified records to cover up the over charges. In its response to that audit, which Wackenhut published on its Web site, the company said it has cooperated with the county’s investigation, but “continues to question the audit methodology.” Wackenhut said a lawsuit by a former guard, who accused the company of padding its bills, has caused the increased scrutiny. “It is Wackenhut’s belief that county entities … have been placed under undue pressure and influence by unsubstantiated allegations in this ongoing disputed litigation,” it stated. Miami-Dade continues to review Wackenhut’s response to determine what actions should be taken, county spokeswoman Suzy Trutie said.

Coquelles Detention Centre, Coquelles, France
April 6, 2006 Gulf Daily News
Holding cells used by British immigration officials at a French freight terminal were so crowded and filthy that staff called them "the dog kennels," a prison watchdog said yesterday. Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers also said staff were unsure whether they could stop a detainee from fighting, trying to escape, or committing suicide because they did not know whether English or French law applied. Her report concerned the centres at Calais seaport and the Channel tunnel freight and tourist terminals at Coquelles, which were set up on French soil under an international treaty to hold detainees seeking entry to Britain. Accommodation at Coquelles freight terminal was described by staff as the "dog kennels," Owers said. The six 13 feet by 10 feet cells at Coquelles freight terminal featured hole-in-the-ground toilets and on busy days one cell could be used to hold six people. Furnishing, ventilation and heating were all inadequate, her report added. Records suggested average detention time was seven and a half hours, with the maximum nearly 12 hours. The chief inspector made 49 recommendations for improvement, including one that an independent monitoring board should have regular access. Figures for May to July last year showed 661 detainees had been through Calais Seaport detention centre, 11 of whom were children. The average period of detention was four hours, although the longest was 17. In all, 17 per cent were given permission to enter Britain. At the third centre at Coquelles tourist terminal, average detention time was three hours but the maximum recorded was nearly 16 hours. None of the facilities, run by private firm Group 4 Securicor, could appropriately separate men, women and children. The chief inspector also published a report on detention facilities at Heathrow airport, including the Queen's Building, which handles the greatest number of forced removals from Britain. People could be detained there for up to 36 hours, the report said. Owers complimented the staff's approach to welfare of detainees but called the system inhumane. "Some of those we observed in detention had been dealt with as though they were parcels, not people, and parcels whose contents and destination were sometimes incorrect," Owers said.

Cree Incorporated, Durham, North Carolina
October 19, 2005 News Observer
An early-morning immigration sweep at Cree Inc. resulted in the arrest of 36 undocumented workers Tuesday. Most of the people arrested were employed by a contractor to Cree, which makes semiconductors. The bust was the first at a high-tech company since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began focusing on facilities that the government considers strategic or sensitive. All but 10 of those arrested were employed by a maintenance and cafeteria services subcontractor, GCA Services Group of West Conshohocken, Pa. Also, in early February, ICE arrested a Kenyan man working at Cree as a security guard. He was employed by Wackenhut, another Cree contractor.

Cypress Creek Juvenile Detention Center, Lecanto, Florida
January 4, 2007 St Petersburg Times
A helicopter hovered above. Canine officers tracked through the woods. Checkpoints were in place. And dozens of sheriff's deputies swarmed the area near the Cypress Creek juvenile detention facility. Wednesday afternoon, the word was out: Two teenage inmates escaped from the maximum-security prison. Except they didn't. After an hour and a half of searching, the two missing inmates were found hiding - in the detention facility's compound. Kendall Wayne Wilbanks, 15, of Leesburg and Gavin Alexander Eskdale, 17, of Kathleen in Polk County, picked a lock to gain access to the roof area of the woodworking shop, a separate building from the main facility inside the security fence. The inmates were in the shop for an 11 a.m. class. But they were missing when the class ended and a head count took place at 12:06 p.m., the Citrus County Sheriff's Office said. A massive manhunt began, but deputies soon turned their attention back inside the facility after a check of the perimeter showed no breach of the fence.

August 21, 2006 Miami Herald
Just after 4 a.m. on Oct. 13, youth-camp guard Josephus Johnson heard a ''gurgling'' sound coming from a dorm room. He found 17-year-old Willie Durden cold, limp and without a pulse. Twenty minutes and two exams later, an officer at the Cypress Creek Juvenile Offender Correctional Center finally started CPR. Why the wait? ''Some of these kids will play pranks,'' Johnson told an investigator with the state Department of Juvenile Justice, according to records provided to The Miami Herald this week. The inspector ``asked Johnson how someone could get his or her heart to stop beating to accomplish such a prank.'' Durden, a Jacksonville teen described as a ''model inmate'' who dreamed of being a youth counselor himself, was pronounced dead on arrival at Citrus Memorial Hospital at 5:10 a.m. He was to receive a football scholarship to a Christian school in Jacksonville following his release. He became the sixth Florida child to die in DJJ custody since 2000. Two other children have died since then, including Martin Lee Anderson, who died Jan. 6 at a Bay County boot camp. Durden is among several youths who died after guards or nurses dismissed their condition as the false cries of a faker or malingerer -- and the cases raise serious questions about the quality of care children in state custody receive. "This is another tragic example of the state's inability to guarantee the health and safety of children in its care,'' said Roy Miller, who heads the Children's Campaign, a Tallahassee-based advocacy group. ``Parents and judges and law enforcement people need to ask the tough question: Are children in state custody safe? ''These are not isolated incidents. They are recurring, and it's shameful,'' Miller added. Asked Nancy Hamilton, who oversees a St. Petersburg drug treatment program and is president of the state Juvenile Justice Association: ``How do you hire for common sense? This is a key issue . . . Would you wait 20 minutes if this were your child? Or would you be on your phone?'' The head of Cypress Creek, Joseph Hasselbach, declined to discuss the case, citing a DJJ requirement that agencies that contract with the state government not speak to reporters.

March 17, 2006 Florida Times-Union
It took five months for the state to release the autopsy report Thursday for a Jacksonville teen who died in juvenile facility, drawing concern from some lawmakers especially after another boy's taped beating death in January. According to the autopsy, Willie Durden, who died Oct. 13 at the Cypress Creek Juvenile Offender Corrections Center in Citrus County, had an enlarged heart. But the report took several months to surface even after blood tests came back negative for drugs. Durden, 17, was the third young black male in three years to die in a state detention center. The Legislature's black caucus has been waiting for Durden's report since before Panama City teen Martin Lee Anderson died in January at a Panhandle boot camp where staff are accused of contributing to his death. The report on Durden shows the autopsy exam was performed the day of his death and toxicology results came back in November, but only in the last few days has the report quietly appeared on Northeast Florida lawmakers' desks.

Czech Republic
March 25, 2008 Ceskenoviny
Czech police arrested last week an accomplice of Frantisek Prochazka, who is suspected of having stolen half a billion crowns in cash from a security agency last December, Prague City State Attorney's Office spokeswoman Stepanka Zenklova told today. "The detained person has been put into custody and we will provide no more information so that not to endanger further investigation," Zenklova said. She said the alleged accomplice was in custody and faced charges of robbery in conspiracy. A special police team is looking for Prochazka on whom an international arrest warrant has been issued. The company afflicted is the G4S Cash Services, a subsidiary of the supranational security agency Group 4 Securitas that specialises in transport of money. Prochazka worked as a security guard there. The robbery took place on December 1, 2007, on Saturday morning. According to the police, Prochazka and his accomplice who was also employed with the G4S agency as a driver loaded the bags with the cash Prochazka stole from the company's safe in a van resembling an office vehicle that was used for transportation of money. While the accomplice drove the vehicle away Prochazka remained at his workplace. Police declined to say whether the driver was the person whom they detained last week. According to central Bohemian police spokeswoman Sona Budska, police today also detained three men from the Pribram area who are suspected of robbing security agencies' armoured vehicles. They face up to 12 years in prison for the combined theft of more than 12 million crowns. According to available information, two of the vehicles robbed by the suspected perpetrators belonged to G4S. Budska told that she had no information on a possible connection between the two cases of robbery.

December 10, 2007 Czech Happenings
The state attorney in charge of the case of Frantisek Prochazka, former employee of G4S security agency, whom the police suspect of stealing 560 million crowns from the agency, has proposed to issue an international arrest warrant for him, Stepanka Zenklova from the Prague State Attorney's Office told CTK today. "The state attorney has proposed to issue a warrant for the arrest of Prochazka in the Czech Republic, a European arrest warrant and a warrant for his arrest on the international level," Zenklova said. The Prague 3 District Court will now decide on issuing the warrants. So far, only a preliminary consent for Prochazka's detention has been issued. However, after the police officially accused him on Thursday the state attorney could propose issuing the arrest warrants, Zenklova said. Previous information by some media that a European arrest warrant for Prochazka has already been issued has not thus been confirmed. Prochazka has been accused of theft. He will face up to 12 years in prison if apprehended and found guilty. The "theft of the century," probably unprecedented in Czech history, occurred in the G4S agency's premises in Prague last Saturday. Prochazka's car, driven by an unknown accomplice, arrived at the complex, took the stolen sum from Prochazka and drove it away. Prochazka, who worked in the agency as a guard and is armed, disappeared later and he is still escaping from the police.

December 5, 2007 The Prague Post
Police are searching for a security agency employee who took a record 560 million Kč ($31.2 million) from his company’s Prague 3 office Dec. 1 in what officials are calling the “robbery of the century.” According to Prague city police spokeswoman Iva Knolová, “Police would welcome any information about the suspect, and have launched a statewide search.” The man, 33-year-old František Procházka, an employee of multinational security agency G4S Cash Services, has short brown hair, is of medium height and may be carrying a weapon, according to Knolová. While stealing the money, Procházka may have had an accomplice, the Czech News Agency (ČTK) reported, citing a source close to the investigation. “The suspect used an opportune moment to enter the company’s safe room,” the source says. “He took the cash, put it in bags and had it driven to an unknown place by his accomplice.” The perpetrators used a company vehicle typically used to transport clients’ money to drive away with the stolen cash, giving them more time before G4S staff was able to uncover the heist, the online news server Aktualne.cz reported. The company, a subsidiary of international security and cash transport agency Group 4 Securitas, is offering a 2 million euro reward to anyone who helps catch the perpetrators. The stolen sum is equivalent to G4S’s annual turnover, according to a statement of the company’s local branch. In an effort to map Procházka’s route, police have asked the public to provide them with any information about the getaway vehicle, a white Volkswagen utility vehicle with a 1L74973 license plate and a sticker with the company’s logo. “The suspect used this vehicle and was driving it at the time the robbery occurred,” Knolová says. The vehicle was found abandoned on Kandrtova street in Prague 8 late on the evening of Dec. 2. “It’s possible that an eyewitness noticed the suspect manipulating the vehicle in an abnormal manner,” Knolová says. Police are also looking for information regarding a gray metallic Volkswagen Passat with a 1L81115 license plate, which the suspect may have used after disposing of the getaway car. If caught, Procházka could face up to two years in prison, Knolová says.

Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC
July 8, 2009 Government Executive
The Federal Protective Service is failing to properly oversee its 13,000-strong contract guard force, causing grave security gaps at federal buildings nationwide, Government Accountability Office officials told senators on Wednesday. As part of a recent review, investigators from the watchdog agency successfully entered 10 high-security federal buildings carrying components for a bomb through doors being monitored by contract guards. Once inside, the investigators assembled an improvised explosive device and walked freely around the buildings and into various legislative and executive branch offices with the IED in a briefcase, GAO said in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Lawmakers called GAO's findings disturbing, shocking and outrageous, and asked urgently and repeatedly what they could do to help FPS gain control of the situation. "In this post-9/11 world that we're now living in, I cannot fathom how security breaches of this magnitude were allowed to occur," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, ranking member of the committee. Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said that in all his years of reading GAO reports, this one represented "about the broadest indictment of an agency in the federal government I've heard." Mark Goldstein, GAO's director of physical infrastructure issues and author of the report, told lawmakers the review revealed significant shortcomings in FPS' ability to monitor and verify contract guard training and firearms certifications. In reviewing 663 randomly selected guards, GAO found that 62 percent had at least one expired certification. Goldstein said a lack of funding has hindered the agency's ability to reach appropriate staffing levels and provide the technological tools necessary to protect federal buildings. But a number of the problems with the contract guard program are unrelated to budgetary constraints, he said. "Not having national standards and guidance for inspecting the guards, [and] better standards for knowing when certifications have expired -- things like that, are not resource-based," Goldstein said. "I think there has been a lack of attention to this part of the protective requirements for federal buildings." Lieberman said he and Collins are aware of management problems at FPS and that is one reason why they have not pressed to increase the agency's budget. "We didn't want to just throw more money at the problem until we fix the agency," he said. FPS Director Gary Schenkel did not dispute GAO's findings and said he takes full responsibility for the failures as head of the agency. He assured the committee that FPS officials have been making progress in addressing deficiencies and are working even faster now that they are aware of GAO's findings.

March 6, 2006 USA Today
The guards have taken their concerns to Congress, describing inadequate training, failed security tests and slow or confused reactions to bomb and biological threats. For instance, when an envelope with suspicious powder was opened last fall at Homeland Security Department headquarters, guards said they watched in amazement as superiors carried it by the office of Secretary Michael Chertoff, took it outside and then shook it outside Chertoff's window without evacuating people nearby. The scare, caused by white powder that proved to be harmless, "stands as one glaring example" of the agency's security problems, said Derrick Daniels, one of the first guards to respond to the incident. "I had never previously been given training ... describing how to respond to a possible chemical attack," Daniels told The Associated Press. "I wouldn't feel safe nowhere on this compound as an officer." Daniels was employed until last fall by Wackenhut Services Inc., the private security firm that guards Homeland's headquarters in a residential area of Washington. The company has been criticized previously for its work at nuclear facilities and transporting nuclear weapons. Homeland Security officials say they have little control over Wackenhut's training of guards but plan to improve that with a new contract. The company defends its performance, saying the suspicious powder incident was overblown because the mail had already been irradiated. Two senators who fielded complaints from several Wackenhut employees are asking Homeland's internal watchdog, the inspector general, to investigate. "If the allegations brought forward by the whistle-blowers are correct, they represent both a security threat and a waste of taxpayer dollars," Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote. "It would be ironic, to say the least, if DHS were unable to secure its own headquarters." Daniels left Wackenhut and now works security for another company at another federal building. He is among 14 current and former Wackenhut employees — mostly guards — who were interviewed by The Associated Press or submitted written statements to Congress that were obtained by AP. A litany of problems were listed by the guards, whose pay ranges from $15.60 to $23 an hour based on their position and level of security clearance. Among their examples of lax security: •They have no training in responding to attacks with weapons of mass destruction; •Chemical-sniffing dogs have been replaced with ineffective equipment that falsely indicates the presence of explosives. •Vehicle entrances to Homeland Security's complex are lightly guarded; •Guards with radios have trouble hearing each other, or have no radios, no batons and no pepper spray, leaving them with few options beyond lethal force with their handguns. Over the last two years, the Energy Department inspector general concluded that Wackenhut guards had thwarted simulated terrorist attacks at a nuclear lab only after they were tipped off to the test; and that guards also had improperly handled the transport of nuclear and conventional weapons. Homeland Security is based at a gated, former Navy campus in a college neighborhood — several miles from the heavily trafficked streets that house the FBI, Capitol, Treasury Department and White House. Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said Wackenhut guards are still operating under a contract signed with the Navy, and the agency has little control over their training. A soon-to-be-implemented replacement contract will impose new requirements on security guards, he said. Daniels, the former guard who responded to the white powder incident, said the area where the powder was found wasn't evacuated for more than an hour. Available biohazard face shields went unused. Daniels said that after the envelope was taken outside, and the order finally given to evacuate the potentially infected area, employees had already gone to lunch and had to be rounded up and quarantined. Former guard Bryan Adams recognized his inadequate training one day last August, when an employee reported a suspicious bag in the parking lot. "I didn't have a clue about what to do," he said. Adams said he closed the vehicle checkpoint with a cone, walked over to the bag and called superiors. Nobody cordoned off the area. Eventually, someone called a federal bomb squad, which arrived more than an hour after the discovery. "If the bag had, in fact, contained the explosive device that was anticipated, the bomb could have detonated several times over in the hour that the bag sat there," Adams said. The bag, it turned out, contained gym clothes. Some guards who continue to work at Homeland, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because of fear of losing their jobs, said they knew of two instances in which individuals without identification got into the sensitive complex. Another described how guards flunked a test by the Secret Service, which sent vehicles into the compound with dummy government identification tags hanging from inside mirrors. Guards cleared such vehicles through on two occasions, this guard said, and one officer even copied down the false information without realizing it was supposed to match information on the employee's government badge. Marixa Farrar, a former guard, said two guards always should have been stationed inside the main building where Chertoff had his office, but she often was on duty alone. One day last fall a fire alarm rang. As employees walked by Farrar, they asked if this was a fire or a test. "There were no radios, so I couldn't figure out if it was a serious alarm," she said. There was no fire.

DuPont Laboratories, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
April 30, 2008 Philadelphia Daily News
A former postal employee serving a year's probation for stealing bars of gold from an express-mail package was jailed yesterday for three months for violating his probation. Edward Henderson, 22, of Dover Street near W. York Street, ran afoul of the feds after he told his probation officer he had been fired from his job as a security guard for Wackenhut Security. Todd Schaffer, the probation officer, testified at a hearing yesterday that Henderson found a SIM card for a cell phone in a storage locker at DuPont Laboratories and used it for several months in his own cell phone. A SIM card is a tiny data card that stores account information. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joan Burnes said Henderson used the SIM card between May and August 2007, ringing up charges of almost $1,750 to call his girlfriend and family members. Henderson was charged in Common Pleas Court last August with theft by unlawful taking and with receiving stolen property. Those charges are still pending. A condition of Henderson's probation was that he not commit any federal or state crimes. U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Rice was not pleased. Last May, Rice sentenced Henderson to a year's probation for stealing 15 bars of .9999 fine gold from an express-mail package, valued by authorities at about $11,850. Burnes said Rice had given Henderson an opportunity last year to set himself straight but he blew it. Burnes asked that the judge jail Henderson for three months. Henderson admitted he had "done a foolish thing" but said he hadn't deliberately violated his probation. Defense attorney Maranna Meehan said she thought three months in jail was a "bit excessive." "I'm asking for a second opportunity for [him]," she said, adding that Henderson was supporting his mother and his 3-year-old son. But this time, Rice was not so understanding. "I had confidence in you, I gave you a chance," he told Henderson. "You made a promise to me and you broke it." The judge was just getting warmed up. "You just don't get it. I think you just thought you could get away with it because you're wearing a uniform," Rice said, his voice rising a few decibels. Rice also ordered Henderson to make restitution of $1,750 to DuPont Labs. Rice ordered Henderson to be taken into custody immediately.

El Cajon Boulevard, San Diego, California
April 3, 2007 Union-Tribune
A City Heights man accused of using his security guard badge to lure victims and then rape them was sentenced yesterday to 12 years in prison. Robert James Purdy, 42, pleaded guilty in San Diego Superior Court to rape under color of authority and kidnapping charges involving two teenage girls. He agreed to the 12-year prison term in February under the terms of a plea bargain. Purdy was accused of a dozen felonies corresponding to three attacks in September and November in Normal Heights, Southcrest and North Park. Prosecutors said Purdy, a Wackenhut security employee, got the girls into his car by showing his badge and then demanded sex. He was arrested at his home on Nov. 9.

February 1, 2007 10 NEWS
A security guard who used his badge to lure young girls into his car and then forced them to have sex pleaded guilty Thursday to two counts of rape under the color of authority and one count of kidnapping. Under the plea deal, Robert James Purdy, 42, will receive a 12-year prison sentence. He must also register as a sex offender and has agreed to give up all property seized by police, including his Ford Escort, according to prosecutors. The defendant, who will be formally sentenced on April 2 by Judge Stephanie Sontag, would have faced more than 40 years behind bars if convicted of a dozen felony charges, including sodomy and false imprisonment by violence. Purdy, of City Heights, pleaded guilty to raping two 15-year-old girls last Nov. 7 and Nov. 8. One of the victims was moved from one location to another, according to the plea agreement. Deputy District Attorney Evan Kirvin said Purdy was an employee of Wackenhut Corp. when he used his badge to lure the victims into his car. The victims were in an area known for prostitution when they were victimized, but it was not established that either actually worked as prostitutes, Kirvin said. Purdy was tracked down and arrested after an officer recalled putting a citation on a vehicle that fit the description given by one of the victims.

November 21, 2006 North County Times
A City Heights man accused of using his position as a security guard to lure young girls into his car, where he allegedly forced them into sex, pleaded not guilty today to 12 felony counts, including rape and kidnapping. Deputy District Attorney Evan Kirvin said Robert James Purdy, 41, is charged with raping two girls under the age of 16 on Nov. 7 and Nov. 8. Kirvin said there may be additional alleged victims, which could lead to more charges. Anyone who thinks they may have been victimized by Purdy should call San Diego police, the prosecutor said. Judge David Szumowski set bail at $500,000 and scheduled a readiness conference for Jan. 11. Purdy, a Wackenhut Corp. employee, allegedly used his security guard's badge to persuade women and girls to get into his car, where he forced them into sex acts. The alleged victims "were in areas known for prostitution when they were victimized," San Diego police public information officer Monica Munoz said. Kirvin, who would not comment on whether the alleged victims were prostitutes, said at least one girl was moved from one location to another. The defendant was tracked down and arrested Nov. 9 after an officer recalled putting a citation on a vehicle that fit the description given by one of the alleged victims. As charged, Purdy faces more than 17 years in prison if convicted.

November 11, 2006 KFMB
A suspected serial rapist is behind bars Saturday morning, being held on $325,000 bail. Police have identified the suspect as Robert James Purdy. Authorities say the 41-year-old man is a security guard who works for Wackenhut Security Services. He’s a man who officers say used his badge and his fake cop talk to target women working the streets along El Cajon Boulevard. Investigators tell News 8 that so far they know of four rape victims. All are prostitutes and two are minors.

Florence Correctional Center, Florence, Arizona
February 6, 2009 Yuma Sun
An illegal immigrant injured in an automobile accident after his arrest by the Border Patrol has received a $200,000 settlement. Jose Sandoval reached the settlement with Corrections Corporation of America, which had subcontracted with the Wackenhut security firm to transport previously detained aliens for the Department of Homeland Security, according to Yuma attorney Candy Camarena, who along with attorney Virginia Zazueta represented Sandoval. Sandoval, who had been arrested in the Yuma area in March, was being transported in a van with five other people to Florence, Ariz., when a flat tire caused the driver to lose control, according to Camarena and Miguel Escobar, Mexican consul in Yuma. The van rolled over along Interstate 8 in Pinal County. Sandoval was hospitalized with injuries to the arm and spinal column. "He was deported to Mexico through Nogales, in precarious health condition," Escobar said. "He was walking with a cane, and he contacted the Mexican Consulate to get help. The consulate took care of him and took him to San Luis Rio Colorado for medical care and we contacted the attorney." Sandoval, a resident of Baja California, got the additional medical attention but "the arm was broken in seven places," he said. "I have metal pins here and there," Sandoval said Friday at a news conference in San Luis Rio Colorado. "The spinal column splintered in two parts, I suffer a lot of pain. All the time there is that pain in the back." A carpenter by training, he had gone to the United States to work in construction, he said Friday at a news conference, but will no longer be able to do that kind of work. "I've tried to lift heavy things, but it hurts. I can't do it." The legal case was nearly seven months in preparation, Camarena said. "The biggest problems that we had in this lawsuit was that federal court demands that the plaintiff in a suit be present. Mr. Sandoval can't enter the United States, but we reached an agreement to resolve the case." Sandoval received $80,000, with the rest of settlement going for his medical and legal bills.

Florida Department of Corrections, Tallahassee, Florida
September 30, 2005 St. Petersburg Times
Over dinner in midtown Manhattan, Florida Corrections Secretary James Crosby met in July with two executives of a company seeking a multimillion-dollar contract with his agency. Crosby paid his own tab and said no state business was discussed. State bidding rules prohibit vendors and agency staffers from discussing pending contracts, except through official channels. The company, G4S Justice Services, later won a three-year contract to monitor sex offenders in half the state, including Pinellas and Hillsborough. It won because it submitted the lowest price. More bad news surfaced Thursday. --Under criticism from legislators, prison officials reversed course and decided not to hire four companies to expand privatization of health care at South Florida prisons. Instead, prison officials will redo the bids and hire one company to provide medical, dental, mental health and pharmacy services, a deal worth more than $100-million. Because of complex bid regulations, hiring four companies invited a legal challenge, opponents said. --A high-ranking prison health care official, John Burke, quit his $95,000-a-year job amid questions about his past ties to a company that has a prison contract to package medicine for inmates. In his resignation letter, Burke cited "continued turmoil" over his past work for TYA Pharmaceuticals of Tallahassee and another company, MHM Services of Vienna, Va. Both companies were expected to seek parts of the inmate health care program. "I have done nothing improper, unethical or illegal during my tenure now or before," Burke wrote Wednesday. Burke listed his past ties to TYA and MHM on a financial disclosure form filed with the state Commission on Ethics, but prison officials say he never disclosed it to them. G4S sales director Leo Carson, who was at the dinner with the company's top executive, Fiona Walters, said it was the kind of casual get-together that occurs frequently at all professional conferences. "It was very impromptu, very informal and very much in a conference atmosphere," Carson said. "The first thing out of our mouths was, "We want to avoid this topic, for the obvious reason. Agreed? Agreed."' Carson said it would have been rude to snub Crosby, and that the dinner was "115 percent above board." He said Crosby paid his own tab. Crosby previously acknowledged having gone to concerts and sporting events with Don Yaeger, a Tallahassee lobbyist for vendors seeking contracts in the prisons. But as with the New York dinner, Crosby said he always paid his own way.

September 8, 2005 St Petersburg Times
In a surprise twist to Florida's fast-growing sex offender tracking system, a Texas firm tentatively hired to help run the program has quit. The withdrawal by Satellite Tracking of People of Houston came after more than two weeks of field tests of its new one-piece ankle bracelet, known as BluTag. A contract with the state Department of Corrections was contingent on successful testing of the global positioning system devices. The state declined to say whether problems arose in the tests. STOP declined to comment. STOP's vice president for business development, Greg Utterback, sent the state a terse letter Tuesday stating only that the company "is requesting to withdraw from contract consideration." STOP's chief executive, Steve Logan, declined to comment. STOP was one of two companies that submitted low bids to expand electronic tracking of sex offenders under the Jessica Lunsford Act, which includes a three-year, $3.9-million project to track up to 1,200 offenders. The law, which took effect one week ago, was passed in memory of the 9-year-old Homosassa girl who was abducted and killed in February. Angry at the bid language, STOP filed a protest in July and briefly brought the program to a halt. After the state removed the words STOP did not like, the company dropped its protest and made the lowest bid of seven firms. The Corrections Department split the state into two regions, north and south. STOP was the low bidder for the northern half, including Pasco, Hernando and Citrus, the county that was home to Jessica Lunsford and to John Couey, a 46-year-old sex offender charged with her death. G4S Justice Services, a subsidiary of London's Group 4 Securicor, has been hired to provide tracking in the southern half, which includes Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

Florida Legislature, Tallahassee, Florida
May 7, 2008 Palm Beach Post
The chief of staff in training for de facto Senate President Jeff Atwater is officially off the payroll, Atwater said Wednesday. Millionaire "Budd" Kneip of Palm Beach Gardens earned a $7,000-a-month salary from the state for one month and two days to learn the ins and outs of the legislature, which was dealing with a $5 billion budget deficit. Kneip was the founder and owner of the Oasis Group, a division of Wackenhut Corp. He has no legislative experience but has run campaigns, including the one for Palm Beach County's 2004 half-penny sales tax increase to build schools. Normally, the chief of staff assumes his position when the Senate president is appointed in the fall. Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, is being challenged in his reelection bid by Skip Campbell, D-Tamarac, who formerly served in the Senate with him. Florida Democrats on Tuesday formally requested public records about Kneip's hiring and asked Atwater use his campaign account to reimburse the state for Kneip's salary. "Floridians are hurting, Sen. Atwater, but your campaign coffers are not," Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Thurman said in a letter to Atwater on Tuesday. "We were going out spending money foolishly when we don't have the money to spend," Campbell said. "Let's be honest about it. There is no chief of staff until you become senate president." Before Thurman's letter became public, Atwater said he had arranged in the final days of the legislative session for Kneip to go off the payroll. The session ended Friday. "Budd's assistance during session was invaluable. ... He has returned home to continue developing a transition plan; I look forward to Budd coming back to the Senate this fall," Atwater said. Thurman's demands were a way to help Campbell, Atwater said Wednesday. "This is a chairman trying to insert herself into a local race with no information," he said.

April 12, 2008 Palm Beach Post
Sen. Jeff Atwater has hired an aide who will get on-the-job training before he becomes Senate president chief of staff, and Atwater's campaign opponent is criticizing the expenditure. Robert "Budd" Kneip is a Palm Beach Gardens businessman with no legislative experience. He founded The Oasis Group, an outsourcing division of Wackenhut Corp. Kneip, who is earning $7,000 a month, needed to come on board early to get the feel of how the legislature runs and how government budgets are developed and negotiated before his new boss officially takes over, Atwater said. Normally the chief of staff is appointed after the legislative leader assumes his role in the fall. Atwater is being challenged for reelection in November by Democrat Skip Campbell, a trial lawyer who formerly served in the Senate alongside Atwater. Campbell criticized Kneip's salary at a time when lawmakers are slashing about $5 billion from the state budget because of plummeting tax collections. "How can we be hiring somebody for on the job training at 7K a month when we're cutting education, food for the poor, Medicaid treatment for the mentally ill? This is one of the most hypocritical actions I've seen in government," Campbell said. Kneip has sat on the advisory boards for Florida Atlantic University and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, and served as chairman of the Palm Beach County Task Force on Business Development. In the latter role, he successfully pushed a 2004 referendum for a half-penny sales tax hike to pay for building schools to comply with the constitutional amendment limiting class sizes. Kneip's know-how at implementing state policy at the local level and business acumen are why he's right for the job, said Atwater, a North Palm Beach Republican. "He doesn't have the experience in this process," Atwater said. "To have him be able to watch how this works is going to help me as we think about structure, the design, the flow and process of work."

Gambia, Africa
November 28, 2005 Daily Observer
The two staff members of Wackenhut security firm, who were implicated in the aborted groundnut theft at the Gambia Agricultural Marketing Company Ltd (Gamco) a few months ago, were on Thursday arraigned before Magistrate Mboto of the Banjul Magistrates' Court on a two-count charge of conspiracy to commit felony and stealing.

Global Solutions Limited
June 13, 2009 Perth Now
ONE of two guards suspended over the death of an Aboriginal elder in a prisoner transport van, says she has been ''gagged'' from talking about the tragedy. On Friday, State Coroner Alastair Hope recommended Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock consider criminal charges over the "unnecessary and wholly avoidable death'' of Mr Ward, 46, who died on January 27 last year. Officers Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell drove the Warbuton elder, whose first name cannot be released for cultural reasons, for the 352km Outback journey between the Goldfields towns of Laverton to Kalgoorlie. In his stinging finding, Mr Hope said Mr Ward died when temperatures rose to 50C in the pod of the commercially owned van which had no air-conditioning and little-to-no air flow. Contracted transport company, G4S, formally known as Global Solutions Ltd, stood down Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell on Friday. "The two employees have been suspended and the findings of the coroner, the coroner's report and recommendations will be considered carefully and it will then be decided what the next step should be,'' G4S spokesman Tim Hall told ABC radio yesterday. Ms Stokoe declined to comment on her suspension, saying: "I can't talk about anything, I would like to, but I can't''. Mr Ward's family is planning to sue G4S, which runs other custodial services including court security, over the tragedy. Prison Officer's Union secretary John Welch said the inquest had raised questions about the privatisation of custodial services in WA. Mr Welch said he feared G4S would be allowed to be apply for the contract to run the recently announced Eastern Goldfields prison which was scheduled for completion by the end of 2013. "You wonder why, in the light apparent failures of privatisation, you would want to even consider looking at having at private provider in the Goldfields,'' Mr Welch said. A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Christian Porter said no decision had been made on whether the prison would be public or private, and any discussion on the potential awarding of a private contract was speculative. Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chair Marc Newhouse said another public protest was planned for the city on Saturday to lobby the State Government for improvements.

