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
July 8, 2011 POGO
Private security contractor ArmorGroup North America Inc. (AGNA) agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle whistleblower allegations that it violated procurement rules that put the security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan at risk. AGNA's parent company said the settlement was made solely "to avoid costly and disruptive litigation—and that there has been no finding or admission of liability." This is the same company whose employees are depicted in lewd pictures POGO made available in fall 2009—which demonstrated a serious breakdown in discipline among the security personnel defending the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. POGO Executive Director