June 12, 2009 WA Today
A man died a "terrible death" in the back of a prison van where temperatures reached 50 degrees celsius, the West Australian coroner has found. Coroner Alistair Hope, in his findings handed down on Friday, said the 46-year-old Aboriginal man's death had been "wholly unnecessary and avoidable". Mr Ward, whose first name cannot be released for cultural reasons, died while being transferred 350km from Laverton to Kalgoorlie in a transit van on January 27, after being picked up for drink-driving on Australia Day. The air-conditioning unit inside the prisoner's compartment of the commercially operated van was not working and the coroner was told Mr Ward would have suffered through temperatures of 50 degrees before his death. He received third-degree burns where his body came into contact with the metal floor in the back of the Global Solutions Ltd (GSL) vehicle. Mr Hope found Mr Ward, of the Goldfields town of Warburton, died of heat stroke. He said his death was the result of a "litany of errors" and accused the prison van drivers of collusion and giving false evidence. He said the fact the prison van did not have a spare tyre was an indication of GSL's "reckless approach". It was a disgrace that a prisoner yet to be convicted was transported such a distance in the oven-hot conditions, Mr Hope said. The prisoner's compartment had little light, no restraints to protect the person inside if the van was involved in an accident, had little air flow and the fan did not work when tested, Mr Hope added. There was no proper method for a prisoner to communicate with the drivers, he said. About 40 protesters demonstrated outside Perth's Central Law Courts, where the coroner delivered his findings. Amnesty International called it "a disgrace that a prisoner should be transported in this way in the 21st century".

May 16, 2009 The West
He literally cooked to death. Trapped in a prison van for four hours, suffocated by temperatures that climbed to more than 50C, the Aboriginal elder had no way to communicate with security officers sitting just a metre away, in the airconditioned cab. His only sustenance was a small bottle of water and a meat pie. When he finally collapsed on the van floor, the metal was so hot it seared his skin. Yesterday, Corrective Services Commissioner Ian Johnson travelled to Kalgoorlie to publicly apologise to Mr Ward’s family, accepting responsibility for the 46-year-old’s death in January last year. It was a dramatic end to a coronial inquest that has revealed a litany of failures in the justice and custodial systems in WA’s outback. Widow Nancy Ward and her children will return to Laverton next week after sitting quietly and with dignity throughout the case, which has attracted the attention of the United Nations and the Australian Human Rights Commission. Mr Ward, a conservation worker, a supporter and interpreter for local police and an advocate and educator for children of the Gibson Desert, was an international ambassador for the Ngaanyatjarra people. His family say he was treated like an animal. Mr Ward had been drinking on Australia Day last year in the remote Goldfields town of Laverton when he was arrested for driving with more than four times the legal alcohol limit. Conducting a quasi-court hearing for Mr Ward at his cell door at the local police station, justice of the peace Barrye Thompson remanded him in custody to face court in Kalgoorlie the following day. Mr Thompson told the inquest he had no formal training when appointed as a JP and could not even remember whether he had read the Bail Act. The Aboriginal Legal Service was not contacted. Guards and police officers testified the prison vans used by Global Solutions Limited and maintained by the State were notoriously unreliable, sub-standard and the air-conditioning was often faulty. GSL’s supervisor in Kalgoorlie, Leanne Jenkins, had warned her management an incident would occur unless the vehicles were replaced. At 11.20am, the GSL prison van pulled into a secure area at Laverton police station where the guards were told they would have a trouble-free passenger. Mr Ward made a comment about the warm day and a guard told him “the quicker he got into the van, the quicker the air-conditioning would kick in”. But the air-conditioning did not work: it had been reported faulty in the GSL maintenance log more than a month earlier. Before making the continuous 360km journey to Kalgoorlie, the guards did not tell Mr Ward there was a duress alarm in the back of the van in case he needed help. Towards the end of the trip, they heard a loud thump. Pulling over on to the side of the road and opening the outer door of the van, the guards felt the heat radiating from the rear pod and they saw Mr Ward face-down on the van floor — unconscious and unresponsive. Reaching into the back of the van felt like a “blast from a furnace”, according to Dr Lucien LaGrange, who assisted in removing Mr Ward’s lifeless body at Kalgoorlie Hospital. Doctors found full-thickness contact burns on his stomach and tried for 20 minutes to resuscitate Mr Ward, whose skin felt like a “hot cup of coffee”. They managed to get a brief return of a heartbeat, but after putting him in an ice bath, his body temperature was still 41.7C. Coroner Alastair Hope is due to deliver his findings on June 12. For now, the Ward family will have to return to a community missing a leader. It is little comfort to them that money was allocated in this week’s State Budget to replace the fleet of transport vans — four years after the Department for Corrective Services undertook to do so. “I am sorry,” Mr Johnson told Mrs Ward yesterday. “I have a deep regret but no matter what I say, it’s not going to change what happened.”

May 14, 2009 The West
More than 30 family members and supporters of Mr Ward, an Aboriginal elder who had a fatal heatstroke in the back of a prison van, gathered outside the Kalgoorlie Courthouse yesterday to call for those responsible for his death to face tribal punishment. Mr Ward’s widow Nancy and his four sons were among those who wailed in grief as they demanded justice and answers to why the Warburton elder died in such horrific circumstances. The family’s interpreter and relative, Gail Jamieson, said that under traditional law, anyone found culpable of the death should be speared. “The family is just devastated,” she said. “He was treated with no respect and he was a well-respected, outstanding elder. If they were in an Aboriginal culture, they would be speared because us Aboriginal people are also going through two cultures.” The inquest was told no disciplinary action was taken against the two GSL officers responsible for transporting Mr Ward on the day he died. Mr Ward died after a four-hour journey in a GSL prison van from Laverton to Kalgoorlie on January 27 last year when temperatures reached 42C. Global Solutions Limited general manager John Hughes said security officers Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell were stood down on full pay and were reinstated when an internal investigation found they had not violated company policies or procedures. Questioned by the family’s barrister Michael Rynne, Mr Hughes said any reinvestigation would depend on Coroner Alastair Hope’s findings. GSL’s multi-million-dollar contract could require it to pay a penalty of 4.5 per cent of its value if found to have failed in its duty of care. Mr Hughes said he understood GSL’s obligations included ensuring officers minimised hardship to detainees, conducting regular checks to ensure their safety, security and health and preventing injury. The inquest concludes today.

March 21, 2009 The West
The security guard who drove the van in which an Aboriginal elder died of heat stroke has admitted he should take responsibility for the death. Testifying for a second day at the inquest into the death of 46-year-old Mr Ward, Global Solutions Limited driver Graham Powell said yesterday he regretted how Mr Ward died. “In hindsight, if I had to do that journey again, I would certainly be doing it a lot differently,” he said. He agreed with lawyer assisting the coroner, Felicity Zempilas, it was inhumane to transport prisoners in the rear pod of the van over long distances and that the vans were “certainly not designed for that”. Coroner Alastair Hope told Mr Powell he was “troubled” over his evidence about phone calls made after Mr Ward collapsed. Mr Hope said a delay of two minutes between calls was a long time in an emergency. To questions from his counsel Linda Black, Mr Powell said he should have checked the airconditioning, made comfort stops and told Mr Ward explicitly how to communicate with the officers if he was in distress. The inquest has heard Mr Powell and colleague Nina Stokoe did not stop during the four hours they had Mr Ward in the van in mid-40C heat while driving from Laverton to Kalgoorlie in January last year. Mr Ward suffered a full-thickness hand-size burn on his stomach from a hot metal surface inside the van. Senior chemist David Tranthim-Fryer said the prison van temperature would have been above 50C. Evidence from a police re-enactment he helped with revealed the van floor reached 56C and the air temperature at least 50C on a slightly cooler day. The temperature would have been hotter with a person inside because there would have been another heat source. “We opened the back doors and could feel the heat coming out of the pods. The hot air affects you more than anything else,” Mr Tranthim-Fryer said. Mr Ward’s body temperature was 41.7C after 20 minutes of resuscitation in an ice bath while being fanned. The van’s rear-pod airconditioning was not working, a fault noted in the GSL maintenance log more than a month before Mr Ward’s death. Mr Powell said he did not check the airconditioning in the pod despite knowing it had a history of faults. He had assumed Ms Stokoe checked it. Mr Hope has heard evidence from witnesses, including GSL’s Kalgoorlie supervisor Leanne Jenkins, who spoke of substandard “unreliable” prison vans which were not suitable for long distance travel. The inquest did not finish within the two-week timeframe and Mr Hope adjourned it until May 11. Outside, Mr Ward’s cousin Bernard Newberry said his family wanted those responsible charged. The family has asked that Mr Ward’s first name not be used.

January 30, 2008 Oldham-Chronicle
SECURITY guards were left red-faced after their prison van got stuck in a town centre car park. Global Solutions Limited (GSL) is employed by the Prison Service to transfer prisoners safely between court and jail. But the driver caused a bit of a stir when the van became jammed in the former Co-op car park at the back of Mecca Bingo on King Street. Police went to investigate but found the prisoners had already been dropped off at Oldham Magistrates’ Court. A police spokesman said: “The driver said he had read the height restriction notice but thought the van would be able to clear it.” The driver and his colleague then freed the van by letting air out of the tyres.

January 29, 2008 News.Com.AU
THE West Australian desert town of Warburton was in mourning yesterday over the death in custody of its former Aboriginal community chairman, who was arrested on Australia Day for allegedly drink-driving. Ian Ward, a 46-year-old father of five and one of the last nomads born in the Gibson Desert, died the following day after collapsing in the back of a security van during a 915km journey to jail in the goldfields city of Kalgoorlie-Boulder. Major Crime Squad detectives are investigating. Mr Ward was being driven by contractors for the Department of Corrective Services, who noticed he had collapsed as they neared their destination. Mr Ward's nephew Andrew Johns said his large family was gathering in Warburton to remember a man who lobbied for his people's native title rights. "We are very sad today," Mr Johns said. The family understands Mr Ward died of a heart attack in hot conditions in the back of the van. "It is a long way to go and very hot," he said. Police had stopped Mr Ward last Saturday at 9.30pm in his remote home town of Warburton, about 1500km northwest of Perth in the traditional Ngaanyatjarra lands between the Gibson and Victoria deserts. He was charged with one count of drink-driving and taken to the lockup in Warburton. Mr Ward was driven 570km to the courthouse in Laverton, where he appeared on Sunday morning and was remanded in custody. Police say he was being transported to the nearest jail - the Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison 352km away - when he collapsed. Mr Ward was being transported by Global Solutions Ltd, having been picked up in Laverton at 11.40am, police say. He was being taken in the rear of the GSL security van. As the van neared Kalgoorlie, he was found to have collapsed. He was conveyed to Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital, where he died a short time later.

November 29, 2007 The Telegraph
Group4Securicor is in talks to buy Global Solutions, a company it used to own, for around £350m. Earlier this year, private equity firm Cognetas appointed investment bank UBS to carry out a strategic review of Global Solutions, which runs a number of Britain's prisons and detention centres. However, the credit crunch forced Cognetas to put the review of Global Solutions on hold. Since then, the company has received a number of approaches, including one from Group4Securicor. Cognetas bought Global Solutions, which also manages hospitals, schools and tourist offices, from Danish security firm Group 4 Falk for about £200m three years ago. Group4Securicor is now understood to be carrying out due diligence on the business. However, it is not the only company bidding. Sources said US group GEO and several private equity firms have also made approaches for the company. Global Solutions has previously come under the spotlight for the way it runs its prisons and detention centres, following the Government's privatisation of the sector. Earlier this year, there was a Panorama investigation by an undercover BBC reporter, who worked as a custody officer, in one of Global Solutions' prisons at Rye Hill. None of the parties involved would comment.

MANCHESTER'S new £30m court is at the centre of a new storm after dozens of prisoners were hours late arriving from their cells.  Furious lawyers sat around for up to three hours yesterday waiting for their clients to arrive from police stations, including Bootle Street less than a mile away.  GSL, the private security firm that ferries prisoners to the court, blamed "logistical problems" and has apologised to court authorities.  It is the latest in a string of problems at the court since it opened in May.   Around 40 people were due to be moved from holding cells in Manchester to the court before 10am yesterday, in time for morning hearings.  Less than half were delivered on time and more were dropped off at 11am and 11.45am. Lawyers were still waiting for at least eight clients at 12.30pm. GSL, part of Group 4, said the final transfer was made at 12.45pm.  Court bosses have already threatened to fine GSL for previous failures to get prisoners into court on time.  (Manchester Online, August 31, 2004)

Group 4/Securicor (AKA Wackenhut, GS4, ArmorGroup), UK
February 19, 2010 Miami-Herald
Democratic Senate candidate Maurice Ferre is calling on his primary rival, Kendrick Meek, to return $10,000 in campaign contributions from Wackenhut's political action committee -- a week after the company agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle claims it systematically overbilled Miami-Dade County. "Kendrick Meek was part of the team that enabled Wackenhut to bilk Miami-Dade taxpayers out of millions of dollars," said Ferre. "Floridians need a Senator who will put their interests before special interests and Meek has proven he is not the man for the job." Meek sold security contracts for the company from 1994 to 2002, and his Senate campaign received the maximum $10,000 donation its political action committee. Meek's wife, Leslie, and his mother, Carrie, have also lobbied for the company, Ferre noted, adding that Carrie Meek lobbied for both Wackenhut and Miami-Dade County while the two were fighting over billing. "The Democratic establishment is making a big mistake in anointing Kendrick Meek," said Ferre. "Meek has never faced a real election and has never answered for his wheeling-and-dealing as an elected official. Congressman Meek's record would not hold up to the intense scrutiny applied by the Republican machine in a general election."

February 19, 2010 Miami Herald
Miami-Dade Commissioners voted 8-3 Thursday to approve a settlement with Wackenhut Corp., formally ending the testy dispute between the county and security firm that guarded Metrorail stops for two decades. Under the deal, Wackenhut will pay $3 million to the county and $4.5 million to a former Wackenhut employee and her lawyers who filed a whistle-blower suit alleging bogus billing practices. In return, Wackenhut gets a clean bill of health with the county and can compete for Miami-Dade government contracts in the future. A Miami-Dade audit previously found Wackenhut overbilled the county anywhere from $3.3 million to $5.8 million for work it never performed. Other estimates put the number much higher. Last year Miami-Dade leaders said they would bar the firm from doing business with the county. Wackenhut, which stopped guarding railway stops in November, denied overbilling the county and filed a $20 million lawsuit last year against Miami-Dade. While commissioners approved the deal, some were uneasy. ``We're not getting back what we're owed,'' said Commissioner Joe Martinez, who voted against the settlement.

February 16, 2010 Grand Rapids News
Less than a month after a federal judge rejected James and Glenna Chandler's bid to punish the security company that employed five men convicted of killing their daughter in Holland in 1979, the couple has filed an appeal, pushing their case forward. Janet Chandler's father filed the appeal Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District in Cincinnati, records show. The Chandlers have claimed Wackenhut Corp. -- which employed five of the six people convicted of Janet Chandler's slaying -- did not conduct sufficient employee background checks, or properly supervise their workers. They also contended Wackenhut helped hide the employees' involvement in the murder, which took nearly three decades to solve. The family was seeking cash damages for the mental pain and suffering inflicted by the death of Janet, a 22-year-old Hope College student. On Jan. 19, U.S. District Judge Janet Neff dismissed the Chandlers' claims against the Florida security firm, which hired guards during a strike at a Holland area plant. Neff said the allegations were filed after a three-year statute of limitations.

February 16, 2010 Miami-Herald
Heading to an end: the long-running dispute between Miami-Dade County, Wackenhut Corp. and a whistleblower named Michelle Trimble over millions in alleged overbillings for phantom workers at Metrorail. On Thursday county commissioners are scheduled to vote on a proposed settlement in which all parties would drop their competing lawsuits, Wackenhut would pay $7.5 million, and Miami-Dade would end its bid to keep the private security firm from doing business with the county. It would promise not to use the facts of this case against Wackenhut on current or future contracts. Out of the $7.5 million Wackenhut has agreed pay, $3 million would go to the county, $1.25 million to Trimble and $3.25 million to her attorneys, led by plaintiffs lawyer Mark Vieth and the Miami firm Josephs Jack. The proposed settlement comes nearly a year after a final audit by Miami-Dade County concluded that taxpayers were overbilled by Wackenhut -- which provided security at the county's Metrorail stops for two decades -- by $3.3 million to $5.8 million. In the proposed settlement, the county also agreed to clarify its final audit by Miami-Dade's chief auditor Cathy Jackson, saying her comments ``should not be construed to mean that the principals or management of Wackenhut engaged in fraud.'' In a memo to commissioners, County Manager George Burgess defended the proposed settlement, writing that the deal avoids the risks associated with trial and required ``all parties to make some compromises.'' Drew Levine, Wackenhut's president, declined to comment. Trimble could not be reached for comment. Vieth, who has been leading the civil case against Wackenhut since August 2005, did not return calls. Michael Josephs of the Josephs Jack firm declined to comment. If approved, the settlement will end a dispute that's been part of a broader history of waste and mismanagement underscoring the county's stewardship of the transit system. In this case, the county has been criticized for responding slowly to allegations that taxpayers were paying for guards who did not show up at Metrorail stops. In August 2005 the whistleblower lawsuit against Wackenhut was filed alleging phony billing practices; the suit is called a Qui Tam action, in which a private citizen sues on behalf of the government. Trimble worked as a guard at the county's Juvenile Services Department, where Wackenhut also previously provided security services. The county balked at participating in the case, instead ordering its own audit that was not finished until 2008. The inquiry found that Wackenhut billed the county for service not rendered. It wasn't until a year later, in April 2009, that a final audit was issued -- again concluding taxpayers were bilked. County manager Burgess had said he would replace Wackenhut once its contract expired in November and pledged to bar the firm from doing business with the county in the future. Burgess also said the county would cooperate with the Qui Tam lawsuit. At the time, plaintiff attorney Vieth said the ``evidence of overbilling has been overwhelming and existing for four years.'' For its part, Wackenhut denied wrongdoing and subsequently filed a $20 million suit against the county, saying the future damages it will suffer ``as result of this unfair and malicious taint'' on the firm's reputation ``are incalculable.'' Last month -- on the eve of trial in the whistleblower case -- the proposed settlement was reached, according to Burgess' memo.

February 11, 2010 KATU News
In a Seattle bus tunnel a 15-year-old girl was viciously attacked while security guards did nothing but call 9-1-1. The incident, in addition to sparking outrage, has many asking whether security guards in Portland are allowed to step in. Disbelief and disgust was the reaction by people who were shown surveillance footage of a girl being repeatedly kicked in the head by another girl while private security guards stood by at arm’s length and did nothing but call 9-1-1. “I know the transit isn’t exactly the same over there (Seattle), but I know it’s still good and that’s, that’s horrible,” said one man after watching the video at a MAX station. “Somebody’s getting hurt, I mean you don’t want them to get hurt, I don’t know, like, do something,” said another man at a MAX station. TriMet and its private security contractor Wackenhut, said if one of their guard’s is near a fight, they won’t just stand back and dial 9-1-1. Wackenhut project manager, Maj. Ellis Bremer, said there’s no question employees can and will get directly involved to stop fights. “We will not stand by,” he said. “We are here to protect the employees and assist the employees of TriMet and in so far as the ridership goes, of course, protect the ridership and inform the ridership.” The state only requires eight hours of classroom work to get a license to be a private security guard, but Wackenhut said it requires its people to go through an initial minimum of 80 hours and then a 16-hour refresher course every year. Most riders said they believe security should mean more than just dialing 9-1-1. Transit officers in Seattle say they are reconsidering the limits put on their private security guards.

December 24, 2009 Miami-Herald
The former chairman of the Florida Board of Medicine and another Fort Lauderdale physician have agreed to pay substantial sums to settle federal civil charges of insider stock trading. Dr. Mammen P. Zachariah, appointed to the board of medicine by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2004, and Dr. Sheldon Nassberg allegedly reaped illegal windfalls by acting on stock tips supplied by Mammen Zachariah's brother, prominent Broward heart specialist and major Republican fundraiser Dr. Zachariah P. Zachariah. Zach Zachariah, who has raised millions of dollars for Republican causes and candidates, including both presidents Bush, faces similar charges, but has declined to settle his case. A federal magistrate has set trial for Aug. 23, 2010. That trial promises to offer a unique look at Republican fundraising and how political access is bought and sold. Among the expected highlights is witness testimony from two of South Florida's better-known corporate chieftains -- The Geo Group's George Zoley and Phil Frost, formerly of IVAX. The Zachariah brothers and Nassberg, all of whom practice at Fort Lauderdale's Holy Cross Hospital, were named in a May 2008 civil complaint brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The complaint accuses them of collecting more than a half-million dollars in illegal profits during a fraudulent stock-trading scheme in 2005. Without admitting or denying the government's allegations, Mammen Zachariah, 61, agreed to pay nearly $136,000 in what a judge labeled ``ill-gotten gains,'' plus an equal amount as a civil penalty. Nassberg, an endocrinologist, agreed to similar payments totaling $52,668. He admitted no wrongdoing. Both men are required to pay up by the end of the month. The final judgments signed by U.S. Magistrate Linnea Johnson on Wednesday also include permanent injunctions that restrain both doctors from future securities law violations. Zach Zachariah, another past chairman of the Florida Board of Medicine, is alleged to have used nonpublic information to buy and sell shares of two unrelated Florida companies, Miami-based generic drug maker IVAX and Sarasota's Correctional Services Corp. (CSC). Zachariah was on IVAX's board of directors in July 2005 when company chairman Phil Frost informed him that IVAX had agreed to be acquired by Teva Pharmaceuticals for $26 a share. Within minutes, Zachariah bought 35,000 IVAX shares for about $21 a share, the SEC said. At the time of the alleged purchase, company insiders were forbidden from trading in IVAX stock. Zachariah also allegedly tipped off his brother, who bought 2,000 IVAX shares for about $23 a share on the last trading day before the deal was announced in July 25. Zachariah allegedly used inside information to make even more money trading shares of CSC, which was acquired by The GEO Group of Boca Raton in 2005. According to the SEC, the Zachariah brothers and Nassberg turned $380,000 in quick profits. The government says Zachariah acquired that inside knowledge in a couple of ways. One was through his son Zachariah ``Reggie'' Zachariah, who worked in GEO's mergers and acquisitions department. Reggie Zachariah has denied under oath tipping off his father to the deal. Another was through Zachariah's own moonlighting work for GEO. The SEC says Zachariah made ``millions of dollars'' as a corporate consultant, service provider and lobbyist for GEO, a giant prison contractor once known as Wackenhut Corrections. Zachariah, who owns a $2.3 million home on the Intracoastal Waterway in secluded Sea Ranch Lakes, said under oath last winter that he was paid to provide access for GEO chief executive George Zoley to top federal and state Republican politicians. Those politicians include former President George W. Bush, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, former Florida Senate President Tom Lee and House Speaker Alan Bense and former attorney general Charlie Crist, now Florida's governor.

December 22, 2009 Aiken Standard
A long-serving member of the Savannah River Site's military-style security force is suing his employer, claiming he was discriminated against because of his race. His former employer, however, states they fired him due to numerous arrests and his unwillingness to cooperate with Department of Energy physicians who were assessing his "fitness for duty." Lagone Melton of Hephzibah, Ga., filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Wackenhut Service Inc. recently, claiming he was treated differently and more severely than white colleagues in similar disciplinary actions. He further claims he was demoted, decertified and terminated when he raised the issue of racial discrimination to union officials. His former employer denies all of Melton's claims. Melton has been employed by the security firm since 1990 and has received positive performance evaluations since that time, he claims in his complaint. He was fired from his position on July 9, 2007, under what he believes are false pretenses. In December 2006, Melton was charged with reckless driving, he wrote in his complaint. After reporting this to his employer, they required Melton to attend alcohol and anger management treatment, he claims. "Other white employees of the same rank, SPO III, received driving under the influence charges but were not treated in the same manner as the plaintiff," Melton's complaint reads. "They were not required to enter into a treatment program." Court records show, as the defendants claim in their response, that Melton was arrested Dec. 24, 2006, and charged with DUI and weaving over the roadway, but it was reduced to reckless driving when Melton pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to two days in jail, probation and had his car fitted with an ignition interlock device which acts as a breathalyzer that will not allow someone over the legal alcohol limit to drive. Wackenhut officials state that this was not the first time Melton was arrested for DUI and that they ordered alcohol dependence and anger management classes at the behest of a clinical psychologist. "(The) plaintiff was arrested for driving under the influence in December 2006; he had been arrested on at least three previous occasions for (DUI) and on other occasions arrested for other misconduct, and, as a result, ... he was referred to an off-site clinical psychologist for evaluation for fitness for duty," the response states. An outspoken proponent of employees unionizing, Melton was made an administrator when the Local 125 organization was ratified in January 2007. He states in his complaint that he was targeted for termination after he expressed that African-American applicants were being "denied hire" and that Wackenhut "demonstrated unwillingness to work with African-American union executives." Wackenhut officials deny all of this charge.

December 13, 2009 KESQ
Jimmy Hughes, wanted for a 1981 triple murder in Rancho Mirage, was booked in a Riverside jail late Saturday night. Riverside County Sheriffs detectives took him into custody at a Miami jail and flew him to Ontario airport. Hughes is now booked at the Robert Pressley Detention Center. His first scheduled court date is Thursday, December 17th at 8:00AM. On July 1st, 1981, Fred Alvarez, his girlfriend Patty Castro, and friend Ralph Boger were shot to death at 35040 Bob Hope Drive in Rancho Mirage. There was a house there that has since been bulldozed. As previously reported on KESQ.com, This cold case is known as the "Octopus Murders," a term coined by investigative journalist Danny Casolaro in 1991, because the murder plot has tentacles that reach into our police agencies, Indian tribes and political leaders. Detectives now believe it was a contract killing and that, 52 year old Jimmy Hughes is the hitman. Hughes was arrested as his plane was waiting on the tarmac at Miami airport September. He was on his way to Honduras, where he now runs a Christian ministry. Extradition for Hughes from the Miami-Dade Pre-Trial Detention Center had been postponed for three months until Hughes' attorney declared they would no longer fight extradition earlier this month. Nearly 30 years ago, Hughes was security chief for the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. Tribal Vice Chairman Fred Alvarez was going to blow the whistle on weapons manufacturing deals between the tribe and defense contractors, including Wackenhut Corporation. Those weapons deals later turned into database software development that became a major spy scandal known as "PROMIS" with national security impacts to this day. Rachel Begley, daughter of murder victim Ralph Boger, confronted Hughes last year with a hidden camera and demanded answers. Begley said to Hughes, "You were the 'bagman' in our father's murder. I'd like to talk to you about that." Hughes, confronted during a break at an evangelical conference in California replied, "I have nothing to say about that. Can't can't. Can't say anything about that" Hughes added, "I want to forget about a past that is ever so awful and scary in my past. I don't live there anymore. I don't got nothing to do with that. Screw the FBI. Screw the police. Screw everybody in my past. The world I live in is screwed up." "I wake up in the morning with a clear conscience. Let me tell you something about my past. My past is dead. I don't care about my past. My past is my past. It's none of your business. It's nobody's business. I don't care who died. I don't care who got killed. I was trained in the military. I killed people all over the world, right or wrong because the government ordered me to," said Hughes. Hughes even admitted to shooting at least 6 people in the head as a professional hitman on the website of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship. Hughes explained to Begley, "Your parents got killed. In a mafia hit. That's life. That's what happened. Your parents were involved in some very dangerous things. Your dads. That's the only thing I can tell you. Your dad and I were friends. I knew your dad. He touched... He touched somebody. They gave an order and that is what happened to him." "It's a lot bigger than the murder of this guy or the murder of that guy. It is a big... You're talking political people," said Hughes. From Richard Armitage to William Weld, those political people include a "who's who" of past Republican Administrations. Documents obtained by News Channel 3 show many of the weapons made on tribal land were meant for the Iran-Contra arms deals. Hughes claimed, "I was investigated by the FBI. I was indoctrinated by... I was messed around by them. So I don't care. I can't tell you anything that the police don't already know."

December 8, 2009 Reuters
The State Department will not renew the contract of a security company embroiled in a scandal involving the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, where guards were accused of drunken conduct and sexual hazing. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said on Tuesday Virginia-based ArmorGroup would not have its contract renewed when it expires in June, although it will receive a six-month extension to allow the contract to be put up for new bids. Toner said officials had reviewed the contract and "concurred that the next option year should not be exercised and that work begin immediately to compete a new contract." He said the review included both recent misconduct allegations against ArmorGroup personnel and the company's "history of contract compliance deficiencies." This week a report by the non-partisan Government Accounting Office identified a number of shortcomings in the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security including staffing shortage and increased reliance on contractors in high-risk posts. The Kabul embassy scandal broke in September, when a watchdog group accused ArmorGroup of jeopardizing security at the embassy by understaffing the facility and ignoring lewd, drunken conduct and sexual hazing by some guards -- and provided graphic photos as evidence. ArmorGroup North America, now owned by Florida-based Wackenhut Services, was also hit by a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that said it had ignored brothel visits by guards and other misconduct because of what a lawyer said was a "myopic preoccupation with profit" in its five-year, $187 million contract with the State Department. State Department officials said the safety of embassy staff was never in jeopardy. But they subsequently said 12 embassy guards had been removed or resigned, ArmorGroup's entire senior Kabul management replaced and alcohol banned at the group's camp. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered a thorough review of how contractors are used. The GAO report noted that worldwide, the U.S. diplomatic security budget had grown to $1.8 billion in 2008 from just $200 million in 1998, when truck bomb attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed more than 300 people including 12 Americans. The bureau's workforce has also doubled over the same period but is failing to keep pace with rising security threats including those faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, it said. "Staffing shortages in domestic offices and other operational challenges -- such as inadequate facilities, language deficiencies, experience gaps, and balancing security needs with State's diplomatic mission -- further tax its ability to implement all of its missions," the report said. The report urged the State Department to develop a strategic plan to directly address the rising demands of diplomatic security including increased staffing.

November 24, 2009 The Guardian
The brutal truth of child detention 2,000 asylum seekers' kids a year are locked up, and the only beneficiaries seem to be firms running centres like Yarl's Wood A report by the novelist Clare Sambrook of End Child Detention Now, which campaigns against the detention of 2,000 asylum seekers' children every year, asks the very reasonable question: who does this expensive incarceration benefit? Clearly not the children who, according to every study ever written on this issue, suffer acutely from being taken from their homes on the orders of the UK Border Agency and placed in a confined space for an indeterminate period. Many argue that society benefits because it is protected from the asylum seekers and their families. Sambrook wonders how that can be when there is no evidence that asylum seekers are likely to abscond. So who benefits? Clearly the private companies that run so much of this operation have a lot to gain. G4S, the company that operates Tinlsey House, one of three detention centres where last month 10-year-old Adeoti Ogunsola tried to strangle herself after being forcibly redetained, recently reported rising profits and growth in government business which had offset weakness in commercial sectors. As Sambrook reports: "Last year G4S handed chief executive Nick Buckles a £1.4m pay package. That's £3,835 every day. He owns £4m in G4S shares, tipped by the Daily Telegraph recently as, 'a solid buy for these uncertain times'." Someone else who may reasonably be said to benefit from this policy is Christopher Hyman, the chief executive of Serco, who also earns in the region of £3,000 a day. His company runs the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre where children have been detained far beyond the 28-day with charge maximum allowed for terror suspects. "Traumatised child inmates, who must carry ID cards at all times, refer to Yarl's Wood as 'prison' and 'the camp'," says Sambrook. Among the indirect beneficiaries she also identifies John Reid, the former home secretary, who is paid £50,000 a year as a consultant to G4S for, among other things, hosting government and security industry breakfasts. Meanwhile children are suffering. The Lorek report in the peer review journal Child Abuse and Neglect says detained children experience "increased fear due to being suddenly placed in a facility resembling a prison … the abrupt loss of home, school friends and all that was familiar to them". Some exhibit "sexualised behaviour". Older children are so stressed they wet their bed and soil their pants. Who benefits from this expensive and harsh policy? Sambrook answers her own questions with this – " some extremely wealthy grownups".

November 23, 2009 Wall Street Journal
G4S PLC (GFS.LN), an international security solutions group, said Monday it Monday it has bought Champions of the West, Inc--trading as All Star International from the Junge Revocable Trust and John P. Junge individually, by its U.S. Government Services business, Wackenhut Services, Inc. for $59.9 million in cash, on an enterprise value basis.

November 6, 2009 West Australia Today
The ongoing contract with a private prison transport company responsible for the death of an Aboriginal elder in January last year has sparked legal retaliation. The Deaths in Custody Watch Committee has told radio 6PR that it was seeking independent legal advice to appeal the decision to keep the $25million a year contract between the State Government and contractor G4S. The State Coroner found that the company was responsible for the death of 46-year-old Mr Ward, who had been arrested for drink driving and was being transported 350kms to a Kalgoorlie Court when he suffered heat stroke from the 50C heat inside the unairconditioned truck. "It is outrageous and unimaginable that they [G4S] could continue their contract. They have been responsible for six deaths in Australia in less than nine years," committee spokesman Mark Newhouse said. He said the company, under its current terms, could still be responsible for two more deaths in custody and not have its contract terminated before it expired in 2011. "What is even more concerning is that in one incident, if there are four to five deaths, that is not considered a breach of contract, which is outrageous," he said. The group is also planning on mounting a public campaign to improve proper approvals for public contracts and improving the monitoring of those being transported while in custody. Mr Newhouse said there had been no evidence from the company that any improvements had been made. G4S have refused to comment on the grounds that it was a confidential contract. The Attorney General Christian Porter was also unavailable for comment.

September 30, 2009 ABC
The West Australian Government has officially responded to the coroner's findings in the case of Mr Ward, who died of heatstroke in a prisoner transport vehicle. The coroner said the Aboriginal elder's death in searing desert heat was a disgrace, as the van was "not fit for humans". But the Government has decided not terminate the contract of the private company which transported Mr Ward. The Government says it supports all of the coroner's recommendations - some of which have already been acted on. But the full response has come three months after the coroner handed down his findings, and 20 months since the tragedy occurred. The Government agrees there should be more training and monitoring of staff, and there should not be transportation of prisoners over long distances. But the Attorney-General Christian Porter says the contract with private operators G4S is likely to continue. Mr Porter has suggested the company may have to pay a penalty. "The penalties that you've spoken of, for a death for instance, I understand are $100,000 which seems to me to be ridiculous in the scope of what occurred here," he said. "But again, the question about termination is very unfortunately a question about the legality of being able to terminate under the terms of the present contract." The coroner called for the prisoner transport fleet to be completely replaced. This will not happen until the end of next year. Mr Porter says responsibility for transporting prisoners could be brought back to the public sector. "The final decision as to whether or not this service will be public or private has not yet been made but I can say that if a determination is made to keep this service in the private sector, the contract that governs the process will be a completely different type of contract to the one that presently exists," he said. The Deaths In Custody Watch Committee says Group 4 and GSL staff have contributed to the deaths of six people in Australia. The committee's Marc Newhouse says the contract should have been terminated. "We're completely outraged that the contract with G4S - he hasn't announced the termination of it, it has to be terminated," he said. "They've been subject to critical reports by the Australian Human Rights Commission. This company is not fit to operate in this country and they should be terminated." Noongar elder Ben Taylor says he believes racism in the system is causing Aboriginal people to suffer. "There's a lotta racism there and the only ones who're gonna suffer are my people, Aboriginal people," he said. "This is got to go wider, and I'm on the Watch Committee with Marc and we're going to keep hanging on here because there's more lives that are going to be taken, and that's going to be blackfellas, Aboriginal people, my people, and that's the full stop." Mr Newhouse says the committee had also called for a speedier response in the wake of a death in custody. "That the Coroner's Act is amended in line with the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommendations, that a system of mandatory reporting be put in place so that government and other relevant bodies have to report within a certain time frame," he said. "The point of it is to save lives and to prevent lives being lost." But Mr Porter says the Labor state government should have ended the contract with the company. But the Opposition Leader Eric Ripper says there were other considerations. "You can't just terminate a contract without there being financial consequences for taxpayers and the government does have a responsibility to both protect prisoners and the interests of taxpayers," he said. "That's why this matter needs careful examination rather than a kneejerk reaction."

September 18, 2009 AP
A top executive of the private security contractor hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan was informed in July 2008 of alleged illegal and immoral conduct by guards, attorneys for a whistleblower suing the company said Friday. The claim contradicts the sworn testimony of Samuel Brinkley, a vice president for Wackenhut Services, the owner of ArmorGroup North America. Brinkley told the Commission on Wartime Contracting under oath on Monday that he and other corporate officials outside of Afghanistan didn't know until a few weeks ago of problems that reportedly included lurid parties and ArmorGroup employees frequenting brothels in Kabul. But in a 10-page letter to the commission, the attorneys say their client, James Gordon, told Brinkley during a meeting on July 15, 2008, of alleged guard misconduct. The meeting took place in Brinkley's office in Arlington, Va., Gordon said in a separate e-mail through the lawyers. Gordon was ArmorGroup's director of operations until February 2008. He says he was forced out of the job after trying to get the company to fix a long list of shortcomings with the $189 million embassy security contract that the State Department awarded ArmorGroup in March 2007. He filed a lawsuit earlier this month in federal court claiming the company retaliated against him for telling the department about the deficiencies. Brinkley and Wackenhut did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a previous statement on the lawsuit, a Wackenhut spokeswoman called Gordon's claims baseless and said he voluntarily resigned from the company. Clark Irwin, a spokesman for the wartime contracting commission, said the congressionally mandated panel is reviewing the letter. At the commission's Sept. 14 hearing on ArmorGroup's performance, Brinkley portrayed himself and other company executives as being blindsided by the misconduct of a small number of employees. "I am not here to defend the indefensible," Brinkley said. "Certain of our personnel behaved very badly." During a series of heated exchanges, commissioners pressed Brinkley to explain why he didn't tell the State Department of reports that guards were behaving inappropriately, potentially putting security of a key U.S. diplomatic outpost at risk. Brinkley said ArmorGroup managers in Afghanistan only told him about an Aug. 11 incident involving nine employees who got drunk at a bar near their living quarters. Those workers were counseled by the on-site manager and a temporary ban on alcohol was imposed. He said the State Department was informed of this incident on Aug. 26. Brinkley said he wasn't aware of the scope and duration of the misconduct until Sept. 1 when a watchdog group released a report with photos showing guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol. The watchdog group, the Project on Government Oversight in Washington, also said guards were subjected to abuse and hazing by supervisors who created a hostile work environment. The letter from Gordon's attorneys says they are concerned Brinkley's testimony did not provide the commission with a "full and accurate understanding of many of the events in question."

September 16, 2009 The West Australian
The prison watchdog’s powers will be expanded to allow him to audit individual cases as part of the Government’s response to a coronial inquiry into the death of an Aboriginal elder in the back of a transport van. A legislative package to be announced by Attorney-General Christian Porter this morning will strengthen the powers of the Inspector of Custodial Services in line with recommendations of State Coroner Alastair Hope. The laws will include giving him the power to issue "show cause" notices which require a response from the department of Corrective Services. Mr Hope delivered a damning report in June which found the Department of Corrective Services, prisoner transport company G4S, formerly known as Global Solutions Limited, and the two guards who drove the van had all contributed to Mr Ward’s death. Mr Porter said the Government would not support the Opposition’s proposed legislation on the recommendations, which is scheduled to be debated in State Parliament this afternoon. He said the Labor Bill was flawed and the Government’s legislative package would go further than the Coroner’s recommendations, giving Inspector Neil Morgan the power to carry out individual audits the treatment of up to about 40 prisoners each year. Mr Porter said he would be seeking Cabinet approval for more money to provide extra staff to conduct the audits. Today’s debate on the powers of the inspector coincides with a "day of action" organised by the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, which is calling on the Government to respond to the Coroner’s report on Mr Ward’s death.

September 14, 2009 Government Executive
The State Department should terminate ArmorGroup North America's contract for security services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, witnesses and panelists said during a Commission on Wartime Contracting hearing on Monday. The recent photographs and report from the Project on Government Oversight detailing alleged lewd, drunken behavior by guards at the embassy just describe the latest and most egregious violation by ArmorGroup, witnesses told the panel. State Department Undersecretary of Management Patrick Kennedy testified that the contract has required "extensive oversight and management." Since awarding the contract to ArmorGroup on March 12, 2007, State has issued seven deficiency notices addressing 25 deficiencies, one cure notice and one show-cause notice. Each notice demanded separate correction action plans to resolve contractual issues and several involved serious allegations, including that the contractor had deceived the government in its contract proposal. Despite these problems, State has not terminated the contract with ArmorGroup and has, in fact, exercised an extension of the contract period. State officials said they are awaiting the results of an ongoing investigation into the contractor's conduct at the embassy. Commissioner Clark Kent Ervin pressed Kennedy to pledge State would terminate the contract if the probe validates the allegations made against the contract employees. While Kennedy was hesitant to speculate on a hypothetical situation, he said he could imagine an outcome of the investigation that would lead the agency to terminate the contract. "We're seeing a serious case being made for termination," he said. William Moser, deputy assistant secretary of State for logistics management, told the commission a public hearing was not the proper forum to talk about future contract actions. Regardless, he said the department is discussing potential alternatives and approaching the reevaluation of the contract "with a great deal of seriousness." Danielle Brian, executive director of POGO, said the organization's investigation shows State officials were notified of serious issues relating to the ArmorGroup contract repeatedly, and took limited action. "For the two years of this contract, State's response to whistleblowers' sustained complaints and to its own finding of severe noncompliance consisted mainly of written reprimands and the renewal of ArmorGroup's contract," Brian said. "Simply documenting a problem or even levying a fine is not effective oversight when those same problems continue to occur." Brian said State has been "stubbornly defensive" in not recognizing its own failures, and how those failures have caused misconduct and potential lapses in security. While POGO strongly believes the contract should be canceled and ArmorGroup -- or its parent company, Wackenhut -- should be debarred from doing business with the government, that will not prevent future problems, Brian said. To ensure proper conduct by contractors overseas, State must shorten the rotations of its regional security officers, perform more frequent audits and independent verification of contractor reports of compliance, and prioritize accountability, she said. "This cultural shift will be aided by canceling contracts when the contractor consistently underperforms -- which will have the added benefit of acting as a deterrent to future contractors -- and by disciplining the State Department officials who are responsible for the failed oversight of the ArmorGroup contract," Brian said. Commissioner Linda Gustitus said State already lost authority with industry by not terminating its contract with Blackwater Worldwide in the wake of the Nissor Square shooting incident in Iraq. "That helped to send a message to other contractors that you can do a lot and not have you contract terminated," Gustitus said. Several commissioners joined Brian in urging Kennedy to hold accountable the State employees responsible for managing Armor Group by firing them, withholding bonuses or taking some other disciplinary action.

September 14, 2009 Wayne Madsen Report
At a September 10 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, two former managers for ArmorGroup North America (AGNA), headquartered in McLean, Virginia and a subsidiary of ArmorGroup International (AGI), revealed a litany of contract fraud and abuse charges against AGNA and AGI and provided further details of sexual deviancy among AGNA security guards in Kabul tasked with protecting the U.S. embassy. ArmorGroup is now owned by Wackenhut Services, Inc., headquartered in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The two former employees are suing AGNA, AGI, Wackenhut, and Corporation Service Company for wrongful termination, false claims, and conspiracy. John Gorman, a retired Marine Corps veteran who was the camp manager at the security guard force’s Camp Sullivan, blew the whistle on contract non-performance, security pitfalls, and sexual deviancy, and was placed under virtual house arrest in June 2007 by AGNA’s top manager in Kabul, Michael O’Connell, and flown out of the country. Gorman was terminated and confined for some 24 hours, along with two other AGNA managers, James Sauer, a retired Marine sergeant major and Pete Martino, a retired Marine colonel, who filed complaints to both AGNA and the Regional Security Office (RSO) for the U.S. embassy in Kabul, also Marine Corps veterans. Because they told the RSO they feared for their personal safety after bringing the charges against AGNA, he offered them the security of his apartment on the embassy compound, which they turned down only to later have their cell phones and weapons confiscated by AGNA and being confined before their flight out of the country. Gorman said no one at AGNA “ever mentioned or indicated a concern for the actual security at the embassy -- the greatest and only concerns were the profit margin and the bottom line.” Gorman said the project manager for the security contract, Sauer, a man with 35 years of experience as a 30-year career Marine with private security contractor experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, was “ignored, second guessed, and rejected.” Sauer had vehemently objected to allowing security personnel to be deployed to Kabul who had engaged in “lewd and deviant behavior” during their subcontractor training in Texas. After Gorman, Sauer, and Martino made their complaints known to McConnell, the corporate executive replied that ArmorGroup was a publicly traded company and could, therefore, not hire more people “because he had a responsibility to the shareholders.” The effect was the hiring of clearly unqualified personnel for the security guard force. Gorman said that there were people hired as guards who had “no DD214s, driver’s licenses, passports,” including one person who had been fired from a previous security project for pulling a pistol on another employee while drunk. AGNA, according to Gorman, covered up the security contract failures because the firm was “to assume the $187 million a year security contract for the American embassy in Kabul in less than two weeks and they were bidding on the more lucrative $500 million contract for the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. James Gordon, a New Zealand citizen and New Zealand Army veteran who is married to an American, worked for ArmorGroup Iraq as the operations manager, a subsidiary of AGI, also spoke about corporate malfeasance involving AGNA. He later became the business development director for AGNA headquarters in McLean. In 2007, Gordon took over as operations director for the Kabul embassy security contract and attempted to bring the contract into compliance with State Department requirements. Eventually, Gordon was forced out of the company because instead of correcting contract violations the firm’s only goal was to “maximize profits.” Gordon said among AGNA security personnel were unqualified personnel, some of whom had serious criminal records. Some guard recruits had engaged in “disgusting behavior” during their initial training at AGI’s subsidiary’s training facility, International Training Inc. (ITI) of Pearsall, Texas. Sauer, Martino, and Gorman had received reports that some of the AGNA recruits, while undergoing pre-deployment in Texas, had engaged in “lewd, aberrant, and sexually deviant behavior, including sexual hazing, urination on one another and equipment, bullying, ‘mooning,’” exposing themselves, excessive drinking, and other conduct making themselves unfit for service on the contract. The AGNA employees who were later forced out of the company attempted to ensure that the trainees in Texas never arrived in Kabul. Several email exchanges (“e-pong”) show they tried to block the sexual deviants from duty in Kabul. AGNA also misrepresented ethnic Nepalese Gurkha farmers hired as security guards for the Kabul embassy job as Gurkha military veterans of the British and Indian armies. In fact. the Gurkha farmers hired from Nepal and northern India were not proficient in English as required under the State Department contract. In fact, some could speak no English. The language test had never been administered to the Gurkha recruits. When some Gurkha guards walked off their jobs in May 2007 because of poor wages and treatment, Carol Ruart, AGI’s human resources director in London, ordered AGNA management in Kabul to “lock [the Gurkhas] in their rooms until they agree to work for less.” Gordon also stated that AGNA never invested in secure vehicles to transport embassy guards between the embassy and other locations. AGNA used broken down vehicles called “white coffins.” After the State Department released funds to AGNA to buy secure vehicles, the firm never bought the vehicles but transferred the money to AGI in London. AGNA also hired a “rogue” South African program manager for the embassy contract in Kabul, according to Gordon. DuPlessis replaced Sauer. Jimmy Lemmon replaced Martino as deputy program manager. During the tenure of the South African, Nick duPlessis, ammunition went missing from Camp Sullivan where the guards were bivouacked and illegal weapons were stored at the facility. Moreover, duPlessis did not possess a security clearance to receive classified briefings, a requirement for the program manager position. In addition, Gordon stated that the AGNA logistics manager, Sean Garcia, used contract funds to purchase counterfeit North Face and Altama jackets and boots for the security guards from his wife’s company in Lebanon, Trends General Trading and Marketing LLC of Beirut. Gordon said, “the cheap knock-offs could never keep the men warm during the cold winters in Afghanistan.” After Gordon notified the State Department about the contract breach, the order to remove him was ignored and the State Department continues to own sub-par counterfeit material. Gordon sent an email dated September 3, 2007 to duPlessis and his staff in Kabul. Gordon also said that the AGNA armorer in Kabul, responsible for maintaining all the weapons, had to be “forcibly removed” from a brothel in Kabul. Many of the prostitutes working in Kabul, according to Gordon, are young Chinese girls who were taken against their will to Kabul for sexual exploitation. When Gordon ordered the armorer’s immediate termination, he discovered that the AGNA medic, Neville Montefiore, and duPlessis, the program manager, had also frequented the brothels with the armorer. Gordon also discovered that there had been an outbreak of sexually-transmitted diseases among the AGNA guards in 2007 and this was never reported to the State Department as required by the contract. Prostitutes also frequently visited Camp Sullivan. Gordon also discovered that the guard force routinely visited brothels in Kabul and Montefiore’s replacement discovered the improper storage of regulated narcotics at Camp Sullivan’s medical facility, including morphine. “You can rest assured that there is no hiding of information from the DoS [Department of State]. Anyone who thinks that they can get away with this will probably end up in a Federal Penitentiary. It is our duty to report on all aspects of the contract performance and we are required to be transparent and honest in our dealings. Personally I wouldn’t accept anything else.” Gordon’s plans to visit Kabul to conduct an investigation were immediately shut down by ArmorGroup’s parent office in London. Gordon said it is contrary to U.S. law for a foreign company to direct or influence any activities on a classified contract. Moreover, the British parent conducted their own investigation, which resulted in a three-page whitewash. Gordon was denied access to all information about AGI London’s investigation. After the whitewash, Gordon received a report that an AGNA trainee wanted to be hired on as a security guard at the embassy in Kabul because he knew someone “who owned prostitutes there.” The trainee boasted that he could purchase a girl for $20,000 and earn a handsome profit each month. The trainee, according to Gordon, had previously worked in Kabul under duPlessis. Neither AGNA nor the State Department conducted a follow-up investigation of the violations of the U.S. Trafficking in Victims Protection Act by AGNA employees. AGNA responded to Gordon’s warnings by blaming him for all the contract’s failures and he was forced to leave the firm on February 29, 2008. After Wackenhut Services Inc. bought ArmorGroup, after Gordon left the company, he met with Sam Brinkley, the vice president of Wackenhut, to discuss the contract problems. Brinkley promised to remove duPlessis and investigate all the charges of misconduct. On June 10, 2009, Gordon was present during hearings held by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO). Gordon said that Brinkley and the State Department testified to McCaskill’s subcommittee on contracting oversight that AGNA was “fully compliant” on the security contract for the embassy in Kabul. Brinkley told the subcommittee that he “was proud” of the way the company had been managing the embassy security contract. Gordon said the situation at Camp Sullivan had worsened and the U.S. Embassy was facing a grave security threat. McCaskill and ranking Republican member Susan Collins (R-ME) never heard testimony from any of the whistleblowers on AGNA’s poor security record in Kabul. The only witnesses heard were Brinkley and William Moser, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Logistics Management. Brinkley, in addition to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, has responsibility for the security contract for the U.S. Naval Support Activity in Bahrain, which, according to ex-AGNA sources, may be using untrained Gurkha farmers from the Indian subcontinent as crack veterans of the British and Indian armies. The Gorman/Gordon lawsuit states that on October 10, 2007, the AGNA security force in Kabul was involved in a number of serious incidents, including: detaining a group of Afghan civilians and involuntarily transporting them to the U.S. embassy; verbally and physically engaging in an altercation with Afghan Ministry of Interior policemen and handcuffing the policemen; confronting an Afghan general and several Ministry of Interior policemen; refusing an order from the embassy RSO to withdraw from a checkpoint to defuse a potentially explosive situation. The statements of the two ex-AGNA employees reveal a culture of depravity and unprofessional behavior that Gordon stated still exists to this very day in Kabul.

September 14, 2009 AP
A member of a federal commission investigating wartime spending said Monday that photos showing private security guards in various stages of nudity at drunken parties may be as damaging to U.S. interests in Afghanistan as images of detainee mistreatment at Abu Ghraib were in Iraq. Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon comptroller, made the comment at a hearing Monday held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting on allegations of lewd behavior and sexual misconduct by employees of ArmorGroup North America, the company hired to protect the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Zakheim said the photos are circulating heavily on the Internet and give Muslims in Afghanistan a negative image of the United States. Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's management chief, acknowledged the department should have been paying closer attention to the activities of the ArmorGroup guards at their living quarters near the embassy. The private security contractor hired to protect the embassy said Monday it erred by not immediately telling the State Department about an alcohol-related incident involving its guards that proved far more serious than company officials first believed. "I am not here to defend the indefensible," said Samuel Brinkley, vice president of Wackenhut Services, the company that owns the contractor, ArmorGroup North America. A manager for ArmorGroup counseled nine guards after they got drunk at a bar near their living quarters in Kabul on August 10. But after photos surfaced showing the guards had been at a party where ArmorGroup employees engaged in lewd and inappropriate behavior, they realized they made a mistake by not alerting U.S. officials. Photos showed guards and supervisors in various stages of nudity at parties flowing with alcohol. Brinkley said the manager's response, which included a temporary ban on alcohol, seemed adequate at the time. "In retrospect, we were wrong in not notifying the State Department," Brinkley said in testimony before the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting. Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, told the commission the State Department is very concerned about ArmorGroup's delays in reporting its knowledge of any misconduct by its employees. The State Department has been sharply criticized for its management and oversight of the security contract at one of the country's most important diplomatic outposts. In addition to the allegations of misconduct, other problems have included a shortage of guards and inferior equipment. As the department's top management officer, Kennedy said he takes full responsibility for having failed to prevent the problems that reportedly ranged from out-of-control parties to Armor Group supervisors frequenting brothels in Kabul. The State Department has launched an investigation into ArmorGroup's handling of the $189 million contract embassy security contract. Kennedy told the commission that the misconduct "dishonored" the State Department in Afghanistan, where "the success of U.S. objectives depends on the cultural sensitivity of all mission personnel, including employees under contract." But he and other State Department officials said no decision will be made on whether to terminate the contract with ArmorGroup until the investigation is complete. Members of the commission pressed Kennedy to be more aggressive, saying the evidence already available is enough to warrant firing ArmorGroup, which was awarded the contract to protect the embassy in March 2007. "To me, it's just totally out of control and it's been going on for a long time," said Michael Thibault, co-chairman of the commission. Commissioner Clark Ervin asked Kennedy to pledge to terminate the contract if the investigation proves all the allegations prove to be true. Kennedy refused to commit, saying the inquiry needs to run its course. However, Kennedy added, "We are seeing a very, very serious case being made for termination."

September 13, 2009 Washington Post
In 2005, the State Department hired a Northern Virginia company to provide security for the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. Diplomats quickly became concerned about whether the new guards, who barely spoke English, could protect such a sensitive site. "They had serious problems," recalled Ronald E. Neumann, who was ambassador at the time. The department then brought in another security contractor, ArmorGroup North America. But the difficulties didn't cease. In recent days, evidence of ArmorGroup's failings has burst into public view -- photos depicting its guards in semi-naked hazing rituals and official documents showing persistent staff shortages. Harold W. Geisel, the acting inspector general of the State Department, told Congress last week that his investigators are checking for possible criminal conduct by ArmorGroup, and a congressional hearing is scheduled for Monday. Lawmakers and watchdog groups are questioning how the department could have continued to employ a company that, in addition to tolerating bullying and understaffing, failed to ensure that its guards had proper security clearances and sufficient equipment -- or that they spoke English. The criticism is particularly intense because the State Department had promised to improve oversight after a 2007 shooting incident in Iraq involving bodyguards from security contractor Blackwater that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead. "State's management of these contracts has been self-evidentially abysmal," said Peter W. Singer, an expert on government contracting at the Brookings Institution. ArmorGroup's efforts to guard the Kabul embassy were troubled from the start, according to congressional hearings, internal State Department documents and interviews. The McLean-based company submitted "an unreasonably low price" in 2007 for the contract, said Samuel Brinkley, an official with Wackenhut Services, the firm's parent company, at a congressional hearing in June. Former ArmorGroup supervisors have said in interviews that the company slashed guard staffing so it could squeak out a profit. State Department officials have expressed outrage about the lewd behavior shown in the photos. Still, they defend their selection of ArmorGroup, saying they are legally required to award such contracts to the lowest qualified bidder and noting that ArmorGroup was well-regarded. They also insist that the embassy was never endangered by the guard problems -- even though internal department documents say it was. "The fact you find something is wrong means something is wrong. But you find it," the department's undersecretary for management, Patrick F. Kennedy, said in an interview. He emphasized that many of the guards' failings emerged in documents written by department officials. "There was oversight present," he said. The troubles at the Kabul embassy raise questions about how authorities will manage what is expected to be a surge in the number of contract guards at U.S. facilities in Iraq as the American military presence declines. The scandal has also given new impetus to a debate over whether too many government wartime jobs are being outsourced. "The State Department should consider whether the security for an embassy in a combat zone is an inherently governmental function, and therefore not subject to contracting out," Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this month. Brian's group released the photos of what it called near-weekly sessions of hazing and sexual humiliation of ArmorGroup guards at their camp. The State Department has for years used local contract guards to secure the perimeters of its embassies, while generally keeping a modest Marine contingent for interior access. But in Iraq and Afghanistan, the department decided not to use local guards because of vetting concerns, officials say. Instead, as the military withdrew forces from around those embassies in recent years, the department turned to contractors such as ArmorGroup. But the department, which suffers from a shortage of contracting staff, has had a rocky history of managing such guard contracts. Each of its three contracts in Kabul has come under fire. The first was awarded to McLean-based Global Strategies, to replace a Marine combat force withdrawing from the U.S. Embassy in March 2005. The department justified the $6-million-a-month sole-source contract by saying it had received late notification of the Marines' departure. But the inspector general found that the Defense Department had given six months' official notice, and scolded the State Department for poor planning. By July 2005, the State Department had signed a contract with MVM of Ashburn, cutting its guard costs to less than $2 million a month, according to the inspector general's report. But MVM could not provide enough guards, partly because it was paying much less than its predecessor, according to Neumann. And, he said, the guards spoke so little English that they could not understand instructions. "We went back to the State Department and said, 'These people are unacceptable,' " Neumann said. State canceled MVM's contract and kept on the Global guards temporarily. MVM's chief executive, Dario O. Marquez, did not return a call seeking comment but told the Wall Street Journal last year that the State Department did not give him enough time to fix the problems. Neumann said the department was handicapped in selecting guard companies because of regulations stipulating that the contract go to a qualified U.S. firm that offers the lowest bid. "People low-bid, and then they're not competent," he said. Finally, in March 2007, the department turned to ArmorGroup. The firm, which also guarded the British Embassy in Kabul, was one of only two bidders deemed technically qualified by the department's acquisition and security specialists. Its price was about $3 million a month, officials say. "ArmorGroup was not a small, undercapitalized, underfunded, fly-by-night organization," Kennedy said. "They put forth a proposal that met every requirement." But within weeks of the company starting work, the State Department sent ArmorGroup a warning that its deficiencies -- including shortages of guards and armored vehicles -- were so serious that "the security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul is in jeopardy," according to the House Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight. State Department officials issued eight more warnings to the company over the next two years, including one last September threatening to terminate the contract. Despite the problems, the department stuck with ArmorGroup, agreeing this summer to extend its contract for a year. State Department officials have said that the company appeared to be making progress and that changing firms would be disruptive. A spokeswoman for Wackenhut, which took over ArmorGroup North America last year, declined to comment. In a lawsuit filed last week, former ArmorGroup supervisor James Gordon accuses the company not only of failing to properly staff the embassy but also of lying to the State Department about its capabilities. The operation "was a complete shambles," he said.

September 12, 2009 New York Times
When a security guard at the United States Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, was leaving for breakfast Monday morning, he froze at the sight of a crude poster of a rat hanging on his door. “Warning!” the poster said in stark, black letters. “Rats can cost you your job and your family.” The guard was a whistle-blower who had told of security lapses and lewd, drunken bacchanals by fellow workers, sparking an outcry and enraging Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Now he wonders whether he should have kept his mouth shut. “Threats are still running rampant here,” he said in a telephone conversation from Kabul, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “So even though it looks like State may finally turn things around, no one’s ready to celebrate yet.” Such skepticism may be warranted. A review of two years of e-mail messages, letters and memos reveals that the State Department had long known of the serious problems with ArmorGroup, the contractor chosen to protect its embassy. The complaints went beyond the lurid pranks that made headlines, the documents show, and included serious understaffing, bullying by management, petty corruption and abusive work conditions. In fact, the deficiencies became so severe that they threatened the security of the compound, the documents show, and State Department officials withheld payments to ArmorGroup as a way to compel it to comply with the terms of its agreement. On a few occasions, government officials warned the company that if it did not correct the most egregious problems it would lose the five-year, $189 million deal. Yet both times the contract came up for renewal, in 2008 and 2009, the State Department opted to extend it, officials confirmed. The troubles with the ArmorGroup contract, and the State Department’s frustrated dealings with the company over two years and through two administrations, illustrate how the government has become dependent on the private security companies that work in war zones, and has struggled to manage companies that themselves are sometimes loosely run and do not always play by the government’s rules. With a stretched military, the government relies on the security companies themselves to vet, train, and discipline the guards, all at the lowest cost. “It’s expensive for the State Department to withdraw a contract from one company, rebid the project and award it to a new one,” said Janet Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who represents one of the ArmorGroup whistleblowers. “So businesses know that once they get a contract, State may ding them around a little bit, but it’s not going to fire them.” The perils of this reliance were most graphically illustrated in Iraq in 2007, when security guards from another contractor, Blackwater, were involved in shootings that left 17 civilians dead on a Baghdad street. But interviews and documents show that the ArmorGroup affair, in its mundane, unsavory details, offers perhaps a more representative look inside the troubled relationship between contractors and the government in war zones. State Department officials acknowledge they had a litany of complaints about the company, none of which, they insist, compromised the security of the embassy. But they profess to being deeply embarrassed by reports of parties where security guards were photographed naked, fondling and urinating on each other. “I’ve been doing this for 37 years; I’m proud of what I do,” said Patrick F. Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management who oversees outside contractors. But, he added, “This is humiliating.” Mr. Kennedy, however, defended the State Department’s overall handling of the contract. The frequent letters of complaint the government sent to ArmorGroup, he said, were evidence that the department was keeping close tabs on the company. The “greatest majority” of the failures cited in the letters were addressed, he said. Part of the problem, officials said, was that the guards are housed in a complex six miles from the embassy, Camp Sullivan, with little oversight by State Department officials. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, the American subsidiary of the Danish company that owns ArmorGroup, referred questions to the State Department, saying only that it was cooperating with the government’s investigation. On Monday, the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan will hold a hearing to examine the State Department’s oversight of the contract. Christopher Shays, a former congressman and co-chairman of the commission, said there was “a serious failure on the part of the State Department in being unable to compel the contractor to fulfill its commitment.” The disclosures, which were originally made by a nonprofit organization, Project on Government Oversight, deeply rattled the State Department. At a staff meeting following the release of the group’s report, senior officials said, Mrs. Clinton vented her anger about the lurid pictures. Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired Army general who became President Obama’s ambassador to Afghanistan last May, was livid, an official said, because he had never been briefed about the problems. Despite their unease with contractors, officials acknowledged the department had no choice but to keep using them. “In situations where there is a surge of intense security requirements, it is a real challenge,” said Jacob J. Lew, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources. “We cannot reduce the security presence.” The State Department was not in a buyer’s market when it looked for a company to protect its embassy in Kabul. It picked ArmorGroup in March 2007, after its previous choice, MVM, proved unable to marshal the necessary personnel or equipment, officials said. Of the eight companies that bid for the contract the second time around, only two were deemed technically capable. ArmorGroup was the cheapest. The company’s most recent contract extension was granted in June this year, after a Senate hearing in which one of its executives, Samuel Brinkley, a Wackenhut vice president, said in sworn testimony that his company was in full compliance with the terms of its contract, and a State Department official, William H. Moser, a deputy assistant secretary of state, also under oath, said he was satisfied with the company’s performance. In interviews, ArmorGroup whistleblowers said they felt betrayed by the testimony. By many measures, they said, things were worse, not better. After largely uneventful company barbecues morphed into what have been described as scenes from “The Lord of the Flies,” at least a dozen of the men started a document trail of their own, sending e-mail messages and photographs to the Project on Government Oversight. According to interviews and those documents, from July 2007 to April 2009, the State Department issued ArmorGroup at least nine warnings, nearly one every other month, about contract violations that ranged from mundane concerns about the company’s ability to keep accurate personnel logs, to more critical concerns about corruption among company managers and the hardships faced by sleep-deprived, underpaid guards — the majority of them Gurkhas from Nepal — who could not understand simple commands in English. While the Gurkhas were largely the source of the language problems, the lewd hazing rituals were largely the activity of the native English speakers, a mix of Americans, South Africans, New Zealanders and Australians. In 2008, after ArmorGroup was acquired by the Danish company, G4S, Wackenhut informed the State Department it was taking control of the Kabul contract, and promised to fix any problems. Government officials agreed to give the new owners a chance. According to their own correspondence, their optimism seemed to dim fairly quickly. On Aug. 22, 2008, the State Department wrote to ArmorGroup to express concerns that staffing shortages were so severe the company might not be able to provide security after a situation with mass casualties. On Sept. 21, 2008, the State Department deducted $2.4 million in payments from ArmorGroup, warning that its failure to provide a sufficient number of guards “gravely endangers the performance of guard services.” In March 2009, the department again advised ArmorGroup that it had “grave concerns” about staffing shortages, noting that inspectors on a recent tour found 18 guardposts left uncovered. In April, it denied ArmorGroup’s request for a third waiver to the requirement that it teach its foreign guards English. A month later, without much explanation, ArmorGroup told the State Department that deficiencies relating to language and staffing had been resolved. And a month after that, a senior State Department official told the Senate Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight that “despite contractual deficiencies, the performance by ArmorGroup North America has been and is sound.” “I sat in the audience that day, and shook my head in disbelief,” said James Gordon, a former ArmorGroup executive who has filed a whistleblower’s lawsuit against the company. He says he was forced out for complaining about the problems. “I knew that conditions at Camp Sullivan were deteriorating, that the contract continued to be understaffed, that the conditions in Kabul were getting more dangerous, and that the U.S. Embassy was facing grave threats.”

September 10, 2009 New York Times
Two former employees of a private contractor hired to provide security at the United States Embassy in Afghanistan charged that State Department officials were aware as early as 2007 that guards and supervisors were involved in lewd conduct. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, one of the former employees, James Gordon, a native of New Zealand who served as director of operations at the contractor, ArmorGroup North America, charged that he had spoken numerous times with State Department officials about significant problems that threatened security at the embassy. Among other things, he said that ArmorGroup hired guards who could not speak English and had no security experience; that the company employed fewer guards than needed and worked them for longer hours than at other embassies to cut costs; and that it allowed managers and employers to hire prostitutes. “Their goal was to perform the contract as cheaply as possible,” said Mr. Gordon, speaking by telephone from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, where he is now employed by another private security contractor which he declined to name. “Their goal was to do everything they could to prevent the State Department from discovering their multiple contract violations and operational shortcomings. Their goal was to provide a fig leaf of security at the embassy, and to pray to God that nobody got killed.” Mr. Gordon and another former supervisor, John Gorman, said they warned State Department officials in Kabul several times that ArmorGroup was plagued with problems and that it was determined to cover them up. They said that as a result of their efforts to correct the problems and to make the government aware of the issues, ArmorGroup forced them to leave their jobs. As evidence to support his assertions, Mr. Gorman provided a packet of memos and e-mail messages that he said he and two other former employees gave State Department officials in June 2007, including a three-page memo in which he outlined an array of contract violations. Among them, he wrote: “The training program run for new hires has been plagued with hazing and intimidation of students by students. This included physical threats and perversions.” Senior State Department officials said they were unaware that guards had engaged in that kind of activity at their living quarters at a base in Kabul. The officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak about a continuing investigation. The charges echoed those in a report released last week by an independent group, the Project on Government Oversight, which accused the guards and supervisors of deviant behavior. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered an investigation, and about 16 guards and supervisors were fired or have resigned. ArmorGroup North America, based in McLean, Va., was acquired in 2008 by a Danish security company, G4S, and its American subsidiary, Wackenhut Services Inc. In a written statement, Wackenhut described Mr. Gordon’s allegations as “overstated, ill-founded, not based on any personal knowledge or otherwise lacking in legal merit.”

September 10, 2009 AP
A former manager for the security contractor protecting the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan says the company lowballed its bid for the work and then failed to hire enough guards or fix faulty equipment. The allegations come after an independent watchdog group said last week that ArmorGroup guards were subjected to abuse and hazing by supervisors who created a climate of fear and intimidation. On Thursday, James Gordon, former director of operations at ArmorGroup North America, alleged the company bid too low in order to win the contract and then cut corners to keep profits up. Gordon says he was fired for reporting the problems. He also claims ArmorGroup withheld from Congress information about employees who went to brothels. Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, had no immediate comment.

September 2, 2009 The Guardian
Pictures have emerged showing private contractors at the embassy holding 'deviant and lewd' parties.The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has ordered an investigation into allegations that private contractors employed to protect the American embassy in Afghanistan were engaged in "deviant and lewd" parties that have been compared to Lord of the Flies. The decision to launch the inquiry came after an independent group sent her a 10-page dossier yesterday claiming that the security guards at the embassy had been engaged in drunken parties involving prostitutes and the kind of ritual humiliation associated with gang initiation. Pictures and video footage were attached to the dossier. The dossier, compiled by the independent investigative group Project on Government Insight, includes an email allegedly from a guard currently serving in Kabul describing scenes in which guards and supervisors are "peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity". The allegations are an embarrassment at a time when the Obama administration is struggling to win hearts and minds in Afghanistan and the Muslim world in general. It comes against the backdrop of the continuing controversy over the widespread use by the US of private contractors in war zones, of which the most notorious was Blackwater, now named Xe. The group at the centre of the new allegations are the ArmorGroup, part of the Florida-based Wackenhut group, one of the biggest private security organisations in the US. The organisation did not respond immediately today to the allegations. The Project on Government Insight, which was established in 1981 to track military procurement and bring to light evidence of any corruption, described the environment at Camp Sullivan, where the guards were housed outside Kabul, as comparable to the anarchy in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. It said about 300 of the 450 ArmorGroup guards are Gurkhas and the rest are a mix of Australians, South Africans and Americans. In the dossier, it said that guards were "engaging in near-weekly deviant hazing and humiliation of subordinates" . It claimed that some guards had barricaded themselves in their rooms out of fear that the alleged hazing might harm them physically. It further claims that guard force supervisors "made no secret that, to celebrate a birthday, they brought prostitutes into Camp Sullivan, which maintains a sign-in log." According to the report, Afghan nationals, as Muslims, were humiliated by the behaviour and the apparently free-flowing use of alcohol. The pictures could be picked up by the Taliban and used as propaganda against the US and its allies. But the Project on Government Insight stressed that comparisons should not be made with the pictures of abuse at the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib, because no allegations of torture are being made. The report says that the general breakdown in discipline poses a threat to the security of the embassy. Ian Kelly, the state department spokesman, said of the reports of wild, anarchic partying: "These are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way." Clinton has "zero tolerance" for the behaviour described and has directed a "review of the whole system" for farming out security to private contractors that may have threatened the safety of embassy personnel, Kelly said. The embassy said today: "Nothing is more important to us than the safety and security of all embassy personnel - Americans and Afghan - and respect for the cultural and religious values of all Afghans." It added: "We have taken immediate steps to review all local guard force policies and procedures and have taken all possible measures to ensure our security is sound." Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who heads a subcommittee on contractor oversight, wrote to the state department calling for the inquiry in the light of the report. McCaskill's committee earlier this year conducted its own hearings on the involvement of ArmorGroup in Afghanistan.

September 1, 2009 Washington Post
Private security contractors who guard the U.S. embassy in Kabul have engaged in lewd behavior and hazed subordinates, demoralizing the undermanned force and posing a "significant threat" to security at time when the Taliban is intensifying attacks in the Afghan capital, according to an investigation released Tuesday by a government watchdog group. The Project on Government Oversight launched the probe after more than a dozen security guards contacted the group to report misconduct and morale problems within the force of 450 guards that lives at Camp Sullivan, a few miles from the U.S. embassy compound. In one incident in May, more than a dozen guards took weapons, night vision goggles and other key equipment and engaged in an unauthorized "cowboy" mission in Kabul, leaving the embassy "largely night blind," POGO wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton outlining the security violations. The guards dressed in Afghan tunics and scarves in violation of contract rules and hid in abandoned buildings in a reconnaissance mission that was not part of their training or mission. Later two heads of the guard force, Werner Ilic and Jimmy Lemon, issued a "letter of recognition" praising the men for "conspicuous intrepidity (sic)" with the U.S. State Department logo on the letter head. "They were living out some sort of delusion," one of the whistle-blower guards said Tuesday in an interview with The Washington Post from Kabul. "It presented a huge opportunity for an international incident," said the guard who spokes on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. The report recommends that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates immediately assign U.S. military personnel to supervise the guards and remove the management of the current force. It also calls on the State Department to hold accountable diplomatic officials who failed to provide adequate oversight of the contract. The report also found that supervisors held near-weekly parties in which they urinated on themselves and others, drank vodka poured off each other's exposed buttocks, fondled and kissed one another and gallivanted around virtually nude. Photos and video of the escapades were released with the POGO investigation. "The lewd and deviant behavior of approximately 30 supervisors and guards has resulted in complete distrust of leadership and a breakdown of the chain of command, compromising security," POGO said in the letter to Clinton. The guards work for ArmorGroup, North America, which has an $180 million annual contract with the State Department to secure the embassy and the 1,000 diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals who work there. The State Department renewed the contract in July despite finding numerous performance deficiencies by ArmorGroup in recent years which were the subject of a Senate subcommittee hearing in June. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, Inc., the Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. company that owns ArmorGroup, declined to comment on Tuesday's POGO report. Conduct of contractors providing security in Iraq and Afghanistan has been the subject of controversy and other investigations in recent years. The government relies heavily on such contractors for security and other needs. A new Congressional Research Service report has found that as of March, the Defense Department had more contract personnel than troops in Afghanistan. The 52,300 uniformed U.S. military and 68,200 contractors in Afghanistan at that time "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by DOD [Defense Department] in any conflict in the history of the United States," the report said. Some 16 percent of the contractors are involved in providing security, a much higher percentage than the 10 percent that were used in Iraq. Although contractors provide many essential services, "they also pose management challenges in monitoring performance and preventing fraud," according to Steven Aftergood, who first disclosed the congressional report on his Secrecy News Web site.

September 1, 2009 AP
Guards hired by the State Department to protect diplomats and staff at the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan live and work in a "Lord of the Flies" environment in which they're subjected to hazing and other inappropriate behavior by supervisors, a government oversight group charged Tuesday. In a 10-page letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Project on Government Oversight contended the situation has led to a breakdown in morale and leadership, compromising security at the embassy in Kabul where nearly 1,000 U.S. diplomats, staff and Afghan nationals work. The group is urging Clinton to launch an investigation of the contract with ArmorGroup North America. It also recommends that she ask the Pentagon to provide "immediate military supervision" of the private security force at the embassy. The oversight group's findings are based on interviews with ArmorGroup guards, documents, photographs and e-mails. One e-mail from a guard describes lurid conditions at Camp Sullivan, the guards' quarters a few miles from the embassy. The message depicted scenes of abuse including guards and supervisors urinating on people and "threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity." Multiple guards say these conditions have created a "climate of fear and coercion." Those who refuse to participate are often ridiculed, humiliated or even fired, they contended. The group's investigation found sleep-deprived guards regularly logging 14-hour days, language barriers that impair critical communications, and a failure by the State Department to hold the contractor accountable. Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, had no immediate comment on the allegations. The State Department also had no immediate comment. The State Department has been aware of ArmorGroup's shortcomings, the letter says, but hasn't done enough to correct the problems. It cites a July 2007 warning from the department to ArmorGroup that detailed more than a dozen performance deficiencies, including too few guards and armored vehicles. Another "cure notice" was sent less than a year later, raising other problems and criticizing the contractor for failing to fix the prior ones. In July 2008, however, the department extended the contract for another year, according to the notice. More problems surfaced and more warning notices followed. Yet at a congressional hearing on the contract in June, State Department officials said the prior shortcomings had been remedied and security at the embassy is effective. The contract was renewed again through 2010. Nearly two-thirds of the embassy guards are Gurkhas from Nepal and northern India who don't speak adequate English, a situation that creates communications breakdowns, the group says. Pantomime is often used to convey orders and instructions. On the Net: Project on Government Oversight: http://www.pogo.org/

August 16, 2009 Sunday Mail
A SECURITY guard took a day off... so he could steal £40,000 from a shop where he usually delivered cash. John Liddell used his own motor as the getaway car and was caught when it was spotted speeding away from the scene on CCTV. He later claimed he had been paid £1000 for information which he used to pay off drug debts. Liddell, 33, sat in the car with an unnamed getaway driver while a third gang member Gary Owen pounced on his Group 4 Securicor colleagues. Owen, 21, snatched the cash from guards Ann McIntosh and Roderick O'Donnell, who were delivering money to fill the cash machine at a Spar store in Barrhead, East Renfrewshire. The female guard was barged to the ground before being punched and kicked on the head. Prosecutor Andrew Miller told the High Court in Glasgow: "The shop would normally have been covered by Liddell. "However, he and his usual partner were on leave with the result McIntosh and O'Donnell dealt with the delivery." Shamed dad-of-one Liddell, of Carmyle, Glasgow, was identified as being the front passenger in the car. His home was searched and £8580 from the raid was seized. The remaining £31,420 was never recovered. Liddell admitted the Ford Mondeo getaway car was his but denied knowing who committed the robbery. He claimed he had been "afraid" of the people behind the raid and had been paid £5000 from the stolen money. Mr Miller added: "He stated that he told 'them' where the security van with the money would be and that he provided this information to repay a drug debt of £1000." Liddell and Owen, of Shettleston, Glasgow, face jail when they are sentenced next month after admitting assault and robbery. The pair were also accused of stealing a security box holding £40,000 at a shop in Castlemilk last March. Owen faced further allegations that he was involved in two other security raids, stealing a total of £35,300. However, not guilty pleas to those charges were accepted. G4S Cash Services said: "This employee was immediately dismissed upon being charged."

July 8, 2009 Government Executive
The Federal Protective Service is failing to properly oversee its 13,000-strong contract guard force, causing grave security gaps at federal buildings nationwide, Government Accountability Office officials told senators on Wednesday. As part of a recent review, investigators from the watchdog agency successfully entered 10 high-security federal buildings carrying components for a bomb through doors being monitored by contract guards. Once inside, the investigators assembled an improvised explosive device and walked freely around the buildings and into various legislative and executive branch offices with the IED in a briefcase, GAO said in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Lawmakers called GAO's findings disturbing, shocking and outrageous, and asked urgently and repeatedly what they could do to help FPS gain control of the situation. "In this post-9/11 world that we're now living in, I cannot fathom how security breaches of this magnitude were allowed to occur," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, ranking member of the committee. Chairman Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said that in all his years of reading GAO reports, this one represented "about the broadest indictment of an agency in the federal government I've heard." Mark Goldstein, GAO's director of physical infrastructure issues and author of the report, told lawmakers the review revealed significant shortcomings in FPS' ability to monitor and verify contract guard training and firearms certifications. In reviewing 663 randomly selected guards, GAO found that 62 percent had at least one expired certification. Goldstein said a lack of funding has hindered the agency's ability to reach appropriate staffing levels and provide the technological tools necessary to protect federal buildings. But a number of the problems with the contract guard program are unrelated to budgetary constraints, he said. "Not having national standards and guidance for inspecting the guards, [and] better standards for knowing when certifications have expired -- things like that, are not resource-based," Goldstein said. "I think there has been a lack of attention to this part of the protective requirements for federal buildings." Lieberman said he and Collins are aware of management problems at FPS and that is one reason why they have not pressed to increase the agency's budget. "We didn't want to just throw more money at the problem until we fix the agency," he said. FPS Director Gary Schenkel did not dispute GAO's findings and said he takes full responsibility for the failures as head of the agency. He assured the committee that FPS officials have been making progress in addressing deficiencies and are working even faster now that they are aware of GAO's findings.

July 2, 2009 WA Today
The Director of Public Prosecutions has begun his inquiries into the death of an Aboriginal elder in the back of a prison van, giving his family and supporters hope that charges could be laid. The victim was 46-year-old Warburton man Mr Ward, who was effectively roasted in the van during a four-hour journey between Laverton and Kalgoorlie in January last year. A coronial inquest found Mr Ward's death was "wholly avoidable", and State Coroner Alistair Hope recommended charges should be laid over the incident. The inquest was told that Mr Ward - whose first name cannot be published because of cultural reasons - had endured temperatures in excess of 50 degrees in the pod of the van. Mr Hope found "inhumane treatment'' led to the elder's death and said the company involved, Global Solutions Ltd (GSL), its two guards Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell, and the Department of Corrective Services had all contributed to Mr Ward's "terrible death''. Today, DPP Robert Cock QC met with two detective sergeants from the Major Crime Squad about the "horrendous" incident and said he had asked them to conduct further inquiries into the man's death. Mr Cock has also been in touch with the Coroner's Court and asked for further information. His spokeswoman said once he gathered all the information, he would then be in a position to decide if charges should be laid. "I don't know how long the garnering of all the information I require will take," Mr Cock said. "But as soon as I have it all, I will make a decision about charges."

June 23, 2009 The West
The West Australian government is reviewing the contract of a security company involved in the death in custody of an Aboriginal elder, Premier Colin Barnett says. Global Solutions, which was acquired by UK-based security services giant G4S last year, provided security for government groups including the Department of Immigration and the WA Department of Corrective Services. GSL employed two guards to transport the elder, 46-year-old Mr Ward, who died in the back of a prison van on a four-hour journey across the WA goldfields in January 2008. Mr Ward, whose first name cannot be released for cultural reasons, was being taken from Laverton to Kalgoorlie to face a drink-driving charge. He died of heat stroke after suffering temperatures of 50C in the rear pod of a van driven by the guards, Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell. Earlier this month, WA coroner Alistair Hope apportioned blame for the “wholly avoidable” death among the guards, GSL and the WA Department of Corrective Services. The Director of Public Prosecutions is considering whether charges should be laid over the matter. Mr Barnett said today that G4S would be scrutinised before their government contract was renewed. “It is an absolute tragedy that a prisoner in the care of the state could end up dying in that condition,” Mr Barnett said. “The coroner’s reported, the attorney-general is dealing with that issue, and we will certainly look at the contract and the performance, and ensure that it is never repeated in Western Australia again.” The transport tender for corrective services is due to come up next year. Mr Barnett said G4S would be judged on their performance. “I’m not involved directly in the administration of that contract, but I assure you we will leave no stone unturned to ensure that future prisoners are treated with respect and safely,“ he said. “It would be quite inappropriate for me to comment on a tender process, but obviously their performance will be one of the factors that will be taken into account when that future tender is awarded.”

June 23, 2009 Brisbane Times
A sacked security guard has offered her apologies to the family of an Aboriginal elder who died in custody, while the West Australian government says it's reviewing her former employer's contract. Nina Stokoe, one of two guards who had charge of the man when he died of heatstroke in the back of a secure van during a 360km drive, accused authorities of providing inadequate vehicles to transport prisoners. Security giant G4S last week sacked Ms Stokoe and the other guard, Graham Powell, claiming the pair failed to follow directions to check on prisoners every two hours during the fatal four-hour journey. Mr Ward, whose first name cannot be released for cultural reasons, died after suffering temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius in the rear of the privately operated van which had no air-conditioning. He was being taken from Laverton to Kalgoorlie on January 27 last year to face charges of drink-driving. WA coroner Alastair Hope, who in his findings said Mr Ward had suffered "inhumane treatment", has asked the director of public prosecutions to consider laying charges over the incident. Mr Hope found that Ms Stokoe, Mr Powell, Global Solutions Ltd (since acquired by G4S) and the Department of Corrective Services had all contributed to Mr Ward's "terrible death". Ms Stokoe on Tuesday broke her silence in an interview with the Nine Network, saying she is distraught over Mr Ward's death. In excerpts aired on Fairfax Radio on Tuesday, Ms Stokoe broke down while offering an apology to Mr Ward's family. "I am very sorry that it's happened and I can understand how they feel," she said. "I only wish that it never happened and that he was still around. "I am so sorry that it happened. "Mr Ward will always be on my mind, always, he will never go away." Mr Stokoe said guards endured terrible conditions in the vans supplied by authorities but were afraid of complaining lest they lose their shifts. She accepted her part in Mr Ward's death but said the prison vans were "untrustworthy". "(We've) probably been scapegoats, but at the end of the day we were the ones that were driving the vehicle," she said. "We had no choice what vehicle to drive. "At the end of the day, every day in Kalgoorlie when we drove out to pick up prisoners it's pot luck. "There's many times we have been sat by the side of the road broken down. "Sometimes 15, 20-odd hours those vehicles have been stuck out in the middle of nowhere, broken down, with prisoners on board and without prisoners on board. "Those vehicles were untrustworthy." WA Premier Colin Barnett said the government was reviewing G4S' contract. "It is an absolute tragedy that a prisoner in the care of the state could end up dying in that condition," Mr Barnett said on Tuesday. "The coroner's reported, the attorney-general is dealing with that issue, and we will certainly look at the contract and the performance, and ensure that it is never repeated in Western Australia again." The transport tender for corrective services is due to come up next year.

June 19, 2009 Brisbane Times
Two security guards who had charge of a prison van in which an Aboriginal elder died of heat stroke have been sacked, their employer says. UK-based security services giant G4S said on Friday it had terminated the employment of the two guards, Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell, following the completion of a coroner's hearing into the man's death. West Australian Coroner Alastair Hope last Friday delivered a finding that the man, known only as Mr Ward for cultural reasons, had died of heat stroke. He said he had suffered through temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius in the un-airconditioned pod of a van during a 360km journey between Laverton and Kalgoorlie on January 27 last year. Mr Hope apportioned blame for Mr Ward's death between Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell, the private company Global Solutions Ltd (GSL), which has since been acquired by G4S, and the WA Department of Corrective Services. G4S Public affairs director Tim Hall said Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell had disregarded orders to check on prisoners at least once every two hours. But he said their dismissal was a result of the Department of Corrective Services withdrawing their work permits on Monday. "The withdrawal of their work permits effectively made any other considerations unnecessary," Mr Hall told AAP on Friday. Mr Hope has asked the Director of Public Prosecutions to consider whether charges should be laid over the incident.

June 15, 2009 Four Corners
The company linked to the death of Mr Ward was the subject of a damning report in 2005. An investigation by the ABC's Four Corners program found GSL (now G4S) was the subject of a damning report, published in 2005, by Queensland officials regarding the transportation of immigration detainees in 2004. In that incident, none of the detainees was given food during a seven-hour leg of a lengthy trip from Melbourne to South Australia, and only two were given water. The man who wrote the report, the former head of Queensland's corrective services, Keith Hamburger, says he is concerned about the issues raised by the subsequent death of Mr Ward in Western Australia. The Human Rights Commission later found that one of the detainees was so thirsty that he was forced to drink his own urine. Last week the state's coroner found Mr Ward had died of heat stroke after being carted through the desert in 40 degree-plus heat in a prisoner transport van that had faulty air conditioning. The Aboriginal elder, who had been arrested for drink driving, was found with a third-degree burn on his stomach where his body had come into contact with the van's floor. The coroner found the private security guards who drove the van, the company which employed them, GSL, and the WA Department of Corrective Services all contributed to his death. "The criticism of the company related to our procedures and processes," GSL spokesman Tim Hall has told ABC radio. "We accept that there was some ground for criticism." However it is not the first time GSL's procedures have been criticised. Mr Hamburger's findings were equally damning. He found GSL was "responsible for placing the safety of detainees at risk", "humiliating" them, and "disregarding appeals for assistance from detainees in obvious distress". The guards had driven the first leg of the journey to South Australia non-stop for seven hours. None of the detainees was given food, and only two were given water. "I felt quite appalled actually," Mr Hamburger told Four Corners. "I sat in the van. I talked to the staff that did the escort. I saw the CCTV footage. I was very shocked by the whole thing." One of the asylum seekers, now settled in Australia, describes for the first time the journey he endured. "People was in the back shouting and crying and I was banging as well because I needed to go to the toilet," he said. "And they didn't stop for anything. And I have to do it in the car." 'Great concern' -- One year after the Hamburger report was released, the WA government gave the contract for prisoner transport in the state to GSL. "If these issues are being repeated that's a matter of great concern, because this is not rocket science," Mr Hamburger said. "We're dealing here with, as I've said, duty of care. "We've had many years of experience across the board in corrections and detention and police in dealing with these situations. "There's a whole body of evidence around I guess on how to do these things, and so it is concerning. "They should know better."

June 13, 2009 Perth Now
ONE of two guards suspended over the death of an Aboriginal elder in a prisoner transport van, says she has been ''gagged'' from talking about the tragedy. On Friday, State Coroner Alastair Hope recommended Director of Public Prosecutions Robert Cock consider criminal charges over the "unnecessary and wholly avoidable death'' of Mr Ward, 46, who died on January 27 last year. Officers Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell drove the Warbuton elder, whose first name cannot be released for cultural reasons, for the 352km Outback journey between the Goldfields towns of Laverton to Kalgoorlie. In his stinging finding, Mr Hope said Mr Ward died when temperatures rose to 50C in the pod of the commercially owned van which had no air-conditioning and little-to-no air flow. Contracted transport company, G4S, formally known as Global Solutions Ltd, stood down Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell on Friday. "The two employees have been suspended and the findings of the coroner, the coroner's report and recommendations will be considered carefully and it will then be decided what the next step should be,'' G4S spokesman Tim Hall told ABC radio yesterday. Ms Stokoe declined to comment on her suspension, saying: "I can't talk about anything, I would like to, but I can't''. Mr Ward's family is planning to sue G4S, which runs other custodial services including court security, over the tragedy. Prison Officer's Union secretary John Welch said the inquest had raised questions about the privatisation of custodial services in WA. Mr Welch said he feared G4S would be allowed to be apply for the contract to run the recently announced Eastern Goldfields prison which was scheduled for completion by the end of 2013. "You wonder why, in the light apparent failures of privatisation, you would want to even consider looking at having at private provider in the Goldfields,'' Mr Welch said. A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Christian Porter said no decision had been made on whether the prison would be public or private, and any discussion on the potential awarding of a private contract was speculative. Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chair Marc Newhouse said another public protest was planned for the city on Saturday to lobby the State Government for improvements.

May 14, 2009 The West
More than 30 family members and supporters of Mr Ward, an Aboriginal elder who had a fatal heatstroke in the back of a prison van, gathered outside the Kalgoorlie Courthouse yesterday to call for those responsible for his death to face tribal punishment. Mr Ward’s widow Nancy and his four sons were among those who wailed in grief as they demanded justice and answers to why the Warburton elder died in such horrific circumstances. The family’s interpreter and relative, Gail Jamieson, said that under traditional law, anyone found culpable of the death should be speared. “The family is just devastated,” she said. “He was treated with no respect and he was a well-respected, outstanding elder. If they were in an Aboriginal culture, they would be speared because us Aboriginal people are also going through two cultures.” The inquest was told no disciplinary action was taken against the two GSL officers responsible for transporting Mr Ward on the day he died. Mr Ward died after a four-hour journey in a GSL prison van from Laverton to Kalgoorlie on January 27 last year when temperatures reached 42C. Global Solutions Limited general manager John Hughes said security officers Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell were stood down on full pay and were reinstated when an internal investigation found they had not violated company policies or procedures. Questioned by the family’s barrister Michael Rynne, Mr Hughes said any reinvestigation would depend on Coroner Alastair Hope’s findings. GSL’s multi-million-dollar contract could require it to pay a penalty of 4.5 per cent of its value if found to have failed in its duty of care. Mr Hughes said he understood GSL’s obligations included ensuring officers minimised hardship to detainees, conducting regular checks to ensure their safety, security and health and preventing injury. The inquest concludes today.

May 17, 2009 Miami Herald
In the escalating showdown between Miami-Dade County and Wackenhut Corp., former congresswoman Carrie Meek is on both sides. She lobbies for Miami-Dade, which is accusing Wackenhut of bilking the county out of $3.4 million. And she lobbies for Wackenhut, which is suing the county for $20 million in damages. ''It's kind of hard to represent two masters,'' said Robert Meyers, executive director of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust. But Meek is asking county officials to disregard the conflict of interests and allow her to continue representing both Miami-Dade taxpayers and the security company. She has received $150,000 from the county since mid-2007. She declined to disclose her Wackenhut pay. ''I don't see any reason why I can't continue to represent Wackenhut, and I've always been a strong proponent of the county,'' said Meek, a civil-rights pioneer who represented Miami-Dade in Congress from 1992 to 2001. Allegations that Wackenhut was doctoring timesheets and leaving county transit stations unguarded go back to a whistleblower's civil lawsuit filed in 2005. The county auditor found evidence of overbilling in 2006 and released a report in 2008. In early April, County Manager George Burgess said the Palm Beach Gardens-based company should be barred from doing business with Miami-Dade. Meek didn't file her conflict-waiver request until April 27 -- a year after the audit became public. She said she didn't know the county requires its lobbyists to give notice immediately in case of an ''actual or perceived'' dispute with a private client. ''I can tell you that Wackenhut feels that they're being unfairly judged,'' said Meek, who added that she did not know the lawsuit was coming. ``I can't tell you who is right or wrong.'' LONG-STANDING TIES  -- Meek and her family have long-standing ties to the Palm Beach Gardens-based security company. Her son, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, sold security contracts for the company from 1994 to 2002, and his Senate campaign has received the maximum $10,000 donation from Wackenhut's political action committee. Meek's wife, Leslie, registered with the county to lobby for Wackenhut in 2004, according to public records. The former congresswoman began lobbying for Wackenhut in April 2007, the same month the county hired her to focus on transit issues. She asked the county if she could continue representing both clients after she was reminded last month about the county's policy regarding lobbying conflicts, said Joe Rasco, director of the county Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. ''I think it's time we asked and that they proferred,'' Rasco said. ``I think it's a fair question and we'll be taking a look at it.'' Miami-Dade's lobbying contract describes a conflict of interest as a position contrary to county policy or its financial interests. Representing a client at odds with the county without permission ''shall result'' in the lobbyist's contract being thrown out and/or the lobbyist being barred from working for the county for up to three years. ''It is incumbent on the consultant and its employees, partners and subcontractors to remain mindful of the county's policy and fiscal interests and positions vis-a-vis other clients,'' reads the agreement. Meek didn't make the initial cut in 2006 when the county decided to scale back its Washington lobbying team from eight to three firms and put the contracts out for bid. The county had been spending nearly $1.2 million a year. `SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE' -- ''Paying this much for this many people was simply unacceptable,'' County Commissioner Sally Heyman said in March 2006. But two months earlier, Heyman directed staff to add Meek and former state Rep. Mike Abrams -- who came in fourth and fifth place -- to the lobbying team. ''This was coming out of nowhere,'' Rasco told county investigators, who concluded Heyman did not violate the ethics code because the lobbying office reports to the commission. The commission unanimously approved hiring Meek and Abrams on an ''as-needed basis'' and set their pay at a maximum of $75,000 a year. County officials said the money would come from reserves set aside for hiring outside experts in case of an emergency, such as a terrorist attack or major hurricane. Two years later, Heyman now says the county should consider paring down to two lobbying firms. The county pays two full-time employees in Washington to lobby the federal government, in addition to the team of three law firms plus Meek and Abrams.

May 16, 2009 The West
He literally cooked to death. Trapped in a prison van for four hours, suffocated by temperatures that climbed to more than 50C, the Aboriginal elder had no way to communicate with security officers sitting just a metre away, in the airconditioned cab. His only sustenance was a small bottle of water and a meat pie. When he finally collapsed on the van floor, the metal was so hot it seared his skin. Yesterday, Corrective Services Commissioner Ian Johnson travelled to Kalgoorlie to publicly apologise to Mr Ward’s family, accepting responsibility for the 46-year-old’s death in January last year. It was a dramatic end to a coronial inquest that has revealed a litany of failures in the justice and custodial systems in WA’s outback. Widow Nancy Ward and her children will return to Laverton next week after sitting quietly and with dignity throughout the case, which has attracted the attention of the United Nations and the Australian Human Rights Commission. Mr Ward, a conservation worker, a supporter and interpreter for local police and an advocate and educator for children of the Gibson Desert, was an international ambassador for the Ngaanyatjarra people. His family say he was treated like an animal. Mr Ward had been drinking on Australia Day last year in the remote Goldfields town of Laverton when he was arrested for driving with more than four times the legal alcohol limit. Conducting a quasi-court hearing for Mr Ward at his cell door at the local police station, justice of the peace Barrye Thompson remanded him in custody to face court in Kalgoorlie the following day. Mr Thompson told the inquest he had no formal training when appointed as a JP and could not even remember whether he had read the Bail Act. The Aboriginal Legal Service was not contacted. Guards and police officers testified the prison vans used by Global Solutions Limited and maintained by the State were notoriously unreliable, sub-standard and the air-conditioning was often faulty. GSL’s supervisor in Kalgoorlie, Leanne Jenkins, had warned her management an incident would occur unless the vehicles were replaced. At 11.20am, the GSL prison van pulled into a secure area at Laverton police station where the guards were told they would have a trouble-free passenger. Mr Ward made a comment about the warm day and a guard told him “the quicker he got into the van, the quicker the air-conditioning would kick in”. But the air-conditioning did not work: it had been reported faulty in the GSL maintenance log more than a month earlier. Before making the continuous 360km journey to Kalgoorlie, the guards did not tell Mr Ward there was a duress alarm in the back of the van in case he needed help. Towards the end of the trip, they heard a loud thump. Pulling over on to the side of the road and opening the outer door of the van, the guards felt the heat radiating from the rear pod and they saw Mr Ward face-down on the van floor — unconscious and unresponsive. Reaching into the back of the van felt like a “blast from a furnace”, according to Dr Lucien LaGrange, who assisted in removing Mr Ward’s lifeless body at Kalgoorlie Hospital. Doctors found full-thickness contact burns on his stomach and tried for 20 minutes to resuscitate Mr Ward, whose skin felt like a “hot cup of coffee”. They managed to get a brief return of a heartbeat, but after putting him in an ice bath, his body temperature was still 41.7C. Coroner Alastair Hope is due to deliver his findings on June 12. For now, the Ward family will have to return to a community missing a leader. It is little comfort to them that money was allocated in this week’s State Budget to replace the fleet of transport vans — four years after the Department for Corrective Services undertook to do so. “I am sorry,” Mr Johnson told Mrs Ward yesterday. “I have a deep regret but no matter what I say, it’s not going to change what happened.”

May 14, 2009 The West
More than 30 family members and supporters of Mr Ward, an Aboriginal elder who had a fatal heatstroke in the back of a prison van, gathered outside the Kalgoorlie Courthouse yesterday to call for those responsible for his death to face tribal punishment. Mr Ward’s widow Nancy and his four sons were among those who wailed in grief as they demanded justice and answers to why the Warburton elder died in such horrific circumstances. The family’s interpreter and relative, Gail Jamieson, said that under traditional law, anyone found culpable of the death should be speared. “The family is just devastated,” she said. “He was treated with no respect and he was a well-respected, outstanding elder. If they were in an Aboriginal culture, they would be speared because us Aboriginal people are also going through two cultures.” The inquest was told no disciplinary action was taken against the two GSL officers responsible for transporting Mr Ward on the day he died. Mr Ward died after a four-hour journey in a GSL prison van from Laverton to Kalgoorlie on January 27 last year when temperatures reached 42C. Global Solutions Limited general manager John Hughes said security officers Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell were stood down on full pay and were reinstated when an internal investigation found they had not violated company policies or procedures. Questioned by the family’s barrister Michael Rynne, Mr Hughes said any reinvestigation would depend on Coroner Alastair Hope’s findings. GSL’s multi-million-dollar contract could require it to pay a penalty of 4.5 per cent of its value if found to have failed in its duty of care. Mr Hughes said he understood GSL’s obligations included ensuring officers minimised hardship to detainees, conducting regular checks to ensure their safety, security and health and preventing injury. The inquest concludes today.

April 30, 2009 Miami Herald
Three weeks after Miami-Dade County declared that Wackenhut Corp. bilked taxpayers of millions and would no longer do county business, the security firm fired back with its own show of force: a $20 million lawsuit against the county and two top officials. The escalating fight centers on allegations that Wackenhut Corp. overbilled Miami-Dade Transit for security services at Metrorail stops and failed to adequately staff guard posts. The Palm Beach Gardens-based firm, which does other security work for the county, has held the mass transit security contract for 20 years, though its latest contract expires in November. But the stakes for Wackenhut may go beyond its current business with the county. In its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Miami, the security company said the move by Miami-Dade to bar the firm from working for the county could jeopardize contracts with other government agencies across the country. The future damages we ''will suffer as a result of this unfair and malicious taint'' on our ''reputation are incalculable,'' Wackenhut said in the lawsuit, which seeks $20 million in damages and asks the court to stop the county from relying on an audit which concludes time sheets were doctored and transit stops unguarded. The suit also names as defendants County Manager George Burgess and County Auditor Cathy Jackson. Wackenhut contends the county audit used improper methodology. ''It has no basis in reality,'' said Wackenhut President Drew Levine. ``We've done our job and done it well.'' Miami-Dade County spokeswoman Victoria Mallette said the county stands by the report authored by the government's Audit Management Services department. ''We want to be made whole,'' said Mallette. ``We haven't been made whole. It would be irresponsible for us to continue doing business with an entity that we believe has overbilled us.'' Earlier this month, Burgess wrote in a memo to commissioners that as a result of the audit the county would seek to recover $3.4 million in alleged overbillings and support an ongoing whistle blower's civil case against Wackenhut. Burgess named several firms to replace Wackenhut guards at Miami-Dade railway stops and bus facilities, the Juvenile Services Department and Public Works Department. The county manager also declared the county will seek ``debarment.'' The county move earlier this month and subsequent lawsuit Wednesday come several years after charges of overbillings and so-called ''ghost posts'' were first raised. The county -- roundly rebuked for poor stewardship of the transit system -- has been criticized for reacting slowly to the allegations. The whistle blower's civil court case against Wackenhut was filed in 2005 and the audit was completed in 2008.

April 11, 2009 Miami Herald
Four years after allegations surfaced that Wackenhut Corp. fraudulently overbilled Miami-Dade Transit for security work it never performed, the county is moving to replace the firm and support a lawsuit aimed at recouping millions paid for alleged ''phantom'' workers at Metrorail stops. County Manager George Burgess, in a memo to commissioners Friday, said he also wants to bar the Palm Beach Gardens-based security firm from doing business with the county in the future. The move is sure to escalate the testy fight between Miami-Dade County and Wackenhut, which has denied wrongdoing and hired a bevy of lobbyists, including former Congresswoman Carrie Meek, to press its case. Wackenhut has held the contract to patrol mass transit stations for 20 years, although the latest agreement -- a no-bid contract that pays the company as much as $17 million a year -- expires in November. Wackenhut issued a written statement late Friday saying it is ``shocked that the County Manager has falsely accused us of intentionally overbilling the county.'' It called claims of overcharging both false and unsubstantiated, while asserting the county has ``a history of mismanaged audits.'' The county action comes after several years of criticism that Miami-Dade government failed to address allegations of bogus charges for empty guard posts and doctored time sheets. The claims were first raised in an ongoing 2005 lawsuit and later detailed in a 2008 county audit, which initially estimated $6.26 million in overbillings but now pegs the total at $3.4 million. ''The evidence of overbilling has been overwhelming and existing for four years,'' said attorney Mark Vieth, who filed the 2005 lawsuit pending in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. He contends that the Wackenhut overcharges are much higher than the county's number. After the May 2008 county audit, County Mayor Carlos Alvarez declared that the security firm had 90 days to rebut the findings or repay the county. Wackenhut did neither, yet the county didn't move until now -- with six months left on the contract. Burgess defended the pace of the audit and the time it's taken to decide a course of action, calling the issues complex and voluminous.

April 6, 2009 Palm Beach Post
More than two years after a federal investigation found guards were sleeping on the job at Florida Power & Light Co.'s Turkey Point nuclear plant, the utility has paid a six-figure fine to resolve the case. FPL sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a check for $130,000 in January. Six guards slept or served as lookouts for other guards who were sleeping "on multiple occasions" between 2004 and 2006, the NRC found in the 2006 investigation. In one case, in April 2006, a guard was "sleeping while on duty at a post in a vital area of the reactor," according to the NRC. All of the guards were contractors with Palm Beach Gardens-based Wackenhut Corp. None remained on the job after the violations were announced last year. Also last year, FPL paid the NRC a $208,000 fine for four other security violations that involved Wackenhut guards at Turkey Point. In that case, the NRC said FPL didn't properly equip armed responders after two Wackenhut guards disabled their weapons by removing or breaking firing pins. The agency also said FPL provided it with incomplete and inaccurate information.

April 3, 2009 The Age
THE Federal Government is set to dump controversial company G4S as operator of immigration detention centres. The Department of Immigration has announced that Serco, which runs prisons and immigration centres in Britain, is its preferred tender to run Australia's six detentions centres. The contract is believed to be worth up to $500 million. But human rights advocates have hit out at the decision, saying Serco has a poor record in Britain, and detention centres should be operated by the public sector. Advocate Charandev Singh said Serco's record in Britain showed a "prison mentality" would be brought to its operations in Australia. "The Government just wants a clean skin in Australia — somebody with no blemishes (here)," Mr Singh said. "G4S and Serco are basically the same company. They come from the same corporate background, running prisons."

March 21, 2009 The West
The security guard who drove the van in which an Aboriginal elder died of heat stroke has admitted he should take responsibility for the death. Testifying for a second day at the inquest into the death of 46-year-old Mr Ward, Global Solutions Limited driver Graham Powell said yesterday he regretted how Mr Ward died. “In hindsight, if I had to do that journey again, I would certainly be doing it a lot differently,” he said. He agreed with lawyer assisting the coroner, Felicity Zempilas, it was inhumane to transport prisoners in the rear pod of the van over long distances and that the vans were “certainly not designed for that”. Coroner Alastair Hope told Mr Powell he was “troubled” over his evidence about phone calls made after Mr Ward collapsed. Mr Hope said a delay of two minutes between calls was a long time in an emergency. To questions from his counsel Linda Black, Mr Powell said he should have checked the airconditioning, made comfort stops and told Mr Ward explicitly how to communicate with the officers if he was in distress. The inquest has heard Mr Powell and colleague Nina Stokoe did not stop during the four hours they had Mr Ward in the van in mid-40C heat while driving from Laverton to Kalgoorlie in January last year. Mr Ward suffered a full-thickness hand-size burn on his stomach from a hot metal surface inside the van. Senior chemist David Tranthim-Fryer said the prison van temperature would have been above 50C. Evidence from a police re-enactment he helped with revealed the van floor reached 56C and the air temperature at least 50C on a slightly cooler day. The temperature would have been hotter with a person inside because there would have been another heat source. “We opened the back doors and could feel the heat coming out of the pods. The hot air affects you more than anything else,” Mr Tranthim-Fryer said. Mr Ward’s body temperature was 41.7C after 20 minutes of resuscitation in an ice bath while being fanned. The van’s rear-pod airconditioning was not working, a fault noted in the GSL maintenance log more than a month before Mr Ward’s death. Mr Powell said he did not check the airconditioning in the pod despite knowing it had a history of faults. He had assumed Ms Stokoe checked it. Mr Hope has heard evidence from witnesses, including GSL’s Kalgoorlie supervisor Leanne Jenkins, who spoke of substandard “unreliable” prison vans which were not suitable for long distance travel. The inquest did not finish within the two-week timeframe and Mr Hope adjourned it until May 11. Outside, Mr Ward’s cousin Bernard Newberry said his family wanted those responsible charged. The family has asked that Mr Ward’s first name not be used.

March 20, 2009 The West Australian
The guard responsible for transporting an Aboriginal elder who died in custody was previously demoted for breaching procedures and compromising prisoner safety. Giving evidence at a coronial inquest into the death of 46-yearold Mr Ward, Global Solutions Limited security officer Graham Powell said he had been stood down as a supervisor because he breached the company’s policies and procedures. The inquest in Kalgoorlie was told Mr Powell was stood down from GSL for six months in January 2007 because he compromised prisoner security when he failed to ensure prisoners were loaded into a prison van in a secure area. He also breached procedure by smoking in prison vans and allowing staff and prisoners to smoke in cells. Mr Ward’s relatives travelled from around the State to attend the inquest yesterday. Mr Ward’s widow Nancy cried when Mr Powell told how he and fellow security officer Nina Stokoe heard a “loud thud” when Mr Ward collapsed in the back of a prison van. Mr Ward died of heatstroke after collapsing in the back of the GSL prison van during a fourhour, non-stop journey from Laverton to Kalgoorlie-Boulder on January 27 last year. Mr Powell said when he arrived at the hospital he checked the airconditioning in the rear pod of the prison van. “I put my arm inside the prisoner compartment and it appeared to me there was no air coming out the vents,” he told State Coroner Alastair Hope. Mr Powell said he had not checked the prison van’s air-conditioning before leaving for Laverton because it had not been included on a vehicle inspection check sheet. He agreed with Mr Hope that it was highly dangerous not to check the air-conditioning before transporting prisoners.

March 18, 2009 Perth Now
TWO guards responsible for transporting an Aboriginal elder 352km across the West Australian outback joked about how he must have been "freezing his balls off" hours before he died of heatstroke in the back of a corrective services van, an inquest has been told. Giving evidence via video link yesterday, Global Solutions Ltd officer Nina Stokoe said she did not check that the air-conditioning in the back of the corrective services van in which the prisoner died was working - even though it had been faulty and the outside temperature had soared to 42C - because it was not part of procedure. Ms Stokoe said she assumed the air-conditioning was working in the rear because there was no problem with the air-conditioning in the front cab and Ward, whose family does not want his last name published for cultural reasons, would have banged on the side of the van if there was a problem. According to Ms Stokoe, during previous trips, other prisoners often complained that the air-conditioning was too cold, and she and fellow officer Graham Powell joked that, while they were too hot, Ward would be the opposite. "I had a joke with Graham," she told the inquest into Ward's death. "(I said) I bet he's freezing his balls off while we're sitting here stinking hot." Coroner Alastair Hope asked whether it would have been prudent to check the air-conditioning on such a hot day when it had been known to break down and Ward was in a section of the van with only metal seats. "It (the air-conditioning) wasn't on the check list ... I wouldn't know how to check it," Ms Stokoe replied. Ward died on January 27 last year after attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. He was being transferred from Laverton to prison in Kalgoorlie after being arrested for drink driving on Australia Day. Mr Hope was yesterday also told how the Kalgoorlie-based supervisor for GSL, Leanne Jenkins, warned her superiors just four months before Ward's death that someone would "eventually die" if the company's outdated and poorly maintained vans were not replaced. Ms Jenkins said the only response she received was that any vehicles in need of repairs should not be driven. She said the two vans based at Kalgoorlie always had problems and were not suitable for long trips. Ms Stokoe and Mr Powell made no stops on the 3 1/2-hour journey until they heard a thud in the back of the van when they were just outside Kalgoorlie. When they pulled over to check on Ward, Ms Stokoe said, they did not open the van's back doors completely because it was not procedure and Ward might have been trying to escape. "If he was mucking around and it was an escape attempt, we would look like idiots," she said. After realising he only had a faint pulse, the officers rushed Ward to hospital. The inquest continues today.

March 17, 2009 Perth Now
AN Aboriginal elder who died in the back of a prison van arrived at hospital, unconscious and with third-degree burns, an inquest has heard. Lucien LaGrange, who was working in the emergency department of Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital when Ward arrived in the non-airconditioned van, said a blast of hot air hit him when he opened the back of the vehicle. Respected elder Ward - whose family does not want his first name mentioned for cultural reasons - did not appear to be breathing. "It was like a blast from a furnace - it was extremely hot," Dr LaGrange told Coroner Alastair Hope. "I was struck by how wet and slippery he was. It was almost like he had been coated in soap - he just slid." Dr LaGrange said that despite medical staff placing ice over Ward's body, his body temperature was 41.7C. That day, January 27 last year, the outside temperature climbed to 42C. After many resuscitation attempts, Ward was declared dead about 90 minutes after arriving at the hospital. Ward was being transported 352km from Laverton to Goldfields Regional Prison in Kalgoorlie after being charged with drink-driving on Australia Day. The inquest was told that the company responsible for transporting Ward, Global Solutions Ltd, raised concerns with the West Australian Government about the poor state of its vans before Ward's death, but was told no new vehicles were available. Under a multi-million-dollar contract, GSL is responsible for transporting prisoners, while the Department of Corrective Services is responsible for maintaining the fleet of vehicles. Former GSL employee Thomas Akatsa told the hearing that after the company failed to secure new vans from the Government, he raised concerns with the company's supervisors, including airconditioning faults and overheating, but was told not to talk about it. Mr Akatsa said the vans used to transport prisoners were sub-standard, did not contain toilets and were not suitable for travelling long distances. Despite regular problems with airconditioning in the back of the vans, Mr Akatsa said there was no requirement for staff to check the airconditioning was working. He said that while he always did check, not all officers did, including one of the officers who transported Ward on that day, Graham Powell. The inquest heard that Mr Powell, who is to give evidence today, had been demoted from a supervisor to a driver before the death. One of his colleagues at the time, Lynette Corcoran-Sugars, testified that she requested not to work with Mr Powell, accusing him of breaching procedures and inappropriately using constraints on prisoners. Ms Corcoran-Sugars and Mr Akatsa said that when they transported prisoners from Laverton to Kalgoorlie, they made at least one stop and offered prisoners water, food and a toilet break. The inquest has heard that no stops were made during Ward's journey and that he was given only a 600ml bottle of water and a pie before leaving Laverton. Questions were raised about whether Ward should even have been in custody, with barrister Lachlan Carter for the Aboriginal Legal Service claiming a proper bail hearing, as defined by the act, did not take place. The inquest heard that GSL's motto was "safety first". Mr Hope questioned how this could be the case when the company allowed staff to transport prisoners in vehicles that did not have a usable spare tyre. The inquest continues today.

March 14, 2009 Sunday Mail
Former Defence Secretary John Reid faced fierce criticism yesterday as it emerged the world's largest security firm had won a huge contract from the Ministry of Defence weeks after taking him on as a consultant. Mr Reid - who ran the MoD until May 2006 before resigning from the Cabinet while Home Secretary in June 2007 - was hired by G4S three months ago for £50,000 a year to offer 'strategic advice'. This week, it was awarded a four-year contract to supply private security guards for around 200 MoD and military sites across Britain in a deal thought to be worth tens of millions of pounds. While many former ministers have taken private-sector jobs, it is unusual for such a senior Government figure and sitting MP to work for a company so closely linked to their former department. Opposition MPs last night said Mr Reid's earnings from G4S were 'totally inappropriate', while the Taxpayers' Alliance campaign group called for the rules governing employment for ex-ministers to be reviewed urgently.

March 12, 2009 ABC
A coronial inquest into the death in custody of an Aboriginal elder from the Central Desert will resume today in Kalgoorlie, in south-eastern Western Australia . Mr Ward died in Kalgoorlie hospital in January last year after being transferred in the back of a prison van from Laverton. Temperatures on the day were mid-40 degrees Celsius and the journey lasted for four hours. In Warburton earlier this week, the inquest heard the airconditioning in the back of the van was not working and that Mr Ward died of heatstroke. Mr Ward's family testified he was a hard working and respected elder. The inquiry will today hear from police officers who arrested Mr Ward for drink driving and officers from the private transport company Global Solutions Limited which transported him to Kalgoorlie.

January 22, 2009 Morning Star
DAVID Miliband said that the war on terror was an error, but some people don't regret it. Private security companies like Group 4 made a mint. Now, it wants to spread its good fortune - this month, Group 4 Security gave a £50,000 position to former Labour minister John Reid as an "adviser." Reid fits in this part-time job when he isn't too busy representing the good people of Airdrie and Shotts as their Member of Parliament. Group 4 has plenty of reasons to want access to the contact book of a former home and defence secretary - the firm now supplies the armed guards looking after British officials in Iraq and Afghanistan while locking up prisoners, asylum-seekers and "terror suspects" in Britain, so Reid is worth every one of the five million pennies that they are giving the man. Reid was once a Communist Party member, but abandoned Marxism in favour of new Labour. This is odd, because his career seems to illustrate the crudest and most determinist kind of Marxism. For years, Marxists have been grappling with the subtle and sophisticated ways in which the capitalist class dominates society, but Group 4 opted for a very unsubtle approach - the capitalists just hired Labour's representative. Reid hasn't always hawked his brawn for the money men. Back in 1992, Reid signed a House of Commons motion calling on Sir Norman Fowler to resign from the board of Group 4. The motion said that the House "regrets that the right honourable Member for Sutton Coldfield (Norman Fowler), chairman of the Conservative Party, has not seen fit to resign his directorship of another Group 4 company, Group 4 Securitas, and urges him to do so." It added: "The government should suspend all further moves to privatisation within the criminal justice system." Reid's call for Fowler to resign from Group 4 and for the government to shun the firm came after the company let a number of prisoners escape from their vans on the way to court. Whizz forward a decade and a half and Reid, having demanded that Fowler abandon Group 4, has himself taken a job with the firm. In the meantime, Conservative and Labour governments have not stopped their "privatisation of the criminal justice system," they have expanded it. Group 4 has men with truncheons in Britain and men carrying guns in Iraq. Nor has the firm become any less accident-prone. Group 4 Security prefers to be called G4S because, in ad people's language, the brand is tarnished. Group 4 was even described as a "national laughing stock" by the government's own lawyers in court in 2003 after a riot at an immigration detention centre that it ran which was later burned to the ground. Things haven't improved since. Reid himself sent the firm to new frontiers, where the firm ran new fiascos. When Reid was home secretary, the Law Lords told him that just labelling foreigners "terror suspects" didn't mean that he could lock them up without trial. Reid turned to Group 4 for help. It cobbled together something called "control orders," a house arrest for these "terror suspects" administered by Group 4 and other private firms. Control orders were simultaneously too draconian and too lax - prisoners, including vulnerable men who had been tortured in their home countries, were tagged and monitored by Group 4. Those who stuck by the rules were pushed to the edge of mental illness by the isolation of the strict house arrest. At the same time, Group 4 allowed another prisoner to simply disappear. This may have been embarrassing for the firm and for Reid, but they manfully hid their red faces and entered into a new relationship when Reid left government. Group 4 has risen thanks to the crudest economic determinism - Reid, who authorised the signing of cheques for Group 4 as a minister, ends up getting cheques from the firm. Reid is not alone. A small squad of politicians worked to get Group 4 where it is today. First, Tory chairman Fowler helped the firm get into the prisons business in the 1990s. Group 4 tightened its grip on British jails last year when it took over rival private prisons firm GSL. It bought GSL from an investment company called Englefield Capital, which employs another Labour ex-minister, former defence secretary George Robertson, as an adviser. Group 4 then broke into the international mercenary trade by buying a company called Armor Group, whose armed men guard British officials in Iraq and Afghanistan. Up until this, Armor Group's chairman had been another top politician - leading Tory MP Malcolm Rifkind. Twenty years ago, the idea that a private company would run our jails and wars would have looked like science fiction. By hiring politicians, the "security industry" made it a reality.

January 11, 2009 The Observer
John Reid, the former home secretary, has cashed in on his ministerial experience by taking a £45,000-a-year job with private security company G4S, the Observer has learnt. His appointment comes just days after a parliamentary committee warned that former ministers have been exploiting their insider knowledge "with impunity". Formed from a merger of Group 4 and Securicor, G4S is Britain's largest security firm with contracts ranging from private prisons to the armed guards defending British officials in Iraq. The appointment was disclosed by the advisory committee on business appointments, which polices former ministers' job applications. Reid has been judged free to lobby ministers and officials on behalf of the security company. The public administration committee (PAC) called last week for all lobbying activity to be registered and monitored by a tougher watchdog - claiming the industry's attempt at self-regulation had entirely failed. "We are strongly concerned that, with the rules as loosely and as variously interpreted as they currently are, former ministers in particular appear to be able to use with impunity the contacts they built up as public servants to further a private interest," said a statement from the PAC.

November 11, 2008 South Florida Business Journal
Broward County auditors are raising red flags over how county agencies kept tabs on nearly $6 million in billings by Wackenhut Corp. for security services last year. In a report to be presented to county commissioners on Wednesday, county auditors noted several problems with the way Wackenhut invoices have been processed. Specifically, the report noted that county personnel were not reviewing and validating daily entries on security logs that document hours worked by guards. The audit also found that there was no evidence that hours billed were hours actually worked. County Auditor Evan A. Lukic said the decision to review the county’s oversight of Wackenhut grew out of news reports earlier this year that alleged the Palm Beach Gardens-based security company was overbilling Miami-Dade County for services that were not performed. “We were concerned about the allegations we heard and whether we were possibly experiencing the same thing here,” he said. “We wanted to look at it from how are we controlling the contract and administering it.” At this point in the auditing process, Lukic said, there was no evidence Wackenhut engaged in any wrongdoing. However, based on the audit’s findings Lukic said his department will take a closer look at payments to “make sure that guards who we are paying for are present.” In June 2005, Broward County entered into a three-year agreement with Wackenhut to provide security services. Payments for fiscal years 2005, 2006 and 2007 totaled more than $14.8 million. In fiscal 2007, Broward County’s Aviation Department topped the list with $2.1 million in security services billings by Wackenhut. The county’s facilities maintenance division paid out $1.66 million to Wackenhut, and the county’s library division was billed nearly $633,000. The report found that during a one-week period, the libraries division paid 233 hours of overtime for security guards and found no evidence that Wackenhut provided the required written notification and payroll documentation to substantiate the overtime payments. When queried by the South Florida Business Journal about the auditor's findings, Wackenhut issued the following statement: "We've worked closely with facilities management through the audit department to insure compliance and to improve our processes." Questions also have been raised about matching guard qualifications to pay rates. In some instances, the audit raised concerns about guards with lesser qualifications billing at a higher rate, resulting in overcharges. In an Aug. 22 letter, Broward’s director of the facilities maintenance division advised Wackenhut President Drew Levine that he would now require the company to provide documentation that links guards’ qualifications with their job classifications. In the meantime, Lukic is asking the Broward County Commission to direct the county administrator to come up with procedures to ensure that billings are validated, that the guards’ qualifications match their job descriptions and that overtime charges are substantiated. In May, a Miami-Dade County audit found that Wackenhut overbilled the county by as much as $6 million over three years for services it did not provide to Miami-Dade Transit, and then falsified records to cover up the over charges. In its response to that audit, which Wackenhut published on its Web site, the company said it has cooperated with the county’s investigation, but “continues to question the audit methodology.” Wackenhut said a lawsuit by a former guard, who accused the company of padding its bills, has caused the increased scrutiny. “It is Wackenhut’s belief that county entities … have been placed under undue pressure and influence by unsubstantiated allegations in this ongoing disputed litigation,” it stated. Miami-Dade continues to review Wackenhut’s response to determine what actions should be taken, county spokeswoman Suzy Trutie said.

June 18, 2008 NBC6
Miami-Dade County said it is poised to make good on its promise to fire Wackenhut Security from its massive contract on Metrorail trains unless it repays taxpayers millions of dollars. NBC6 has obtained internal county memos that confirm that Miami-Dade County is asking other security firms to submit bids to replace Wackenhut on Metrorail trains and other facilities. The county said Wackenhut's only hope of not getting fired is if it returns up to $6 million in taxpayer dollars. The Metrorail and Metromover systems are guarded by Wackenhut Security in a lucrative no-bid contract. The county said it is getting ready to replace Wackenhut, cutting short the existing contract unless Wackenhut makes amends. "It's very troubling," said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez. In May, Alvarez threatened to fire Wackenhut. On Tuesday, it was clear that was no idle threat. "We are prepared to cancel all contracts with the Wackenhut corporation and demand that we get the money that's owed to us," Alvarez said. The county said Wackenhut scheduled guards to work partial shifts while billing taxpayers for a full shift and sometimes billing taxpayers for a post that had no guards at all, NBC6's Jeff Burnside reported. The allegations were the same as those contained in an NBC6 investigation called "A Question Of Security." The amount in question is up to $6 million. An independent audit claimed it was much more. One problem is that any company that replaces Wackenhut might need to hire some of Wackenhut's guards because of the size of the contract. In an internal memo, Wackenhut called that, "underhanded … tactics by third-party instigators." A labor union urged county commissioners Tuesday to improve working conditions in any new contract. Wackenhut had no response on Tuesday, Burnside reported. Previously, the company has disputed the allegations.

May 9, 2008 Miami-Herald
The Wackenhut Corp. overbilled Miami-Dade County as much as $6 million over three years for phantom security guards at county transit stations, according to a long-awaited audit released Thursday. County auditor Cathy Jackson -- who reviewed a sample of the bills -- found that Wackenhut, one of the country's largest security firms, routinely charged the county for empty guard posts at Metrorail stations and along bus routes, and relied on inaccurate and falsified records to try to cover up the overbilling. Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez has given Wackenhut 90 days to repay the county or rebut the audit findings or he will cancel the company's no-bid contract, along with a separate Wackenhut contract for guards at a juvenile detention center. Jackson said Wackenhut should also pay the county an additional $233,000 for violating the terms of its contract. Wackenhut's billing is also being examined by public-corruption detectives with the Miami-Dade Police Department. 'There is no disputing that [Miami-Dade Transit] was billed for hours not worked by Wackenhut security officers, which is a very serious offense,'' County Manager George Burgess wrote in a memo to Alvarez. Wackenhut, however, does dispute the audit. The company says Jackson used unreliable records to determine that posts were uncovered, and ignored other records that could prove guards were on duty. FIGURES DISPUTED -- While Wackenhut says it will reimburse the county for any ''substantiated billing errors,'' the company says Jackson's conclusion of $6 million in overbilling from 2002 to 2005 is an exaggerated estimate based on a small sample. ''If you start with a false premise, you end up with a false conclusion,'' said Bruce Rubin, a company spokesman. ``We respectfully but forcefully disagree with the auditor's methodology.'' Jackson based her estimate on a review of 505 billing records -- only .25 percent of the bills submitted in the three years studied -- which found $14,722 in questionable charges. She also found $83,665 in suspicious charges, but these were not included in her sample for estimation purposes. Wackenhut has been providing security for Miami-Dade Transit since 1989, and the contract has been awarded without bidding since 1994. The current contract, which pays Wackenhut as much as $17 million a year, is set to expire in November 2009. The security company, based in Palm Beach Gardens, has also spent the past three years fending off an unusual lawsuit brought by a former guard at the county's Juvenile Assessment Center, who accused her former employer of padding its bill to the county. The former guard's attorney, H. Mark Vieth, has said he believes the overbilling could be as much as $3.6 million a year. He has compiled sworn statements from ex-guards who said they struggled to fill unmanned posts, submitted false records and received pay for hours they didn't work. Jackson ''found exactly what we've been telling the county for a while now,'' Vieth said. ''I could have practically written that report for her. The only difference, really, is that we're auditing 100 percent of the bills and she's found this much fraud'' based on a far smaller sample. Wackenhut has denied wrongdoing in the suit and has challenged Vieth to provide proof of specific instances of overbilling. Vieth has enlisted a team of investigators and bookkeepers to sort through Wackenhut bills, sign-in sheets, log books and other records to prove his case, which is not yet scheduled for trial. If he wins the case -- brought under the county's False Claims Act -- his client will receive 25 percent of any damages and the county will receive 75 percent. REFUSED TO TESTIFY -- Yet the lawsuit has put Vieth at odds with the county. Last month he sought a contempt of court order against Jackson after she refused to testify about the audit before it was completed. Vieth plans to call her again for a deposition next week. The audit was costly to Wackenhut even before its release. The company had been selected by county staffers to win another $4.8 million county security contract -- before county commissioners, worried about the audit findings, decided Tuesday to scrap the bids and start over. In her audit, Jackson said Wackenhut constantly shifted guards around to cover unguarded posts, pulling in supervisors or patrols from the bus routes, but the county was billed as though all these jobs were filled. In some cases, log books at Metrorail stations contained no notes to prove a guard was there, the audit found. In other cases, the logs and other records showed guards in two different locations at the same time. Records showed that one armed guard was on duty for 34 ½ hours in a row -- violating a rule capping guards at 13 ½ hours in a 24-hour period and ''leaving in question the ability of armed employees to remain alert and responsive,'' the audit said. Wackenhut officials said the log books were never intended to be used for timekeeping, and said the absence of notes in the books do not prove a guard wasn't on duty.

May 2, 2008 Edinburgh Evening News
TWO security guards who stole £10,000 of bank notes while on a collection run have been jailed for six months. Group 4 Security workers Gary Docherty, 41, and Hugh Drummond, 47, each helped themselves to a £5000 bundle of £20 notes when a bag burst in their van. Staff at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Edinburgh immediately realised there was something wrong when the pair delivered a case which should have contained £50,000 with only £40,000 in it. Police were called in after they found notes in Drummond's rucksack and the officers recovered the rest from Docherty. They previously pleaded guilty to stealing £10,000 on March 28 this year – Docherty's birthday – and were sentenced today. The pair had been collecting cash in plastic cases from branches of the bank when one of the cases burst at Bruntsfield Place. They continued with their run, arriving at the RBS cash collection centre in The Gyle, where the theft was discovered. Solicitor Andy Gilbertson said Docherty, of Clermiston Drive, had worked for the firm for 14 years before he carried out the "spontaneous" crime and had lost his job as a result. He said Docherty had been suffering stress. "It wasn't a matter of if this crime would be detected but a matter of when," Mr Gilbertson added, appealing for a community service order instead of custody. Solicitor Nigel Bruce said Drummond, of Victoria Road, Harthill, Lanarkshire, had spent seven years with the firm, before the "moment of madness".

April 12, 2008 Palm Beach Post
Sen. Jeff Atwater has hired an aide who will get on-the-job training before he becomes Senate president chief of staff, and Atwater's campaign opponent is criticizing the expenditure. Robert "Budd" Kneip is a Palm Beach Gardens businessman with no legislative experience. He founded The Oasis Group, an outsourcing division of Wackenhut Corp. Kneip, who is earning $7,000 a month, needed to come on board early to get the feel of how the legislature runs and how government budgets are developed and negotiated before his new boss officially takes over, Atwater said. Normally the chief of staff is appointed after the legislative leader assumes his role in the fall. Atwater is being challenged for reelection in November by Democrat Skip Campbell, a trial lawyer who formerly served in the Senate alongside Atwater. Campbell criticized Kneip's salary at a time when lawmakers are slashing about $5 billion from the state budget because of plummeting tax collections. "How can we be hiring somebody for on the job training at 7K a month when we're cutting education, food for the poor, Medicaid treatment for the mentally ill? This is one of the most hypocritical actions I've seen in government," Campbell said. Kneip has sat on the advisory boards for Florida Atlantic University and the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, and served as chairman of the Palm Beach County Task Force on Business Development. In the latter role, he successfully pushed a 2004 referendum for a half-penny sales tax hike to pay for building schools to comply with the constitutional amendment limiting class sizes. Kneip's know-how at implementing state policy at the local level and business acumen are why he's right for the job, said Atwater, a North Palm Beach Republican. "He doesn't have the experience in this process," Atwater said. "To have him be able to watch how this works is going to help me as we think about structure, the design, the flow and process of work."

March 13, 2008 The Age
A NIGERIAN man who twice resorted to drinking his urine during a nightmarish seven-hour transfer to Baxter detention centre without food or water will be given $20,000 compensation. Four others who endured the trip in the back of the van with him will also be compensated after the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found they had been subjected to "degrading treatment". The five detainees, whose plight was revealed in The Age, were taken from Maribyrnong in Melbourne to Baxter on September 17, 2004 by guards from GSL, the company that runs Australia's detention centres. A report by commission president John von Doussa found the van did not stop for any breaks in the seven hours from Melbourne to Mildura, breaching the detainees' human rights. The report said the drivers ignored signs that the detainees needed toilet stops, having watched them urinate on closed-circuit camera, and disregarded their banging on the walls. Nigerian man Austin Okoye, 26, suffered the "additional indignity" of twice drinking his urine to relieve his "excessive thirst", the report said. GSL guards were also accused of using excessive force in removing 53-year-old Vietnamese detainee Huong Hai Nguyen from his dormitory at Maribyrnong for the trip. The Immigration Department initially denied Mr Nguyen's allegations. But the department referred the case to the commission after receiving a second complaint from Mr Okoye. In July 2005, Immigration Department secretary Andrew Metcalfe said GSL would be fined $500,000 after the independent report substantiated most of the allegations. Yesterday Mr Metcalfe said GSL would also pay the compensation. "These people were mistreated and they deserve to be compensated," he said. The report said Mr Okoye and Mr Nguyen should get $20,000 each, and the others $15,000. GSL spokesman Tim Hall said the company did not accept the claims about Mr Okoye being forced to drink his urine. But he said GSL endorsed the rest of the report and the Commonwealth would be fully indemnified. The report urged the Government to locate the victims as soon as possible (three of them, including Mr Nguyen and Mr Okoye, have been deported) to provide them with their compensation and a formal apology.

February 22, 2008 The Green Left
A February 22 meeting between Western Australian prisons minister Margaret Quirk, Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Dennis Eggington and WA Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chairperson Marc Newhouse resulted in some ministerial promises of reforms following the the death in custody of an Aboriginal elder on January 27. The elder, from the desert town of Warburton, died after collapsing in the back of a prison van while being transported for four hours in 43oC heat to a jail in the outback city of Kalgoorlie. He had been arrested on January 26 for alleged drink-driving while visiting relatives in the remote town of Laverton, 352 kilometres north of Kalgoorie. The van was driven and staffed by employees of Global Solutions Ltd, an Anglo-French prison management company, which the WA government has contracted to transport prisoners. Professor Richard Harding, the WA government’s inspector of custodial services, told the news media on January 29 that he was not surprised at the Warburton elder’s death, given the state of the prisoner transport fleet. He said that the “government-owned vans are continually breaking down, leaving prisoners stranded in searingly hot conditions in remote areas”. Among other things, Quirk has agreed to overhaul procedures followed when a prisoner is transported. New procedures, to be in place by March 14, will include a health assessment and provision of water and food.

February 4, 2008 News.com.AU
THE contractor that transported an Aboriginal leader who died in custody last weekend has previously been criticised for the treatment of detainees. Government contractor Global Solutions Limited has been accused of the humiliation and sensory deprivation of detainees, who were forced to urinate in their cramped compartments, inadequate provision of food and fluids and the prank strip search of a prisoner. The death of Ian Ward in the sealed compartment of a "bloody hot" van last Sunday as the outside temperature climbed to 43C has prompted an unprecedented attack on the Carpenter Government by the Inspector of Custodial Services, who said the state's chronically deficient prisoner transport system would probably not be tolerated if 95 per cent of prisoners were white, instead of up to 95 per cent of them being Aboriginal. Anger is growing in the desert community of Warburton in WA's Ngaanyatjarra lands over the death of Mr Ward, who collapsed in what may have been an unairconditioned or inadequately airconditioned rear compartment while being transported 352km by GSL. The van transporting Mr Ward left the town of Laverton about midday for Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison to be remanded in custody on a drink-driving charge when he vomited on himself and fell unconscious. His body was wheeled into Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital at 4.30pm on Sunday after the two GSL guards in the van found he had collapsed in the back. Witness Jodie Aurisch said a female GSL guard told an emergency department doctor: "It is bloody hot in the back of the van". GSL and its $70 million prison transport contract with the Carpenter Government are likely to be examined as part of a coronial inquest into Mr Ward's death in custody. It will not be the first time the company faces scrutiny. In 2005, GSL was fined almost $500,000 over mistreatment of immigration detainees. In 2006, GSL was fined a reported $200,000 after guards at Port Phillip Prison in Victoria jokingly strip searched a prisoner as part of a prank called "Sausagegate". A federal government report into GSL's transfer of five detainees from Maribyrnong Detention Centre in Melbourne to Baxter Immigration Facility in South Australia over two days in 2004 found the officers involved had not been adequately trained and treated the detainees inhumanely. In his report into the incident for the Howard government, investigator Keith Hamburger found the van used was unsafe and inhumane and that the detainees had been denied access to toilet facilities, forcing them to urinate in their compartments. The officers were also found to have ignored appeals for assistance from detainees in distress. Melbourne legal advocate Chandarev Singh said GSL had shown "a pattern of lethal indifference". GSL's director of public affairs, Tim Hall, said Mr Singh's "inaccurate and unpleasant personal views" did not warrant comment.

February 1, 2008 The Western Australian
Police yesterday refused to reveal the results of a post-mortem examination on the body of an Aboriginal elder who died after he collapsed in custody while being taken to Kalgoorlie in the back of a van. It is understood police received the results yesterday. Warburton Aboriginal elder Ian Ward collapsed in the back of a Global Solutions Limited van on Sunday after a four-hour trip from Laverton to Kalgoorlie and died a short time later at Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital. The 46-year-old, who was being transferred to face a charge of drinkdriving, was found unconscious in the back of the van in the middle of the afternoon when temperatures outside exceeded 40 degrees. It is understood the van’s air-conditioning broke down the previous week and had to be replaced. The van is part of a fleet owned by the State Government but managed by the private prison management company. The State Government’s controversial deal with Global Solutions Limited, the group responsible for prisoner transport, could be tested, depending on the outcome of the investigation into Mr Ward’s death. Opposition Leader Troy Buswell said the death in custody raised serious concerns over the State Government’s “gifting” of the contract to GSL. GSL was controversially awarded the $70 million prisoner transport, court custody and security services contract last year when the company bought out the previous contractor Australian Integrated Management Service. Letters obtained under Freedom of Information laws revealed the Inspector for Custodial Services, Richard Harding, told Corrective Services Minister Margaret Quirk in April that the plan for GSL to take over the contract was unwise and risky. Despite his advice, Cabinet not only approved the takeover of the AIMS contract by GSL last July, but days later it extended the deal by three years without any public tender process. “Depending on the outcome of the investigation by police and the coroner, the State Government needs to be examining every aspect of the contract and take action against GSL if and when it is appropriate,” Mr Buswell said. Ms Quirk said issues surrounding Mr Ward’s death, including the contract with GSL, was a matter for the police investigation and the coronial inquest and it was not appropriate to speculate.

January 31, 2008 News.Com.AU
PRISONER transport contractors for the WA government were warned about the "parlous state" of their fleet well before an Aboriginal elder died in a prison van. Ian Ward, 46, of Warburton in the Goldfields, died during a Global Solutions Ltd transfer from Laverton to Kalgoorlie in hot conditions on January 27. It is unclear if the airconditioning was off, or faulty. Drivers of the van took Mr Ward, who had been picked up for drink driving on Australia Day, to Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital after they found him collapsed. He died a short time later. WA Custodial Services Inspector Richard Harding wrote to GSL last year outlining six concerns, including 'GSL's capacity to cope with the logistical challenge of running a transport service across such huge distances as are involved with Western Australia''. "The parlous state'' of the government-owned fleet upon which GSL would have to rely was among Mr Harding's concerns. GSL is contracted by the WA government to provide prisoner transport services and by the federal government to run immigration detention camps and transport immigration detainees and prisoners. Project SafeCom spokesman Jack Smit said there had been other transportation issues under the watch of GSL, formerly US-owned but bought last month by European security consortium Group 4 Securitas. "This is an ongoing issue partly because it's an out-of-Australia company ... you no longer have people employed who are directly responsible, by contract, to the minister,'' Mr Smit said. A 2005 federal government inquiry found GSL failed to provide medical assessments and treatments for injured detainees who were being transferred to the Baxter detention centre in South Australia from Maribyrnong in 2004. The probe found the van used to transport detainees was "unsafe and inhumane'' with airconditioning design faults. The five were sent an apology and compensated by the immigration department. WA major crime squad detectives are investigating the latest death amid calls from human rights groups for an independent investigation. WA Deaths in Custody watch committee spokesman Marc Newhouse said Mr Ward's death should not have happened. "Clearly the government has already been warned about the state of that fleet, which is government-owned,'' Mr Newhouse said.

January 22, 2008 St Petersburg Times
If you’re guarding a nuclear power plant, your gun better work. That’s the message federal regulators sent Tuesday to Florida Power & Light. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a $208,000 fine for four security violations at the utility’s Turkey Point nuclear plant, including security workers who deliberately broke the firing pins on their weapons. The violations occurred in 2004 and 2005, according to the commission. The commission, a federal agency that oversees the safety of the U.S. nuclear industry, also faulted the Juno Beach utility for failing to promptly report the violations. Three of the four employees involved worked for Wackenhut, and none of the four work at the plant now, said FP&L spokeswoman April Schilpp. Wackenhut still provides security, and the utility has improved training, she said. The utility has 30 days to appeal the fine, but has no plans to, she said. “The NRC confirms that at no time was plant security compromised,” Schilpp said. “That’s the important thing.”

January 9, 2008 NBC TV6
The CEO of Wackenhut Security, a South Florida company that has been surrounded by controversy, is stepping down. A representative with the company declined to say why Gary Sanders made the decision to quit pending a formal announcement on Wednesday. The change at the top came at a time when Wackenhut Security was facing mounting criticism in various cities, including some in South Florida where its Miami-Dade County operation is the target of a criminal probe. The county audit, which was detailed in an NBC 6 investigation of Wackenhut billing practices, is examining whether Wackenhut overcharged taxpayers millions of dollars. Sanders had been with Wackenhut for more than 25 years.

December 18, 2007 Yahoo Business Wire
Cognetas, an independent mid-market pan-European private equity firm specialising in complex deals, today announces the sale of Global Solutions (GSL) for £355 million to G4S. The sale, subject to EU merger clearance and South African competition commission clearance, is expected to complete in 2008. GSL is a leading provider of outsourced support services to public authorities and corporate organisations worldwide. Services are typically provided under long-term contracts (5 to 30 years) either directly to the end customer or through joint ventures and Public Private Partnerships with government and corporates. GSL has operations in the UK, South Africa and Australia. Its service offering covers three areas: Custodial services, including prison management, escorting, immigration, custody and training; Public Services, for example healthcare, education and Local Authority services; and Business services, comprising utilities, office accommodation and other managed services. Cognetas backed the original MBO of GSL in 2004 in a £207 million (€309 million) transaction. At the time, Cognetas underwrote equity and debt to facilitate certainty for the vendor with an initial commitment of £105 million (€158 million) on behalf of Cognetas Fund I. This was reduced within two months to £54 million (€81 million) by introducing senior debt. The balance of the funding was provided by Englefield Capital on behalf of the Englefield Funds. Since then Cognetas has supported management in the implementation of a growth plan that has seen revenues increase from £291 million in 2004 to over £400 million in 2007 through organic growth, in fill acquisition and expansion of services in its sectors over three continents with the number of staff employed increasing by over 25% to more than 9,500. Nigel McConnell, Managing Partner of Cognetas commented: “We are delighted to be associated with the success of GSL over the past three years and we are pleased to see that the dynamic management team has built the business into a worldwide quality provider of outsourced services. We leave the business on extremely sound and robust grounds which will help sustain its continued growth. I am confident that being part of a larger global business like G4S will take this business forward to a new level and I wish them well”.

December 10, 2007 NBC TV6
Miami-Dade and federal investigators raided the headquarters Friday night of one of the county's largest government contractors. NBC 6 was the first to report in May that Wackenhut Security is under a criminal investigation for overbilling taxpayers millions of dollars, money for work on transit and the downtown juvenile center. NBC 6 camera's filmed public corruption investigators and police removing boxes filled with documents from Wackenhut's Miami-Dade headquarters on Blue Lagoon Drive. Investigators were there for several hours and were being assisted by top Wackenhut executives. Wackenhut has repeatedly declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that the company was cooperating with authorities. "The Wackenhut Corporation ('Wackenhut') continues to cooperate with Miami-Dade County ('MDC'), and voluntarily provided MDC additional records and documents yesterday to assist and facilitate MDC’s investigation and audit of Wackenhut’s performance under its security contract with the Miami Dade Transit Authority," said Drew Levine, president of the Security Services Division. "Wackenhut is proud of its service and performance under its contracts with Miami-Dade County and is very confident that after a thorough investigation the County will conclude that Wackenhut acted properly and performed its responsibilities under the contract in a highly professional and responsible manner." The company has previously denied overbilling taxpayers. Miami-Dade County is nearing completion of an audit of Wackenhut's billing practices. The preliminary audit found serious discrepancies.

November 29, 2007 The Telegraph
Group4Securicor is in talks to buy Global Solutions, a company it used to own, for around £350m. Earlier this year, private equity firm Cognetas appointed investment bank UBS to carry out a strategic review of Global Solutions, which runs a number of Britain's prisons and detention centres. However, the credit crunch forced Cognetas to put the review of Global Solutions on hold. Since then, the company has received a number of approaches, including one from Group4Securicor. Cognetas bought Global Solutions, which also manages hospitals, schools and tourist offices, from Danish security firm Group 4 Falk for about £200m three years ago. Group4Securicor is now understood to be carrying out due diligence on the business. However, it is not the only company bidding. Sources said US group GEO and several private equity firms have also made approaches for the company. Global Solutions has previously come under the spotlight for the way it runs its prisons and detention centres, following the Government's privatisation of the sector. Earlier this year, there was a Panorama investigation by an undercover BBC reporter, who worked as a custody officer, in one of Global Solutions' prisons at Rye Hill. None of the parties involved would comment.

November 20, 2007 This Is Hampshire
A SECURITY firm employee who was heavily in debt stole £25,000 following an extraordinary blunder by two colleagues, a court heard. The cash had been collected from the London Road branch of Nat West in Southampton - and left overnight at the depot. The following day, Paul Dean spotted the bag and stole it, dropping it off at home before continuing with his deliveries. Police carried out a major investigation during which Dean and a co-driver were suspended from their jobs with Group 4 Securicor. Seven months after the theft last November, they executed a warrant at Dean's home and recovered more than £10,000. Some of the proceeds had been spent on a large slim line television, Mr Anderson added. Southampton Crown Court heard the two men who had left the cash behind were fired and Dean's colleague, though exonerated, had resigned. Dean, 51, of Maclean Road, Bournemouth, admitted theft and was jailed for 12 months. In mitigation, Christopher Gair said Dean lost his wife in a road accident in 1994 and had debts of £24,000. A month before the theft, he had been given two county court judgments against him. "In a moment of madness he took advantage of the money left there," said Mr Gair.

November 1, 2007 This Is Leicestershire
An "inside man" involved in a plot to steal £1 million from a Securicor van has been jailed for four years. Ex-soldier Neil Colbourne, from Hinckley, worked for the firm in the lead-up to the robbery bid, which would have involved kidnapping a driver's wife. He was among six gang members who were jailed in connection with the case. A court heard how the plan involved two kidnappers seizing a driver's wife at her home in Swanscombe, Kent, and holding her hostage while others raided her husband's security van at gunpoint. But the plan to target a depot in Dartford, Kent, was foiled when a seventh member of the gang, brothel keeper Vincent Calleja, turned himself in to police. Police swooped on the gang's headquarters the night before the heist last June and found two guns and ammunition, balaclavas, and cable ties. They also found keys to a stolen Renault Espace. Four of the men were found guilty on June 29 of conspiracy to rob and were sentenced on Monday at Guildford Crown Court. Ashley O'Driscoll (21), from Eaton Grove, in Mitcham, Surrey, Billy French (22), from Steers Mead, Mitcham, and Michael Cloherty (41), of no fixed address, were each sentenced to 15 years. The father of Billy French, unemployed Clive Tedder (42), from Spencer Roady, Mitcham, received 18 years. Colbourne, now 34, who had an address in Hinckley and Orpington, Kent, had worked as a guard for Group 4 Securicor and was sentenced to four years, while 33-year-old Wayne McKenna-Bruce, from Chislehurst, Kent, was sentenced to three years in prison. The pair's conspiracy to steal pleas were accepted after a court heard they had not known about the full scale of the plot. The seventh member, Vincent Calleja (45), from Tadworth, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to rob and seven unrelated human trafficking and prostitution charges, and is to be sentenced.

November 1, 2007 PR News
The Wackenhut Corporation ("Wackenhut" or "the Company") today filed a civil action against the Service Employees International Union ("SEIU" or "the Union"). The lawsuit is in response to the SEIU's malicious, four-year, international corporate campaign to force Wackenhut to recognize the Union as the employees' bargaining representative while denying the employees their federal rights to free choice and a secret ballot election. The SEIU's top-down, wholesale, organizing attack also would compromise the quality of Wackenhut's services by forcing the Company to deal with a union that also represents workers other than guards which federal law specifically prohibits as an appropriate unit for representation and bargaining. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit alleges violations of the federal Racketeering Influenced Corporations Act, 18 U.S.C. section 1961 et seq., and seeks injunctive relief, treble compensatory damages and costs.

September 14, 2007 BBC
A security worker has been jailed for stealing almost £130,000 in coins from parking meters on Teesside. Bryn Lynas, 47, of Ormesby, Middlesbrough, was employed to empty the machines in Redcar and Cleveland. At Teesside Crown Court, the former Group 4 Securicor Cash Services employee pleaded guilty to the theft of £128,301 from January 2004 to May 2006. Jailing him for 21 months, Judge Tony Briggs told Lynas he had grossly abused a position of trust. Group 4 was contracted by Redcar and Cleveland Council to empty parking meters. An audit revealed tens of thousands of pounds was missing and when Lynas was arrested last year he told police: "I've got a bag full of money on my back seat." He was interviewed and admitted taking cash from the machines, but said he had been doing it for only 10 months The court was shown footage from a camera covertly placed by police in Lynas' van, in which he repeatedly attempts to prise open cash boxes with a screwdriver. He also admitted money laundering between June 2004 and last May, but disputed stealing £40,000 of the total, claiming that he was not employed on some of the days stated in the case. But Judge Briggs said "the loss of at least £80,000-£90,000" and "dishonesty of this magnitude" required a significant sentence.

September 14, 2007 24 Dash
A security worker who stole nearly £130,000 in coins from parking meters he was employed to empty is facing jail. Bryn Lynas, 47, plundered the machines in Cleveland for two years before his bungled get-rich-quick scheme was uncovered by his bosses. When Lynas was arrested in May last year, after an audit revealed tens of thousands of pounds were missing, he told police: "I\'ve got a bag full of money on my back seat." Officers searched his vehicle and found a bag containing more than £500 stuffed in the footwell of the Renault Megane. Lynas was interviewed and admitted taking cash from the machines, but said he had been doing it for only 10 months. Police inquiries revealed that his partner, Susan Shaw, also 47, had received £23,655 in her bank account from Lynas. She was arrested for a money laundering offence, but had the charges dropped by prosecutors at Teesside Crown Court in August. Lynas, of Ormesby, Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court on August 8 to the theft of £128,301 between January 2004 and May last year, and money laundering between June 2004 and last May. His case was adjourned until today for reports. Lynas was employed by Group 4 Securicor Cash Services, which was contracted by the borough council to empty parking meters. Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council said it was pleased Lynas had been brought to justice but added the cash collecting contract was re-tendered last year and given to a different company.

September 6, 2007 News Shopper
A FORMER soldier has been jailed for four years for his part in a plot to steal more than £1m from security vans - including his own. Neil Colbourne had worked for Securicor for two years when he was the "victim" of an armed robbery outside the HSBC bank in Sydenham. But he was an accomplice and slipped the money box containing £25,000 out of the back of his van to a waiting vehicle before calling the police claiming he had been robbed. Prosecutor Maria Kariaskos told Guildford Crown Court the 33-year-old later changed his story, saying there was no gun involved. He also failed to pick out the real "robbers" in an identification parade. Officers arrested him after studying CCTV footage of the incident on May 16 last year. He could be seen waiting for a minute-and-a-half until the vehicle being used by the "robbers" arrived. Colbourne, of Station Square, Petts Wood, admitted a charge of conspiracy to steal. He also pleaded guilty to another count of conspiracy to steal for helping a gang to plot a £1m theft from another van. The cash handler and his old Army friend Wayne McKenna-Bruce, aged 33, gave the gang the van driver's name and the registration numbers of his car and of two Securicor vehicles. This enabled them to follow their intended target to his house and plan their attack. McKenna-Bruce, from Sevenoaks, pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to steal and was sentenced to three years in jail. James Scobie, representing McKenna-Bruce, said the two defendants thought the driver in the second incident was in on the plot and violence would not be threatened or used.

August 26, 2007 Sunday Mail
A SECURITY van driver who claimed he was robbed by gunmen wearing fake Mexican moustaches has admitted lying to steal more than £300,000. Ian Watt, 44, made up the far-fetched tale about how his Group 4 van was robbed at gunpoint because he was desperate for cash. Watt even went to the trouble of driving himself to a forest outside Edinburgh and bound his own hands to make it look as if he had been assaulted and robbed. Police issued an appeal for witnesses through TV and newspapers and quizzed 500 drivers close to where the alleged robbery was meant to have happened. But they later found CCTV footage of Watt sitting in his vehicle at a time he said he was being beaten, bound and blindfolded by the desperado gang. Then they checked the tracking system on his van and found it did not match his story. Detectives confronted the ex-soldier, who admitted he had buried the load in a nearby wood. Last week he was jailed for 16 months for stealing £271,963.94 in cash, £41,928.72 in cheques and £236.61 in euros. He also confessed to wasting police time. Watt claimed he took the money to help bail out his new girlfriend, who was going through an expensive divorce. A police insider said: "This is one of the most bizarre cases we have ever dealt with. "The guy went to extreme measures to look convincing and on the face of it this was a very serious robbery. "The guys working on the case were incredulous when the truth emerged." Watt had been working for Group 4 security for more than 20 years when he faked the robbery in May.

August 24, 2007 Narco Sphere
Another industry has been privatized in the United States by the Bush administration. This time it is the transportation of migrants for deportation. The Wackenhut Corporation, whose buses wait along the border to be filled with migrants for deportation, is actually owned by a Danish Corporation, Group 4/Securicor. It is known as G4S. Some border residents are concerned that a foreign-owned corporation, and not a U.S.-owned corporation, is handling security and deportations at the border and profiting from it. Wackenhut/G4S took over these duties from the U.S. Border Patrol. The executive director of the watchdog group Private Corrections Institute, Ken Kopczynski, wrote to the Censored Blog: "Great piece on the Minutemen and immigration but Wackenhut is not connected to GEO Group. Group 4 bought out Wackenhut Corporation a number of years ago and sold off the corrections unit to George Zoley and friends. Part of the agreement was that they could no longer use the name Wackenhut which currently is a subsidiary of Group 4/Securicor. Hope this helps and keep at 'em, Sincerely, Ken Kopczynski, executive director, Private Corrections Institute. Imprisoning migrants -- George Zoley is chairman of GEO Group, Inc., which operates privatized prisons across the nation, including prisons in Florence, Arizona. Building prisons for immigrants has been profitable for the GEO Group. In 2007, Geo Group won contracts for a prison in Eagle, Pass, Texas; an immigration detention facility in Jena, La. and a detention facility for U.S. Marshals service in Laredo, Tex., according to its news releases. Headquarted in Boca Raton, Fla., GEO Group, announced in January that it received a new U.S., 10-year contract, for the detention of 2,407 "criminal aliens" at the Reeves County Detention Complex in Texas. GEO took over the county's contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Reeves County is located in southwest Texas, with its county seat at Pecos. GEO said it believes that the facility is the largest privately-operated prison in the world. In Taylor, Texas, another for-profit company, Corrections Corporation of America, imprisons migrant and refugee children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center. Recently, a prison guard exposed maggots in the food there.

March 23, 2007 The Telegraph
Ministers have been forced to act after receiving disturbing evidence of equipment failures and doctored record-keeping within Group 4 Securicor Justice Services, which operates 60 per cent of tags for offenders released early under the Home Detention Curfew scheme. A 130-page dossier obtained by a BBC journalist, who worked undercover for five months in the security company's Nottingham operations centre, includes the following allegations: A manager secretly taped saying that three paedophiles were not being monitored. A prisoner incorrectly returned to jail for seven weeks because of a blunder by the security company. A violent offender breached his bail conditions by going into a pub 10 minutes after removing his tag the night before his court appearance. An employee mocked Victor Bates, a campaigner against tagging whose wife Marian was shot dead in their jewellery shop after the gunman's accomplice had ripped off his tag. A prisoner convicted of indecent assault on home leave was unmonitored for several days because his tagging equipment failed. The revelations will further undermine confidence in tagging after figures revealed that inmates let out under the system committed more than 1,000 violent crimes including four manslaughters, one murder, 56 woundings and more than 700 assaults since it was introduced in 1999. The investigation also discovered evidence of staff fabricating records to save money. G4S is paid around £45 million a year by the Home Office to administer the curfew system. After being confronted with the evidence G4S, which has admitted there was faulty equipment, has been forced to apologise and has suspended five employees in Nottingham. A spokesman for the Home Office said: "Public protection is the Government's first priority. The findings of this programme are of concern. We are reviewing the contract and will be asking G4S urgent questions to ensure that these allegations are thoroughly investigated and issues arising are addressed." The investigation by a team from BBC Inside Out East Midlands disclosed that the monitoring boxes in tagged offenders homes, which relay information about their movements, routinely broke down. One factor in the failure of the system could be that G4S, which has admitted there was a batch of faulty equipment in Nottingham, uses the mobile telephone network technology rather than fixed lines. Steve Green, the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, said the Home Office had to establish whether the Nottingham problems were nationwide. "I want to urgently know if is this a Nottingham problem or a G4S problem. If it is a G4S problem and this is the way company is run then that puts a huge responsibility on the Home Office to tackle and address because that is not acceptable," he said. Ian Ridgely, chief operations officer at G4S, said: "We believe in a small number of cases that we may not have been monitoring to the level that we would expect to, we apologise for that, we accept that. From that point of view we recognise that the Home Office requires us to work to a very high standard and of course we are sorry that in some minor number of instances, we may not have operated to those standards."

February 20, 2007 Great Yarmouth Mercury
An opportunist thief stole a Securicor van containing more than £35,000 after a guard left the keys in the ignition and the engine running, a court heard yesterday. The Securicor guard had just collected the cash from Norwich city centre car parks leaving his security van unlocked, when Martin Chapman, 31, saw his chance and stole the van containing the cash, Norwich Crown Court heard. Duncan O'Donnell, prosecuting, said the van was later found abandoned at Swanton Road travellers site in Norwich and Chapman was later arrested and £26,000 of the cash was recovered. However Mr O'Donnell said the security guard responsible for leaving the van unattended had since lost his job. Chapman, of Rosedale Gardens, Belton, near Yarmouth, admitted taking a Securicor van and stealing £9,239.50 on October 18. He was given a 12-month jail sentence suspended for a year and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid work. Guy Ayers, mitigating, said it was an unusual set of circumstances. “It was purely opportunistic. He saw the van left in this way and thought it was careless and took advantage of that particular driver's way of working.” He said Chapman was genuinely sorry that the guard had lost his job. Chapman who was of previous good character was unlikely to re-offending, Mr Ayers added.

August 12, 2006 Daily Telegraph
INDIA'S biggest private airline Jet Airways would suspend a British employee arrested in London over an alleged plot to blow up US airliners, it said today. "(Asmin) Tariq is being suspended pending a full investigation, having not reported for duty for the past couple of days," an airline statement said. Tariq, a Jet security employee, was among 24 people arrested in Britain earlier this week over the alleged plot to use suicide bombers with explosives to blow US airliners out of the sky. One person was later freed. Jet said Tariq, who holds a British passport, was transferred to Jet in March from global security group G4S - previously called Securicor - after the airline ended its contract with the company. Jet, which flies to London and other international destinations as well as serving Indian domestic routes, said under British employment law, it had been obliged to take on employees working for G4S before the contract ended.

May 23, 2006 The Mirror
IN THE latest major Home Office blunder, 2,700 innocent people were branded as criminals. They were labelled robbers, thieves and sex offenders because their names and dates of birth matched those of convicted criminals. As a result, many were refused jobs, turned down for university or threatened with the sack. The shambles was the fault of the Home Office Criminal Records Bureau, which is managed by private-sector IT firm Capita. Unions say the increasing involvement of private firms in government departments will lead to more mistakes. A Unison spokesman said yesterday: "So many different parts of our public services are in disarray, and privatisation has played a big part in this. "There's a conflict between the motivations of private companies and their clients, the government. For private firms there's a pressing need to be competitive and deliver profits to the shareholder. Prison security COMPANY: Group 4 RESPONSIBLE for a catalogue of blunders, including allowing seven prisoners to escape while ferrying them between prison and court in the East Midlands and Yorkshire in 1993. In the same year, a prisoner fled Group 4 custody at a Hull court. Two years ago, killer Gordon Topen escaped from HMP Rye Hill. Now known as Group 4 Securicor, it detains and escorts asylum seekers, and made a profit of £254million last year.

May 19, 2006 The Mirror
A WHISTLEBLOWER last night claimed the UK's deportation system is a shambolic failure that does nothing to ease our spiralling immigration crisis. The Group 4 Securicor officer, who escorts deportees back to their home country, insists an amazing 6 in 10 efforts end in failure. He says many manage to get sent back to UK detention centres by harming themselves or their children on the way to the airport. Others cause such uproar on the plane that pilots insist they are removed. In the worst cases private jets allegedly have to be charted at vast expense to get them home. And the officer claims it will take 23 years to clear out huge backlog of illegal immigrants. He said: "It's about time people knew what a state the system is in. We have a 60 percent cancellation rate on deportations and it's getting worse. "The deportees will use every trick in the book to avoid getting kicked out. The men will kick and spit and scream that they have HIV. The officer said many corrupt officials in foreign countries refuse to let the deportees in - unless they get a large backhander. He said: "We are often going to banana republics where the authorities will say they don't have the right paperwork or deny the deportee is from their country. Then they ask us for bribes." The officer claimed he and his colleagues often have no choice but to pay the backhander with company cash or credit cards that are supposed to be used for expenses. He added: "Although it's not our money, we try and keep the price down as we resent paying bribes." The whistleblower is a Detention Custody Officer with Group 4 Securicor, which has the Home Office contract to run detention centres and escort failed asylum seekers. He is from the West Midlands but works at Group 4's Overseas Escorting headquarters in Crawley, West Sussex. His duties include collecting failed asylum seekers from UK detention centres and escorting them home. He claims that for high-profile or troublesome deportees, Group 4 Securicor charters a private jet to fly them home - at a rate of up to £1,500-an-hour. The officer said: "It's a shocking waste of taxpayers' money. But the bosses say it's the only way." According to a 2005 National Audit Office report, the average cost of deporting an illegal immigrant is £11,000 per person. Group 4 Securicor last night denied company money was used to pay bribes. A spokesman said: "We provide credit cards and petty cash to cover incidental expenses. We deny paying bribes." The company said the whistleblower's claims of a 60 percent failure rate were false, saying "Less than one per cent of our removals result in immigration detainees being returned to the UK." The firm refused to reveal how many deportees fail to leave the UK. The Home Office admitted chartering flights "when economical and efficient to do so". The spokesman added: "We strongly refute these allegations and do not recognise the figures being quoted."

March 16, 2006 The Age
WHEN Devandar Naidu was at work his boss would kick his chair from beneath him. The security guard was subjected over four years to names such as "coconut head" and "monkey face". He would start work at 7am and not be allowed to go home until 10pm. He had to ask his boss's permission to go to the toilet. Yesterday, the NSW Supreme Court awarded the former guard $1.9 million in compensation for the relentless bullying that left him incapable of working again. Outside the court, Mr Naidu's lawyer, Shaun McCarthy, described the award as a "rare victory for the little man against a giant … conglomerate". "He had a nervous breakdown, he will never work again," Mr McCarthy said. The abuse of Mr Naidu at the hands of News Ltd's security and fire manager, Lance Chaloner, was described as "extraordinary" by Justice Michael Adams. The abuse started in 1992, when Mr Chaloner threw tantrums, would kick chairs from under Mr Naidu, and call him names such as "black c---". Although his hours were 7am to 4pm, Mr Chaloner made him work unpaid until after 10pm. When Mr Naidu went on a rare holiday to Fiji with his family, Mr Chaloner insisted that he telephone work every day, which involved a 15-kilometre trip to a phone, and he had to pay for the calls. When he returned, he was told to do manual work at Mr Chaloner's home, and threatened with the sack if he didn't. Mr Chaloner was dismissed by News Ltd in January 1997. The judge said that although Mr Naidu remained at work until mid-1997, he could not operate effectively. He had major depression and post traumatic stress disorder. News Ltd will share the damages with Group 4 Securitas Pty Ltd, the bulk to be paid by Group 4, which employed Mr Naidu.

June 30, 2005 The Statesman
Britain’s asylum policy came under renewed scrutiny on Monday as dozens of Zimbabweans staged a hunger strike in protest at their imminent deportation and Kurdish Turks mourned a teenage detainee who has killed himself. The Archbishop of Canterbury and former Labour leader Lord Kinnock joined protests over the decision to send failed asylum-seekers back to Robert Mugabe’s regime. Dr Rowan Williams said it would be “deeply immoral” to send failed claimants back to a country where they could face persecution and torture. Lord Kinnock said it would be better to let “a couple of dozen” unjustified claimants remain in Britain than risk sending back people who needed protection. Zimbabweans at the Campsfield detention centre in Oxfordshire said they had been told the Government has delayed further deportations for two weeks, which would forestall the embarrassing prospect of Tony Blair hosting the G8 summit that will focus on the plight of Africa while dozens of Africans are in Britain on hunger strike at his government’s policy.

April 9, 2005 The Guardian
Security firms involved in the deportation of failed asylum seekers are facing more and more claims of intimidation and assault. Group 4/Global Solutions Ltd (GSL) topped the league table of complaints by asylum seekers and their lawyers. Campaigners who studied 35 complaints now being pursued by lawyers revealed GSL was involved in 30% of cases. GSL, which deals with by far the majority of deportees in Britain, recently won a 10-year Home Office contract to run Bicester Accommodation Centre for asylum seekers. The firm was criticised last month after the broadcast of the BBC documentary Asylum Undercover, which contained claims of abuse by GSL guards. Most of the alleged assaults analysed involve incidents on the way to or at airports. Most concern incidents resulting in cuts, bruises and swelling, although deportees have complained of head injuries, damaged nerves, and sexual assault.

March 31, 2005 IRR News
Recent unannounced inspections of centres used to hold asylum seekers in transit to detention centres and to ports for deportation have found that no centre meets the minimum requirements in relation to child protection. Officials carried out their first (unannounced) inspections into 'holding' centres for asylum seekers between June and October 2004. The holding centres, all run by private company GSL Ltd, (formerly Group 4) were: Communications House (Old Street, London), Lunar House (Croydon), Electric House (Croydon) and Dallas Court (Manchester). The report states that 'all four holding centres had inadequate provision for childcare and child protection. None had a child protection policy in place, and staff likely to be in contact with children had not undergone enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks.' At Lunar House the inspection team reported that they 'spoke to one woman detainee with a two-year-old child during the mid-afternoon. She and the child had been in other areas of the building since 8am that morning. Neither she nor her child had been offered anything to eat during that time and had to wait for relocation to a residential centre that evening.' They found that this was 'unacceptable'. At Dallas Court, the team found that 'a weekend shift recently complained when they discovered a young woman in the holding room who had miscarried a few days previously. She had been collected from a hospital following psychiatric referral, had not eaten for three days and had to be helped to and from the van. She was subject to a live F2052SH self-harm monitoring form because she kept asking for her baby and said she wanted to die. Having been delivered to the holding room in the morning, she was not due to be collected by another vehicle until more than six hours later.' For the first time it emerged that other private contractors (unnamed in this report) are being used to move asylum seekers - though GSL Ltd remains responsible for the four holding centres inspected here. The inspection teams also found a worrying 'absence of operational or independent oversight, compared to other immigration detention facilities. There was no Independent Monitoring Board, and no on-site monitor to provide daily oversight of service provision, as there is in immigration removal centres (IRCs). Senior Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) staff visited only occasionally, and, with the exception of Dallas Court, had little involvement with the centres.'

January 13, 2005 PR Newswire
The Wackenhut Corporation, the U.S.-based division of the large U.K. and European security contractor, Group 4 Securicor, has apparently persuaded the U.S. National Labor Relations Board ["NLRB"] to pursue allies of Protects USA. Late last week, the NLRB notified Protects USA ally at the non-profit Prewitt Organizing Fund ["POF"] a formal investigation was under way. "They are requesting private information on activists, allies and funding. It's clearly a continuation of G4-Wackenhut's witch hunt for scapegoats," says Protects USA spokesperson Adam Wilson. "Protects USA and POF are not parties in any matter before the NLRB. We will notify the NLRB that the request will be taken under advisement as it comes in tandem with the intimidation lawsuit G4/Wackenhut filed last month to silence Protects USA," said Wilson. Since last summer, Protects USA and similar groups [Denver PROTECTS, New York/New Jersey PROTECTS, California PROOFERS, Albuquerque-based BOCAS] have conducted more than 200 peaceful public information events in 14 states, aimed at educating the public about the current condition of homeland security. U.K.-based G4/Wackenhut filed a lawsuit in federal court on December 6 to silence its U.S.-based critics and stop public advocacy conducted by Protects USA. Protects USA, a citizen-based homeland security advocacy project, seeks to educate the public on the perils of handing over the security of our most sensitive sites to private profiteers with spotty records or worse.

Police may charge private security company Group 4 tens of thousands of pounds after an 11-day hunt to recapture a dangerous escaped murderer.  Gordon Topen, who was 12 years into a life sentence for killing a businessman, broke free fromtwoGroup4 security officer sat Walsgrave Hospital, Coventry, on Good Friday.  West Midlands Police launched a huge manhunt for the murderer - who had been in hospital for a blood transfusion - involving officers, sniffer dogs and helicopters but he evaded capture.  More than 20 Coventry detectives spent 11 days in a nationwide operation to catch the killer who, it was feared, could try to hunt down the Midland ex-girlfriend whose evidence put him behind bars.  He was finally snared when officers in London discovered Topen holed up in a friend’s house following a tip-off.  Now the Sunday Mercury understands that West Midlands Police may hit Group 4 with a bill for the costs of the manhunt if it believes the security firm was negligent in the escape.    (Sunday Mercury, April 25, 2004)

Hastings Youth Academy, Hastings, Florida
June 27, 2007 Florida Times-Union
A detention worker at the Hastings Youth Academy found himself behind bars after a juvenile at the minimum security facility in western St. Johns County told investigators he thought he was going to be stabbed in a confrontation between the two. Kevin Dewayne Ford, 30, of Interlachen was charged with aggravated assault after a surveillance tape showed him pulling what looks like a knife from his pocket and flicking it open during an argument with a 16-year-old Friday, investigators said. In the recording from the center's surveillance system, Ford and the youth are seen near a desk and making gestures as if arguing. Ford is then seen pulling something from his back pocket and walking toward the juvenile, who was then pulled away by another worker, according to police reports. Moments later, Ford appears to put something in his shoe, according to an offense report by the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office. No knife was found but other workers who witnessed the argument said they saw one or heard the juvenile being threatened. In addition to aggravated assault, Ford was charged with taking contraband into the Hastings jail. Employees are not permitted to take weapons into the facility. Ford, who'd been with the academy a month, was released Tuesday from the St. Johns County jail on $4,500 bail, according to jail records.

Holden Wal-Mart, Holden, Texas
August 28, 2006 Tyler Morning Telegraph
Just days before jury selection was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, Wal-Mart settled a wrongful death lawsuit for an undisclosed amount with the parents of Megan LeAnn Holden, a clerk who was kidnapped from the Tyler supercenter's parking lot and murdered. Attorneys for Ms. Holden's parents, Sheri Kay Dunlap and James Vincent Holden, said the terms of the Wal-Mart settlement were confidential. The Wackenhut Corp, which provided security for the store, was also named in the lawsuit and settled for $1.3 million, according to court records. Ms. Dunlap, "would like to see this as a beginning to Wal-Mart making its parking lots safer for its customers and employees, not just in Tyler, but everywhere," said her attorney, John "Rusty" Phenix, of Henderson. Jury selection for the case was scheduled to begin in U.S. District Judge T. John Ward's Marshall court Tuesday, but, on Friday, Phenix sent a letter to the court announcing the sealed settlement. Attorney Randell "Randy" Roberts, of Tyler, said his client, Holden, was "very glad to have this entire matter behind him." Ms. Holden was abducted Jan. 19, 2005, from the Wal-Mart Supercenter by Johnny Lee Williams Jr., who pleaded guilty last year to capital murder - kidnapping, sexually assaulting, strangling and shooting to death Ms. Holden to death before he allegedly discarded her body in a West Texas ditch. He also pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and was sentenced to five stacked life sentences. Surveillance footage released by law enforcement showed Williams following Ms. Holden to her pickup in the Wal-Mart parking lot, rushing up behind her, shoving her into the vehicle and driving off. Before the abduction, the video showed a security guard talking to the suspect.

Holston Army Ammunition Plant
Holston, Tennessee
Wackenhut (Group 4 Securicor)
December 7, 2007 PR Newswire
Checks, ranging from $200 to $50,000, were distributed to 280 employees at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant this week. Two years after plant workers filed a formal complaint, the Department of Labor awarded the Wackenhut Services Inc. fire and security workers $2.5 million in back pay. According to DOL findings, from 1999 to April 2007 Wackenhut violated the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act, which requires federal contractors to provide pay and benefits commensurable to those found prevailing in the locality. While the final settlement was less than the workers claim, this is the largest SCA settlement for Wackenhut workers to date -- about ten times the previous high. This past June the Army stated, "The money is owed by Wackenhut. Wackenhut should have known all along (the SCA wages applied) based on the original (contract) solicitation." But, Wackenhut claims that federal acquisition procurement regulations allow it to bill the Army for this back pay. "It is shocking that a company with such lucrative government contracts like Wackenhut lacks the necessary organization, experience, accounting and operational controls to pay their employees what is due to them according to federal contracting law," said Valarie Long, SEIU Property Services Division Director. "Now the US Army has to make up for almost a decade of shortchanging the workers."

June 3, 2007 AP
A U.S. senator and a congressman have taken up the cause of contract workers who say they are owed more than $3 million in back pay for fire-protection and security work at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant. The Wackenhut Security Services employees filed a complaint in 2005 claiming their pay and benefits since were below what they are legally required to receive under federal law. There were 85 fire and security workers at the plant at that time and their claim has yet to be resolved. Recently, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and U.S. Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., both have sent letters to Labor Secretary Elaine Chao asking the department to resolve the workers' claims.

September 26, 2006 Business Wire
Group 4 Securicor, the London-based global security firm lobbying hard to stay in the race to guard the 2012 Olympics – and which is guarding this week’s Labour Conference – has been rocked by allegations from its own guards at a U.S. ammunitions plant. Security officers have exposed lax practices at the Holston Army Ammunition Plant guarded by Wackenhut Services Inc. (WSI), which is wholly owned by Group 4 Securicor (G4S). The officers allege Wackenhut cheats during security inspections, cuts back on perimeter patrols to save on petrol, and has allowed civilians in rowboats, including teenage girls, to gain access to the plant by water. The Holston plant in Tennessee produces explosives used in various missiles, as well as C4, a military plastic explosive. “I think you can safely say if it goes boom, it comes from here," said an Army spokesperson. The plant is operated for the U.S. Army by foreign-owned BAE Systems, which subcontracts to WSI. Wackenhut, the largest provider of security services to the US government, has a troubled performance record at nuclear weapons and nuclear power sites. Wackenhut’s problems at Holston come as G4S is positioning itself to win security contracts for the 2012 London Olympics, despite its record of problems in Britain and elsewhere. In the UK G4S has been criticized for racism and poor management at a UK prison; for poor services and facilities for detained immigrants; and for slipshod implementation of electronic tagging of criminals released from prisons, sometimes with violent or even deadly consequences. G4S has been found to have violated worker rights in Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, and the US.

International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC
We have received information that over the last few weeks Wackenhut (Group 4 Falck's subsidiary) has dismissed 2 workers for union activities. Both were employed by Wackenhut in Washington DC and worked at the offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). (Union-Network, March 19, 2004)

Iraq Private Security
October 11, 2009 Weekly Standard
There seems no end to contractor abuse scandals in countries fighting terrorism or undergoing "nation-building." The latest to be reported in the media involves ArmorGroup North America, a private security firm guarding the American embassies in Iraq and Afghanistan. It began in Baghdad on August 9, when an ArmorGroup employee shot two of his colleagues dead. The victims were Darren Hoare, 37, an Australian, and Paul McGuigan, 37, a Briton and ArmorGroup executive. The alleged killer, Daniel Fitzsimons, 33, is also British. ArmorGroup North America is owned by Wackenhut Services, Inc., a Florida-based company, which is a division, in turn, of a Danish enterprise, G4S, that advertises itself as the world's largest security company. The shootings reportedly occurred late at night, inside the ArmorGroup compound in Baghdad's international area known as the Green Zone. Fitzsimons, according to a Baghdad source who declined to be named, is said to have shot his coworkers because they claimed he was homosexual. After killing them, he shot an Iraqi, Arkhan Mahdi, in the leg, then was arrested by Iraqi police (who now patrol the Green Zone). Fitzsimons faces a possible death sentence. He will be the first foreigner employed in Iraq since the beginning of the 2003 intervention to be held to account under Iraqi law. Fitzsimons says he cannot remember the incident. According to the London Sunday Times, Fitzsimons was seen on an earlier occasion injecting Valium and morphine into his leg while already drunk. Another trail of misconduct has led to an uproar in Kabul, where 16 U.S. embassy guards provided by ArmorGroup were fired in early September for alleged drunkenness and for forcing those under their control to engage in deviant and humiliating behavior. U.S. press coverage of the Fitzsimons case has been minimal, and even the contractors' misbehavior in Kabul, although documented by video, has mostly been handled with discretion by the print media. The New York Times mentioned "lurid details" and "lewd conduct" at weekly parties hosted by embassy guards. The Kabul carousing was disclosed when the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) released a report on September 1. More information emerged in a suit filed September 9 by James Gordon, a New Zealander and former operations director of ArmorGroup North America. Gordon says he is a "whistle-blower," forced out of his job after warning company executives and the U.S. Department of State about the situation at the embassy. According to the New York Times, the POGO report stated that victims of "deviant hazing" included Afghans, whose conservative Muslim culture left them especially repelled by such behavior; those who refused to submit were dismissed from their jobs. The report described a " 'Lord of the Flies' environment." Fitzsimons, the accused Baghdad shooter, has been treated in the British media as a case of post-traumatic stress disorder caused by his prior military service in Iraq and the Balkans. But it would be a mistake to blame such dissolution on the stress of war alone. The Green Zone syndrome of alienation from the local population, as chronicled by critics of the Iraq war, is a ubiquitous feature of life among foreign administrators in conflict and post-conflict areas across the globe. Sex trafficking and corruption of locals have become prominent wherever operations are conducted by transnational bureaucracies like the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) along with the attendant ranks of nongovernmental organizations and private contractors. I have observed similar patterns in the Balkans for a decade.

January 7, 2007 Chicagoist
On Wednesday it was discovered that an Orland Park firefighter was arrested for felony theft for falsely claiming he was fighting for the military in Iraq. Lawrence Masa was actually working for a private security firm in Iraq and was being paid quite well. During this time Masa made approximately $190,000 as a firefighter and $200,000 as a private security worker. Yesterday, Steven Slawinski, a Lemont Firefighter, was accused of the same crime. Slawinski, a friend of Masa, is charged with Felony theft for falsely claiming he was fighting for the military in Iraq. Slawinski too was working at a private security firm, getting paid $27,000 from the Fire Department while in Iraq. Officials looked into Slawinksi's claims after they realized the relationship between the two and the timing of both men's return to work. Slawinski was making $63/hour as a trainer in Iraq. Since the start of the Iraq war tens of thousands of private security workers have entered the country. With the ease these two had at falsely producing documents stating they were serving in the military, we assume this is much more of a widespread problem. This is just another addition to the slew of problems we face with private military contractors in Iraq. The U.S. Department of State currently recognizes 28 Security Companies doing business in Iraq, it is not known which company Masa and Slawinski were working for, but our look into the companies shows two which specialize in both fire and security. Baghdad Fire and Security is described as providing the following services,"Fire protection and security equipment supply. Install, maintain and commission these systems. Physical security and demining." The second, Group 4 Falck A/S, provides, "Cashing sorting. Ambulance services (vehicles and professional staff). Firefighting services (vehicles, products and professional staff). Prisons and prison management. Global solutions. Facility management and training services." The State Department's disclaimer regarding these companies is, "The U.S. government assumes no responsibility for the professional ability or integrity of the persons or firms whose names appear on the list." The other problems we mentioned above, include abuse at Abu Ghraib (following these allegations the companies involved were awarded additional Pentagon contracts) and a video of firms shooting at Iraqi citizens. Needless to say, previously these firms were acting without any regard for, and any repercussions from, the law. With five words slipped into the most recent Pentagon Budget, however, this should change. Previously, if Congress had not declared war the Military had no jurisdiction over security contractors. Essentially leaving Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan as playgrounds for the firms. We don't discredit the risk the workers of these firms take, but it only makes sense they have some sort of moral authority guiding them. The amendment included in the budget bill simply took the word "war" and replaced it with "declared war or a contingency operation." The Defense Tech article suggests that Journalists embedded in contingency operation zones could also be subject to the change, but this will most likely not remain true as embedded journalists are unarmed and not considered contractors.

Kahului Airport, Maui, Hawai'i
June 17, 2008 Maui News
A federal grand jury in Honolulu has indicted Robert “Butchie” Tam Ho, a former Wackenhut supervisor, for tampering with a witness to an arrest and alleged assault by Tam Ho at Kahului Airport in 2005. Tam Ho has pleaded not guilty to the two felony counts, which carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison. He could not be reached for comment. The former assistant police chief already was being sued in a civil action in 2nd Circuit Court over the same events. Phil Lo-wenthal — the Maui lawyer who, with his lawyer son, Ben, is representing the plaintiffs — said Monday, “We didn’t even know about the tampering” until the indictment was handed up earlier this month. However, he said, the grand jury account tracked closely with the narrative given by his clients: Greg Kahlstorf, president of Pacific Wings; Kahlstorf’s business partner, Frank Ford; William Goshorn, then a pilot for the airline; and Kahealani Reinhardt, then also an airline employee. The name of the witness is given in the indictment as “J.W.,” a Wackenhut employee. On Oct. 20, 2005, Kahlstorf had demanded a meeting with Airports Division and Wackenhut managers after one of his pilots was cited and detained by Wackenhut for being in a restricted operating area — an offense Kahlstorf denied. The airline and the guard company had had uneasy relations since at least February 2004, when Wackenhut guards apparently pressured Pacific Wings to board a passenger who had been turned back by airline security because she did not have acceptable identification. The grand jury reported that Tam Ho left the meeting after a shouting exchange with Kahlstorf. When he returned with two other Wackenhut employees, they made a “citizen’s arrest” and tried to handcuff Kahlstorf for harassment. Kahlstorf did not cooperate, and he and the two other guards fell to the floor. Tam Ho ordered the other Pacific Wings employees out. They left, but one, identified as W.G. (Goshorn, who related his story to reporters in 2005), came back to witness what was happening to his boss. Tam Ho “adopted an aggressive fighting stance and struck W.G. about the head and shoulders several times with his fists,” according to the grand jury report. Goshorn did not fight back, and others (not identified) pulled Tam Ho off Goshorn. Maui police arrived, and Tam Ho, a former assistant police chief, demanded that they arrest Goshorn. After an investigation that included an interview with J.W., they did. Meanwhile, the private guards moved Kahlstorf and Goshorn to the Wackenhut offices, which provides the basis for the civil suit’s allegations of kidnapping. According to the grand jury, J.W. also went to the offices, where Tam Ho told her “she should simply say she was heading home for the day . . . and that she didn’t see what happened.” Although that was not so, that is what J.W. told police. The second count refers to the following day, when, the grand jury said, Tam Ho dictated a written statement to J.W., who entered it into a Wackenhut computer. The jurors said Tam Ho falsely had her write that Goshorn had stopped the door and did not comply with Tam Ho’s request; and that J.W. could not see what was happening but had “observed Tam Ho and him in a scuffle.” The Airports Division investigated the incident and concluded that there was “no evidence that the actions taken by its airport security contractor . . . were inappropriate.” Tam Ho tried to get county prosecutors to charge Kahlstorf and Goshorn with resisting arrest or assault, but the prosecutors declined. They also dropped the initial complaint against the pilot for entering a restricted area. The next month, a Wackenhut guard confronted a Pacific Wings pilot about a parking spot and in a lengthy, videotaped incident spat on and threatened the pilot. That guard was barred from state facilities, and Wackenhut was ordered to train its employees about conduct. The feud did not end there. In another confrontation, Pacific Wings called Maui police, who declined to intervene in what they determined was a civil matter. “This is what the feds are supposed to do” when local police and prosecutors are involved so closely in a dispute, Lowenthal said of the tampering indictment. The civil suit alleges that Tam Ho and other Wackenhut employees “assaulted, battered, kidnapped, unlawfully restrained and intentionally inflicted emotional distress” on the four Pacific Wings people. In April, Tam Ho and Wackenhut separately denied those claims and asserted that the airline group contributed to the incident themselves. Wackenhut could not be reached for comment, but the company has demanded a jury trial. Lowenthal later also asked for a jury trial, but he said Monday his suit will have to hold until the criminal trial is settled, because of the Fifth Amendment implications if Tam Ho were to be deposed for his clients. Tam Ho is free on $10,000 unsecured bail.

June 13, 2008 KITV
The former head of security for Wackenhut at Kahului Airport pleaded not guilty to federal charges on Friday. Authorities charged Robert Tam Ho with two counts of witness tampering. Tam Ho told a subordinate to lie and file a false report about an altercation between Tam Ho and an executive of Pacific Wings, prosecutors said. Tam Ho joined Wackenhut after leaving the Maui Police Department, where he was assistant chief. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

June 8, 2008 Star Bulletin
A former Wackenhut of Hawaii security officer is facing federal charges in connection with an altercation between Wackenhut employees and Pacific Wings airline employees at Kahului Airport in 2005. A federal grand jury returned an indictment yesterday charging Robert Tam Ho with two counts of witness tampering. Tam Ho instructed a subordinate Wackenhut employee to tell Maui police that she did not see Tam Ho assault Pacific Wings security coordinator William Goshorn in an airport conference room on Oct. 20, 2005, when in fact she did, according to the indictment. Tam Ho also directed the worker to write a false statement about the assault, the indictment says. Maui police arrested Goshorn on third-degree assault charges and Pacific Wings President James Greg Kahlstorf for alleged harassment and resisting arrest based on statements from Tam Ho and other Wackenhut employees. Less than a month later, Maui police arrested Wackenhut security officer Eric Brown for allegedly threatening another Pacific Wings employee at Kahului Airport. Wackenhut suspended Brown, and the state Department of Transportation banned him from working on any state property or facility.

November 24, 2005 The Maui News
The Maui County prosecutors office is continuing an investigation into allegations of assault, harassment and violations of airport security rules by personnel with Pacific Wings, a county official said Wednesday. Prosecutors have not "dropped" the case, which involves conflicting claims by the Pacific Wings staff and airport security guards with Wackenhut Corp. "On the contrary, the prosecutor is still in the process of gathering all the reports," the county statement said. "The prosecutor intends to fully investigate both sides of the controversy, to talk to various state personnel who may have knowledge of the case or some particulars thereof."

November 15, 2005 KGMB 9
A Wackenhut security guard was arrested Sunday after threatening to kill a pilot at the Kahului Airport. Pacific Wings pilot Gabriel Kimbrell caught the incident on videotape. "Don't take picture of me!", yelled guard Eric Brown as he lunged toward Kimbrell, and then spit at the camera. "I'm going to kill this (expletive). I don't care," said Brown. "Give me your (expletive) gun. I'm going to shoot this (expletive) in the head." Maui police arrested Brown for second degree terroristic threatening. "The only thing I could think of was to keep filming," said Kimbrell. "I was pretty traumatized." Because of an ongoing beef with the guards, Kimbrell had been ordered by his company's lawyer to videotape any encounters. Sunday's incident stemmed from a parking ticket Kimbrell got when he left his silver truck in this loading-zone at the Kahului airport. KGMB called Wackenhut officials five times today. They did not return our calls. But the Department of Transportation says Kimbrell had been ticketed in that same spot last month. And this time, according to the DOT, as the guard was about to write the ticket, Kimbrell could have just moved his truck but he went to get his video camera instead. "We believe that at this point Wackenhutt has followed proper security procedures and we think they've done the job in checking on any security violations," said Scott Ishikawa, spokesperson for the DOT. While the state's Airports Division investigates the case, the Maui Police Department has about 45-minutes of this tape. The Pacific Wings airline only gave the media less than three minutes worth. The airline's president says the rest of it shows a pattern of harassment. The airline's president refers specifically to a meeting last month in which he says security guards attacked him and handcuffed him. In the end, the airline's president was charged with harassment and resisting arrest. Complaints were filed, investigations launched, and there's still no sign of a resolution.

Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
June 26, 2007 PR Newswire
The City of Los Angeles is launching an investigation into security contractor Wackenhut Corporation/G4S' compliance with the city's Responsible Contractor Policy, a probe that could result in debarment from city contracts for five years. Prior to the investigation, Wackenhut had more than US$5 million annually in contracts with the City of Los Angeles to guard at least two dozen buildings and public places including Los Angeles City Hall East; Mount Lee -- the home of the famous Hollywood sign; the Ed Davis Training Facility, which is the newest and most elaborate LAPD training facility; other parks, performing arts centers, and the Watts and Van Nuys city halls. In addition to launching the investigation, Los Angeles did not select Wackenhut for future city work worth up to an estimated US$20 million over three years. Wackenhut Corporation formerly had the largest piece of this city account. They were first selected in 2004 for a three-year contract along with four other contractors for the Los Angeles security work. In its Notice of Investigation, the Los Angeles City Bureau of Contract Administration (BCA) determined, "after researching [a] complaint (regarding [Wackenhut's] contractor responsibility status) that the issues raised are valid." Accordingly, Wackenhut "[has] been placed under investigation for violations of [the Contractor Responsibility Ordinance] of Los Angeles." Under the Responsible Contractor Program (RCP), the City determines whether the prospective contractor is one that has the necessary quality, fitness and capacity to perform the work set forth in the contract. Irresponsible contractors with poor performance of other contracts; failure to comply with relevant laws and regulations; and shoddy record of business integrity are not eligible for city contracts for up to five years according to the Los Angeles Administrative Code Section 10.40.2(a), Ordinance No. #17367. In March 2007, U.S. Congresswoman Diane Watson co-chaired a public hearing where she heard current and former Wackenhut employees testify to the company's long record of workplace discrimination, labor violations, and management incompetence. In response to charges of racial discrimination by Wackenhut within the Department of Energy's elite anti-terrorist Protective Force, Congresswoman Watson declared, "I'm appalled that we have contractors here with Federal government contracts being paid by taxpayers' dollars ..... practicing the behavior of the 1950's and the 1960's." California Assembly member Mervyn Dymally (D-52) and California Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-26) also co-chaired the Commission on Wackenhut and Security Standards that included Los Angeles City Council member Wendy Greuel and Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor, California State University, Long Beach and National Chairman of the Organization US. The Los Angeles Commission on Wackenhut and Security Standards, a group of prominent religious, community leaders and trade unionists, conducted the hearing. In addition to the hearing, the group sent a letter to Los Angeles' head of the Bureau of Contract Administration, John L. Reamer, expressing their concerns about the company's "well documented record of racism, discrimination and poor security that appears to violate the City of Los Angeles' Responsible Contractor Policy." The March 28, 2007 letter was signed by Rev. Eric P. Lee, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles and Rev. Dr. Lewis E. Logan II, senior Pastor of the Bethel A.M.E. Church in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles BCA received evidence that Wackenhut Corporation's answers on the contractor responsibility questionnaire in January 2007 were less than truthful. With respect to early termination of contracts within the past five years, Wackenhut failed to mention losing contracts at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant (August 2006), Indian Point #2 Nuclear Power Plant (2003), and Utah Transit Authority (2002). In addition, Wackenhut's contract to guard Dept. of Homeland Security Headquarters and Army Bases was not renewed. As for recent employment litigation brought by workers, Wackenhut overlooked a number of race discrimination and civil rights cases, including an US$80,000 settlement in a sexual harassment case. Wackenhut also failed to mention governmental investigations for violating laws and rules including investigation leading to the loss of the Dayton Transit contract in Ohio. Problems and failures there included missing incident reports, sleeping on the job, concerns about officers' qualifications, lack of supervision, and unprofessional conduct. As for current investigations of false claim(s) and material misrepresentation(s), Wackenhut neglected to tell the City of Los Angeles about a fraud suit for services allegedly not performed on the Miami-Dade County Transit contract and the County's Juvenile Assessment Center. An ongoing investigation by the NBC affiliate in Miami on parts of a preliminary Miami-Dade county audit revealed that "Wackenhut owes taxpayers up to US$12.1 million for what it calls 'questioned hours' and 'questioned billings'" in addition to various other contract violations. The company also omitted an ongoing investigation by the Department of Energy's Inspector General of falsification of training records. After the hearing, the coalition presented additional materials to the city in the period of the last several months. While Wackenhut had been the incumbent choice for more years of work, the city recently decided not to choose the company for new work. This is in addition to beginning the investigative probe toward potential debarment. Faith Culbreath, president of SEIU Local 2006, which represents security officers at other companies in the Los Angeles area said, "Security workers want to be accountable to the community they serve. That means working for companies that do the right thing by their workers and by the citizens of Los Angeles. Wackenhut abused the public trust and the trust and safety of its workforce."

Malawi
February 1, 2008 Daily Times
SOME of Standard Bank services have been negatively affected due to the on going industrial action by Group 4 Securicor (G4S), the bank has announced. In a statement published Thursday the bank says it has taken some measures to find alternative means for the affected areas. “However, we have been assured by Group 4 Securicor management that normal services will resume soon,” reads part of the statement. The strike started Wednesday with guards demanding a 30 percent annual salary increment which management refused saying they could only manage 12 percent. The court however, stopped the strike after management got an injunction Tuesday evening and employees were told to go back to work on Wednesday morning as the workers’ union also went to court to seek an injunction which the court refused to grant them. According to The Daily Times investigations G4S charges it clients K18, 834.45 for a guard on a 12 hour shift. Those with an Malawi School Certificate of Education (equivalent of O levels ), who are also known as commissioners, are at K29,412.83 while those putting on Securicor Uniform are at K23,477.52. The investigations also revealed that the rates customers pay for a Dog and Handler is K40, 632.32 and a supervisor is at K23, 477.75 and the patrol and alarm guards are at K10, 161.87. However despite netting so much money for the company the starting salary for a guard is K3200 per month (K8 per hour) and those with more experience get about K4000(K11 per hour).There is no guard who gets more than K20, 000. Government has announced with effect from January this year a minimum wage of about K129 per day for those in town up from K87 and K95 in rural areas from K66. G4S is an international company that has branches all over the world. In the United Kingdom their guards do not get less than 5.68 pounds per hour (about K1,700) or K40,000 per 24 hour shift.

September 4, 2007 The Daily Times
Ndirande Police have arrested seven people in connection with the theft of assorted goods valued at over K500,000 on July 24 from Blantyre’s Superior Hotel. Blantyre Police spokesperson Elizabeth Divala Monday said four of the seven were security guards employed by Group 4 Securicor. The seven are Clifford Chatha, 26, Benjamin Chipwete, 28, Dex Hamoni, 24, Mosses Wyson, 27, Lawrence Ludechi, 19, Henry Nkamero, 26, and Mphatso Sigamba, 26. “The seven were arrested on August 25 after some members of the public tipped the police of the suspects’ whereabouts. “Our officers in Ndirande, acting on the tip raided the suspects’ hideout. The seven appeared before Blantyre Magistrate last Thursday and were remanded at Chichiri Maximum Prison waiting for trial”. Divala explained that after stealing the goods the seven kept the entire loot consisting of mattresses, Screens, blankets and telephone receivers at a safe house in Ndirande. Divala said police recovered the stolen materials.

Mangaung Maximum Security Prison, Bloemfontein, South Africa
January 20, 2010 Sowetan
AUTHORITIES at the Mangaung Private Prison outside Bloemfontein have sent samples of food for forensic testing after five prisoners landed in hospital with food poisoning. The prisoners who were admitted to the local hospital have since being discharged. The incident happened last week when four prisoners reported ill after lunch, according to Mangaung Correctional Centre deputy controller MC Motsapi. Motsapi said 281 inmates were treated for runny stomachs. “Five out of 281 prisoners were admitted to hospital but their condition was stable. No new cases have so far been reported,” Motsapi said. The prison is one of three private prisons in the country. The contract to run Mangaung Private Prison was granted to GS4 Care and Justice Service. GS4 spokesperson Leana Goosen confirmed the incident but said things had returned to normal. She said the food consignment of the day was being tested.

September 25, 2009 IOL
Nine prisoners at the Mangaung maximum security prison in Bloemfontein damaged furniture and a building on Friday for unknown reasons, police said. Inspector Harry Nagel said the group of men locked themselves in a "school building" on the grounds and started to break and damage chairs, tables, computers and the building's bulletproof windows. "The building also sustained water and smoke damage." Nagel said the prisoners were armed with picks, spades, garden forks and screwdrivers. Police were called in and they negotiated with the men to come out. "As the men started to surrender they were handed to the private prison authorities," said Nagel. Police said one of the prisoners was apparently slightly injured. Nagel said the reason for the incident was not immediately known. It started around 1pm and lasted for three hours.

August 18, 2003
South Africa's private prisons and maximum security prisons have turned out to be an enormous waste of money, energy and time.  These are some of the findings made by University of the Western Cape Professor Julia Sloth-Nielsen, whose overview of policy developments in the Department of Correctional Services was published recently as part of the Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative's series of research papers.  Sloth-Nielsen has called for an investigation similar to that into the arms deal regarding the tender process for existing private prisons.  "The reason for prison privatisation was mainly cost based," she said.  Privatisation, however, was costing the Department of Correctional Services much more than it had bargained for.  In 2001/2002 it was projected that by 2004/2005 the existing projects (those deemed viable by a prisons task team) would cost the department R538-million - up from projections of R143-million in 2001/2002.  "The department agreed that the decision had been unwise, and that Treasury had at the time advised against the transaction.  "The decision to undertake the private prisons projects was, however, a political one, according to the departmental spokesperson."  The official position currently appeared to be that no more private prisons would be contemplated because of the inordinate and unforeseen expense.  Sloth-Nielsen said the concept of C-Max prisons was introduced at a time when the Department of Correctional Services was characterised by the influence of American ideas in the penal sphere.  The intention was originally to create more of these facilities, she said, but this was put on the backburner during 2001 because it had turned out to be "a cost-intensive exercise".  According to Sloth-Nielsen, the new prison for "bad eggs", Supermax near Kokstad, was an even more lasting testimony to the influence of American penal philosophy and practice.  "No impact analysis or land survey was done, which explains why the facility has been built without a kitchen - the site is too steep to transport food in the normal manner.  "It cost R360-million to build - 155% more than budgeted for."  Supermax - reserved for high-risk prisoners - was a "veritable Robben Island on land" in terms of its inaccessibility for family visits.  In addition, the department had not been able to find enough "bad eggs" to fill the prison.  Now the department envisaged a series of "new generation prisons" for medium and low-risk prisoners.  Four would be built within the next two years. Construction would rely on local resources; empowerment and security would be people centred and not technology based, Sloth-Nielsen added.  They would be strategically placed in areas most affected by overcrowding.  The focus would be on rehabilitation.  (The Star)

August 4, 2003
A PROFESSOR of law has called for an arms deal-like investigation into the awarding of contracts for private prisons.  Professor Julia Sloth-Nielsen of the University of the Western Cape said that the Department of Correctional Services had admitted "impropriety" in the privatisation process yet nothing had been done about it.  She made these claims in a research document presented at a seminar in Cape Town on Thursday.  "If this matter is not being taken up by any other investigative authority . . . this should be a priority of the [Parliamentary Portfolio] Committee in the same way as the arms investigation has been dealt with," she said.  In the document Sloth-Nielsen says:  Initially seven contracts for private prisons were announced, but only two have been constructed, Mangaung Maximum Security Prison in Bloemfontein, contracted to a UK-based consortium, and the maximum security prison in Louis Trichardt in Limpopo; The process of awarding these contracts was hasty, with the first five tenders awarded months before the legislation was tabled in Parliament; and The Department of Correctional Services itself had noted, "with some acrimony", that the people involved in the project design, contract-drafting and negotiations, had upped and left soon afterwards - to take up senior positions in the companies that had won the tenders. "Again, this gave rise to considerable suspicion about the integrity of the process itself," said Sloth-Nielsen.  A task team, consisting of representatives of Correctional Services and the Treasury, presented a report to Parliament in November last year about the financial arrangements of private prisons.  "For a start, the official view appears to be that the contracts were awarded without proper homework having been done," she said.  The actual cost per prisoner a day at the Bloemfontein private prison is R132.20, compared with R93.67 a day for prisoners in state prisons.  "A debate about the morality of housing 6 000 prisoners in the undeniable [comparative] luxury of uncrowded new facilities, while 182 000 remaining prisoners are left to languish in cells where sleeping by rote is the order of the day, is also required," said Sloth-Nielsen.  "If indeed state officials (or former state officials) benefited materially from the privatisation processes, this must be exposed."  Department of Correctional Services spokesman Russel Mamabolo said on Friday they needed more time to study the 58-page document before they would comment.  (Johannesburg)

March 4, 2003
The chairman of the South African Human Rights Commission visited the privately-run Mangaung Maximum Security Prison outside Bloemfontein on Tuesday to investigate alleged violations of prisoners' rights. SAHRC spokeswoman Phumla Mthala said Jody Kollapen would interview individual prisoners and meet with prison authorities on Tuesday morning. Mthala said the investigation followed several complaints by prisoners to the SAHRC's Free State office about, among other things, detention conditions at the prison. The first complaints were received last year. The aim of the investigation was to look at detention conditions and verify the authenticity of the alleged human rights violations, Mthala said. Earlier on Tuesday Dr Motsoko Pheko, deputy president of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and Member of Parliament, told Sapa that he planned to ask Correctional Services Minister Ben Skosana in Parliament about alleged gang violence in Mangaung Prison. Pheko said he had received complaints from inmates who feared for their lives due to gang violence in the prison. "When people are punished and sent to prison by court, they should be allowed to serve their sentences without putting their lives at risk," Pheko said. According to Pheko, the murder of a Mangaung Prison inmate last week by a fellow inmate was gang-related. Mangaung Prison is one of two private prisons in South Africa run by the British based company Group 4. It has approximately 2928 inmates.  (South African Press Association)

February 27, 2003
An inmate of the privately-run Mangaung Maximum Security Prison outside Bloemfontein died after an alleged assault by a fellow prisoner, the prison confirmed on Thursday. The prison's managing director, Frikkie Venter, said the deceased was allegedly assaulted in the prison late on Wednesday afternoon.  No weapon was used in the attack. The injured prisoner was taken to the prison hospital where he died while in a doctor's care. Venter said a team was already investigating the incident. He was waiting for a report with full details.  Captain Ernest Mayiki spokesman for the Free State police confirmed that police were investigating a case of murder. Venter expressed his condolences to the family of the deceased. Mangaung Maximum Security, belonging to the company Group Four, is one of two privately-managed correctional institutions in South Africa. It is situated adjacent to the Department of Correctional Services' Grootvlei Prison near Bloemfontein. Two convicts escaped from the prison on New Year's Day.  (South African Press Association)

January 1, 2003
Two reportedly dangerous convicts are at large after the first escape from a privately-managed prison in South Africa on Wednesday.  The prisoners made their daring escape around 1 pm while working out in the gym of the Maung Maximum Correctional Facility near Bloemfontein, Department of Correctional Services spokesman Russel Mamabolo told Sapa.  Both men were regarded as dangerous.  Mamabolo said his department would conduct a thorough investigation into the escape and expected a full report from the management company that runs Maung Maximum, Group 4.  Maung Maximum is one of only two privately-managed correctional institutions in South Africa.  The other is near Louis Trichardt in limpopo.  (South African Press Association)

May 2001
A youngster caught stealing three mangoes out of hunger, recently spent four months awaiting trial in a Johannesburg prison due to bungling by justice officials, the country's top independent prisons' inspector revealed on Friday.  "This boy was prepared to plead guilty.  It is obvious the magistrate and prosecutor were not doing their job properly," Judge Johannes Fagan told guests visiting the new Mangaung Maximum Security Prison outside Bloemfontein.  He blamed prison overcrowding on inept justice officials who fail to process cases speedily.  According to statistics from the Department of Correctional Services, the country's 236 prisons, with an accommodation capacity of 102, 048 was housing about 170,168 inmates by the end of February.  Nearly a third of these, or about 64,000 individuals, were awaiting trial, Fagan said.  (News 24, South Africa)

Manhattan FBI Headquarters, Manhattan, New York
January 21, 2010 New York Daily News
A Muslim security guard at the Manhattan FBI headquarters claims he's being forced to carry around proof of his religion because he has a beard. Daoud Ibraheem, 72, was granted a religious exception for facial hair when he was hired in 2007 by Wackenhut Services, but says the special treatment has triggered harassment by supervisors. In a $3 million discrimination suit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court, Ibraheem says he is subjected to daily spot-checks by officers from the Federal Protective Service. They repeatedly insist he must produce a letter written by the imam of his Brooklyn mosque vouching for his faith, the suit says. They also falsely accused Ibraheem of sleeping on the job and ordered him to stay outside a heated guard booth while non-Muslim guards have unlimited access to the shelter in freezing weather, said his lawyer, Tamara Harris. She said Ibraheem fears upcoming terror trials of 9/11 plotters could ramp up the hostility even further. "The anger people harbor against Muslims might be heightened by the proximity of his workplace to Ground Zero, where 9/11 happened," Harris said. The Federal Protective Service, a government agency, and private contractor Wackenhut are jointly responsible for security at 26 Federal Plaza. A lawyer representing both Wackenhut and the Federal Protective Service did not return calls for comment.

Medway Secure Training Centre, Rochester, UK
January 5, 2009 Kent News
Inmates at the Medway Secure Training Centre – which houses some of Britain’s most hardened criminals – enjoyed a weekend of tropical fun, playing bongo drums and limbo dancing, and even being given access to an alcohol-free beach bar. During the two-day knees-up, the convicted criminals were also allowed to play games including Scalectrix in a specially-themed youth club and each wing of the jail took part in a competition to come up with the best Hawaiian decorations. Group Four Securicor, which runs the centre, has not revealed the full cost of the party. Taxpayers’ Alliance spokesman Susie Squire branded the weekend event “a waste of money” given the current economic crisis. She said: “Every penny of public money is now incredibly precious. “We’re all tightening our belts in the recession – the public sector should be doing the same. “While we must encourage young offenders to improve themselves and keep busy and active, there’s no need for this sort of frivolity. “I would view this very much as a luxury."

Melbourne Custody Centre, Melbourne, Australia
February 7, 2010 The Sunday Age
THE state government is poised to award a multimillion-dollar prison contract to a private company whose human rights record has been called into question. The Sunday Age can reveal that private prison contractor G4S Australia & New Zealand is the preferred tenderer to take over the Melbourne Custody Centre, a city-based facility that each year processes 11,000 people through cells under the Magistrates Court. The private security firm was last year named in a damning West Australian Coroner's report, which found it had contributed to the ''wholly unnecessary and avoidable death'' of a 46-year-old Aboriginal man in its custody in January 2008. The company's record in Victoria is also marked by a coroner's finding last year that it contributed to the 2005 death of Ian Westcott, who died of an asthma attack in the G4S-run Port Phillip prison. A note found near his body read: ''Asthma attack. buzzed for help. no response.'' In 2000, a coroner found the company had failed to provide a safe environment at Port Phillip when four men hanged themselves in 1997. A 2006 report by the Victorian Ombudsman and the Office of Police Integrity found inadequacies in the way prisoners were transported, with insufficient attention paid to their conditions, including ''basic amenities for long trips''. Charandev Singh, a spokesman for the Centre for the Human Rights of Imprisoned People, said the decision to give G4S preferred tenderer status was shocking. ''The company's lethal record, combined with the circumstances of the horrific death of [the Aboriginal elder], appears to have been totally negated by the Brumby government and Victoria Police in their intention to award a further lucrative contract to this company.'' The Melbourne Custody Centre tender is a sensitive issue for the state government, which was last year criticised by prisoner advocates for renewing G4S's prisoner transport contract despite the WA Coroner's finding. The two companies shortlisted for the Melbourne Custody Centre - G4S and GEO Group Australia - both have blemished records in the eyes of human rights advocates. GEO Group Australia is the existing contractor and has been criticised by the Ombudsman several times for using excessive force on prisoners - most recently in August 2008. GEO, which has run the 30-cell facility for almost 11 years, was recently dropped from the shortlist when the government named G4S as preferred tenderer. Both firms are subsidiaries of multinational outfits specialising in security systems and correctional and detention facilities. The contract for management of the custody centre - which serves the court system but also operates as a holding facility for drug and alcohol-affected people - is yet to be signed with G4S, but is believed to be with Corrections Minister Bob Cameron. A G4s spokesman said he could not comment while the tender was still going. A spokesman for Mr Cameron said he was also unable to comment.

Metro Office Buildings, Nashville, Tennessee
July 17, 2009 Tennessean
Almost 19 months after thieves broke into the Davidson County Election Commission and made off with computers containing 337,000 voters’ Social Security numbers, Metro is on the verge of getting back $400,000 from its security contractor. The agenda for Tuesday’s Metro Council meeting includes a resolution approving a $400,000 settlement with Wackenhut Corp. Metro asked the company for more than $840,000 in May 2008 to reimburse the government for its expenses. Those included $48,387 for an audit by Kraft CPAs; $21,575 for security services that weren’t provided; $235,757.35 for two mailings to voters, and $534,391.75 for identity-theft protection for more than 56,000 voters who responded to the city’s offer to pay for a year of protection. Wackenhut already paid the city back for the $21,575 in services that weren’t provided by its subcontractor, Specialized Security Consultants. The $400,000 would be in addition to that amount, meaning Metro would get back just over 50 percent of its expenses. In essence, Metro is now on track to get reimbursed for the cost of the mailings, which it had to send to let voters know about the December 2007 break-in, and for the audit it ordered to review the subcontractor’s billings. But it would only get back a small part of the cost for the identity-theft protection, which was considered a more discretionary expense.

December 10, 2008 Nashville City Paper
Almost a year after the Christmas Eve break-in at the Davidson County Election Commission office, the company contracted by Metro to provide security services was in town explaining its side of the story. The question now is what does the future hold between Metro and Wackenhut, the international security company that has handled the government’s security guard contract for the last 17 years. The two parties are locked in litigation with Metro seeking about $800,000 from Wackenhut Services, Inc., as a result of the election commission break-in, when two laptop computers containing social security numbers and private information of Davidson County voters were stolen. Wackenhut responded by filing suit against Mt. Juliet-based subcontractor Specialized Security Company (SSC). It was SSC, which had the security guard on duty the night the break-in allegedly took place and that’s a fact Wackenhut feels has not been made clear enough. In town this week on damage control was Wackenhut Vice President and Assistant General Counsel Michael Hogsten, who along with Waller, Lansden, Dortch and Davis attorney Tom Lee, met with Metro Council members and members of Mayor Karl Dean’s administration. “From our perspective I think everyone understands that the subcontractor was the entity at the building providing the services on the date of the incident,” Hogsten said. “The facts regarding the incident I don’t think have been portrayed in a very clear way.” From Metro’s perspective, Wackenhut is to blame and therefore owes the $773,00 the government spent to provide identity theft insurance to the voters whose information was stolen on the laptops. It was discovered later the information was apparently not accessed. “They understand our position that the Metropolitan Government feels they breached their contract and that they should reimburse us,” Metro Director of Law Sue Cain said. Councilman unconvinced -- District 4 Councilman Michael Craddock was among the members who met with Wackenhut this week. Craddock said he listened to what Wackenhut had to say and appreciated their perspective, but added his stance on the issue remains unchanged. “I told them at the end of it, ‘If it were my decision I’d fire you,’” Craddock said. “They need to be fired and they need to pay up. They goofed up. There has been a long pattern here. “You’re talking about one of the most serious incidents in the history of Metro government.” Hogsten contends Wackenhut actually has a positive working history with Metro dating back to 1991. The $4.5 million annual security contract was extended in 2007 under Mayor Bill Purcell’s administration and lasts until 2011. Hogsten pointed out the issue became bigger because of the voter information on the laptops. “From our perspective the only reason this became such a big issue is how the laptops were handled and how the confidential information, that was within the city’s responsibility to protect, was dealt with,” Hogsten said. He described the break-in as an incident that would have been difficult for any security guard to prevent. “That guard doing everything right had very little opportunity from preventing that crime from happening at the building,” he said. In its amended complaint against Wackenhut, which was filed Nov. 18, Metro seeks not only to be compensated but also to have its contract found in breach. Metro currently has the right to void the contract, provided it gives a 30-day notice to Wackenhut. Craddock said it was his understanding the contract had not been voided yet because of the pending litigation. Subcontractor at center of issue -- In its suit against SSC, Wackenhut essentially shifted the blame onto the subcontractor, which handled 20 percent of the security services in the contract. Wackenhut has paid $22,000 to Metro so far since the incident occurred. That payment came after an independent audit showed Wackenhut was billing Metro for hours its guards weren’t working. Hogsten said it was Wackenhut’s intention to bring all the involved parties together to talk about an agreement in the near future. A hearing will be held on Dec. 19 to combine the two lawsuits into one case. “There are other aspects of the claims raised by the city that we need to deal with our subcontractor,” Hogsten said. SSC’s attorney John Thomas Freeney said his clients rejected the claims made by Wackenhut in their suit and planned to contest them in court. Metro’s perspective on who to blame can be found in its amended complaint. Even if Metro concedes that SSC, and not Wackenhut, is to blame for the fallout from the election commission break-in, the complaint points out that Wackenhut was responsible for bringing its subcontractor to the table. In its Request For Proposal for Metro’s security services, Wackenhut stated: “We have always enjoyed an excellent relationship with our sub-contractors. This is because we exercise due diligence in qualifying them and ensuring that they have the capability to provide the quality service required to meet our standards as well as those of our clients.” Metro’s complaint states that Wackenhut did not have the low bid in the RFP process, but landed the contract because of its commitment to subcontract 20 percent of the work to small or minority owned business. Wackenhut said it chose SSC from a list of about 20 small businesses that Metro provided. In its complaint, Metro points out that many of the security guards working for SSC were previously employed or even provided by Wackenhut. Hogsten said it was common for security companies to use the same guards from contract to contract. Craddock proposes keeping security services in-house -- Hogsten said Wackenhut did not want its long-standing relationship with Metro to be undone because of one incident, but between the latest complaint and the feeling among Council members, it is likely the contract will ultimately be terminated. If that happens, Craddock said he thought Metro should change the way it provides security at its facilities and start doing so in-house. “I would like to see the administration explore our own security force,” Craddock said. “I would like to see us explore retired firefighters, police officers, something along those lines, but they are Metro employees. I believe we can provide our own security service.”

November 21, 2008 WSMV
A private security company that is trusted to help keep Nashville safe is accused of twisting the facts in order to get the job. Wackenhut wasn't the lowest bidder when Metro was looking for a security company. But Wackenhut got extra points by saying it would subcontract 20 percent of its contract to a local small business, Specialized Security Consultants (SSC), run out of a house in Mount Juliet. Wackenhut was quick to lay the blame on SSC after the Davidson County Election Commission break-in last December and blamed SSC when Metro discovered it was overbilled. But now Metro lawyers have said the two companies really aren't very separate. Metro alleges that Wackenhut moved some its own guards to the SSC roster, Wackenhut did their payroll, ordered their uniforms, performed their background checks and that SSC used Wackenhut's office space. A contract document signed by Wackenhut's general manager promises Wackenhut is not involved in the operation or management of its subcontractor. "If, in fact, that's what has happened," said Councilman Jim Gotto, "then it was just a subsidiary of Wackenhut." Gotto said if Metro lawyers prove the allegations, it's a case of deception. "To the extent that somebody goes in and cheats, if you will, to try to gain an advantage, I think they're doing the whole community a disservice," Gotto said. Metro Finance Director Rich Riebling said they're looking at all of their options, one of which is rebidding the contract. Because of what it calls "negligent misrepresentation," Metro wants out of its five-year contact. Both Wackenhut and SSC's owner were unavailable for a comment.

October 6, 2008 Nashville City Paper
She asked nicely first. Metro Legal director Sue Cain wrote to security contractor Wackenhut Corp. in May to seek reimbursement for costs associated with the Christmas Eve break-in at a Metro office building that exposed the personal data of 337,000 voters to potential compromise. Now the city has filed suit. A thief took a pair of laptops containing the data, though they were later recovered. Subsequent investigation showed that the subcontracted guard on duty had failed to do his job as specified — and that Wackenhut had been billing Metro for work it never did. The company has paid back some $22,000 in overbillings, but the city still wants to be made whole for the $773,000 cost of buying identity protection for every registered voter and sending out letters to advise voters about the protection program, along with the $50,000 cost of auditing Wackenhut after the incident. The lawsuit also seeks a declaratory judgment terminating Wackenhut's contract to provide security services for Metro agencies. The contract still has more than three years to run. James L. Charles, J. Brooks Fox and Elizabeth A. Sanders of Metro Legal brought the action. Other cases of note filed Sept. 26 to Oct. 2 -- Davidson County Chancery Court -- Wackenhut Corp. v. Specialized Security Consultants Inc. and First Mercury Insurance Co. Filed 25 minutes after Metro's complaint on Sept. 26. Wackenhut goes after its subcontractor, Specialized Security of Mt. Juliet, for damages arising from the break-in and the discovery of "allegedly fraudulent" billing practices by Specialized Security. Insurer First Mercury, which had a $2 million errors-and-omissions policy in force on Specialized Security, has refused so far to cover the costs, according to the lawsuit. In addition to damages from Specialized Security, Wackenhut seeks a series of declaratory judgments that would provide it with coverage from the First Mercury policy. Plaintiff's attorneys: Robert E. Boston and Mary Beth Thomas of Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis.

June 5, 2008 Tennessean
A Metro Nashville security contractor has agreed to repay the city for services a subcontractor failed to provide but says it's still "working diligently" on a much larger reimbursement request tied to a December break-in. Metro asked Wackenhut Corp. last month for more than $840,000 for expenses related to the theft of two computers from the Davidson County Election Commission. The computers contained Social Security numbers for more than 337,000 Metro voters. In a letter to Metro Law Director Sue Cain this week, Wackenhut executive Drew Levine said the company would reimburse the city for billings for services that Metro says a subcontractor, Specialized Security Consultants, didn't provide. Cain wrote last month that those billings totaled $48,387. More than $770,000 the city spent on mailings and identity-theft protection after the break-in won't be coming as quickly. Wackenhut's Drew Levine wrote that the company was "vigilantly pursuing recovery of these claims" from the subcontractor. Cain said Wednesday that Wackenhut "has been dealing with us in good faith" and that it was reasonable for the company to seek payment from its subcontractor before paying Metro. "It's normal business practice," she said.

May 20, 2008 WZTV
Concerns continue to mount with metro's security provider. The legal department has sent a second letter requesting reimbursement from Wackenhut after the December break-in at the election commission. The social security numbers of more than 300 thousand Davidson county voters were stolen. Since then, the city has paid about 800 thousand dollars for mailings and alerts, as well as for an identity theft protection program. In a recent audit, metro has also learned more than 21 thousand dollars was paid to Wackenhut for security services the company never provided. Now, taxpayers are feeling ripped off and want answers.

May 17, 2008 Tennessean
If city employees routinely lied on their timesheets and got paid for days they didn't work, chances are excellent they'd get fired without a second chance. That's pretty much what the Wackenhut Corp., through a subcontractor, got caught doing. City attorneys are giving the company one chance to clean up its act, or forfeit its multimillion-dollar five-year contract. As it should. "They've got to get this right," said Sue Cain, Metro law director. Cain sent the security company a letter this week asking Wackenhut to pay taxpayers back the $840,000 it cost to clean up a mess it helped make, and explain just how company officials intend for it not to happen again. It was a polite, legal way of saying pay up and clean up, or kiss your sweet government contract goodbye. Remember laptop caper? This is the city contractor involved in the big brouhaha just before Christmas when laptops containing the Social Security numbers of 337,000 registered voters in Nashville were stolen from the election commission. The guard in charge, who worked for a Wackenhut subcontractor, admitted he was listening to festive holiday tunes and eating Italian take-out rather than making his hourly rounds. Granted, an election commission employee left one laptop sitting in open sight of a window. She might as well have had it gift-wrapped. But it was an "all's well that ends well" thing, since some dandy police work led straight to the laptops, which had not been compromised. Mayor Karl Dean acted quickly to authorize the city to pay for identity theft protection on any voter's credit history, if he or she chooses. And Dean ordered an audit of the city's dealings with Wackenhut. It showed that a subcontractor billed Metro for months of Saturdays, when no security guard worked. This week, Cain asked Wackenhut to pay the city back for all those costs, including the numerous unfilled 12-hour shifts billed at $149.76 each. Why not just fire them outright? "We could," Cain said, "but it's expensive to do procurement." First, city officials want to get repaid for what it cost to ensure that folks' identities were safe. Makes sense. Second, they want to make sure government buildings are safe, without having to spend even more money to start over with a new bid process. This is a major contract. Wackenhut held it for years, making $14 million from 2002 until 2007. Wackenhut won the bid again last year, and has been paid $3.96 million since May 2007. "They really have done, except for this, a good job," Cain said. "We wouldn't continue unless the problems have been solved. It is their problem. It was their subcontractor. They have to assure the Metropolitan government that if they are using a subcontractor, their billings are correct." If not, some of the 200 city employees about to be laid off would probably be delighted to work for $12.48 an hour guarding buildings.

May 16, 2008 Tennessean
Metro Nashville is asking a security contractor to reimburse the city more than $840,000 for expenses related to a break-in last year at the Davidson County Election Commission offices. Metro Law Director Sue Cain wrote a letter Wednesday to Wackenhut Corp. lawyer Jim Vines, a former U.S. attorney for Middle Tennessee. Wackenhut was responsible for security at the Metro Office Building in December, when thieves stole two laptop computers containing the Social Security numbers of 337,000 voters. Wackenhut subcontracted with a Mt. Juliet firm, Specialized Security Consultants Inc., to secure the building on Second Avenue South. An audit found Wackenhut had billed Metro for some days when security guards actually didn't work at the facility. Cain asked Wackenhut to pay the city $48,387 for the audit by Kraft CPAs; $21,575 for security services that were not provided; $235,757.35 for two mailings to voters, and $534,391.75 for the cost of identity-theft protection for more than 56,000 voters who responded to the city's offer to pay for a year of protection. "The expenditure of these funds was unexpected and has worked a hardship on the government," Cain wrote to Vines. Vines, now based in Washington, D.C., said Thursday afternoon that he had not seen the letter yet. The Christmastime laptop theft outraged many voters and Metro officials. One of the computers sat out in the open on a table about 6 feet from the window the thieves broke through. The other machine was under an employee's desk, waiting to be repaired. City officials said Jan. 3 that the security guard on duty during the incident listened to Christmas music, ordered Italian food and visited the break room, failing to make his hourly rounds of the building. Another guard discovered the break-in through the smashed window after noticing a drop in the building's temperature two days later. The guard who was blamed and fired said neither he nor anyone else was on duty at the time of the break-in, however. Metro asked Wackenhut for more than $100,000 in damages on Jan. 4, and Mayor Karl Dean offered the free identity-theft protection the next week. The laptops were discovered Jan. 17, with tests indicating voters' information had not been viewed or copied. Wackenhut continues to work for Metro, but Cain asked the company to explain in writing why the city shouldn't put the security contract out for new bids. "As we have discussed, the Metropolitan Government is very concerned that it has contracted with Wackenhut over many years and at considerable expense for security services only to learn through this break-in that Wackenhut was not providing the services that were expected and, even more disturbing, had been billing for services that were not provided," she wrote. Wackenhut has a five-year contract to provide security at many Metro buildings. The agreement took effect on May 1, 2007.

January 25, 2008 WSMV
The I-Team has uncovered a cozy relationship between a Metro employee and the security contractor he oversees.  Bill Kostrub said he doesn't want to talk about it, but part of his job with Metro government is approving payments to Wackenhut Security, a company for which he used to work. Wackenhut is now under investigation for billing irregularities at the election commission. “I appreciate your coming out, but all the questions go through Velvet,” he said. He referred reporter Nancy Amons to Velvet Hunter, who is second in command at Metro General Services, where he works. Kostrub's job at General Services includes reviewing the bills for security guards submitted by Wackenhut. Kostrub was a salesman at Wackenhut until October 2006. During the time, Wackenhut was negotiating the contract with Metro to provide security for all of its buildings. In December 2006, while contract negotiations were still going on, Kostrub went to work for Metro. Now he has the power to OK Wackenhut's invoices. Amons shared the findings with Councilman Jim Gotto. "It doesn't sound good. It doesn't look good,” he said. Channel 4 obtained a stack of invoices under the Open Records Act that shows 67 times in the last three months, Kostrub signed off on security guard bills submitted by Wackenhut. The bills cover the months when Metro auditors said Wackenhut appeared to be billing Metro for ghost employees. Metro said guards were supposed to be patrolling the Howard Office Building every Saturday. Tax dollars paid for it, but Metro said there's no evidence the guards were there. At least five of the Saturday bills were approved by Kostrub. “I'm really interested that you used to work for Wackenhut and now you approve their invoices,” said Amons. “And I can appreciate that. Talk to Velvet about it. You guys have a good day,” Kostrub said. "There's nothing wrong with this gentleman working for Metro, but he certainly doesn't need to be working for Metro on this particular contract,” Gotto said. Hunter said late Friday that Kostrup was hired through an open and competitive process and that Metro did not have a problem with his former employment. Channel 4 and the I-Team are not implying that Kostrup did anything wrong; they are just asking if it creates an ethics issue.

January 9, 2008 News Channel 5
Could Metro's drinking water supply be at risk? It's a concern after a shocking lapse in security. First, thieves hit the Davidson County Election Commission office. Now, there's concern other Metro services are at risk due to another security breach. It involves security firm Metro hired Wackenhut. The company employs hundreds of security guards. There is frequent turnover. But what happens when the security guards leave the company? One former employee John Kennedy said when people leave the company, they take their IDs. In his living room closet, he has five Wackenhut shirts and a jacket. He quit in July after working for the security firm for almost a year. He also has official patches, a brass badge and a Metro Water Services security identification badge that expires in 2012. His duties included protecting the city's drinking water supply. He said he still has the key that lets him "walk through gate that has a padlock on it." "I walk in uniform and more than likely I can get into any Metro water facility in town," he said. Kennedy said neither Metro nor Wackenhut ever contacted him about the items. "It's extremely dangerous," Metro Councilman Michael Craddock. "Where does this end?" Craddock is critical of the security company because of this as well as the recent theft of computers from the election commission office. "Not only half a million people had their social security numbers stolen, now our most precious commodity, water, we don't know if it is safe today," he said. Craddock said there's no excuse for Wackenhut not to take back uniforms and badges before employees leave the company. In the wrong hands, he said, someone could do horrible damage because of lax security. Craddock is speaking generally. Kennedy is not a threat. He simply forgot he had the uniforms and identification. He plans to return them. Metro Water Services officials said Wackenhut is responsible. After this practice was brought to their attention, the department contacted the security company looking for an explanation. Wackenhut officials declined comment Wednesday. Metro Water Services officials said the water supply is safe. They admit that the badges and keys not being returned are certainly a problem. But they emphasized that there are layers of security designed to keep the water system secure.

January 9, 2008 WKRN
The city may have been paying for security guards at the Davidson County Election Commission who were not on the clock, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said Tuesday. The Department of General Services is investigating security at the election commission after a theft there last month. Two laptops containing the social security numbers of all registered voters in Davidson County were stolen from the building on December 24. General Services said there is no actual proof security guards used their access cards to get into the building on Saturdays, between October and December. Despite that, Metro was billed for 12 hours shifts on those days. Tuesday, the CEO of the security firm responsible for security at the election commission office, the Wackenhut Corporation, stepped down. The firm did not give specific reason for CEO Gary Sanders’ resignation. Authorities believe the thieves used a rock to break a window to gain access into the election commission. Weeks later, the window has yet to be repaired and plywood remains over the window.

January 7, 2008 Tennessean
The security guard who was fired after computers with voters’ Social Security numbers were stolen from the Davidson County Election Commission says he wasn’t on duty at the time. In fact, Brendan Murphy said in a telephone interview, no one was on duty at the time. Murphy called The Tennessean after reading a story in Friday’s paper about an unnamed guard who was blamed by Metro officials for listening to Christmas music, ordering takeout food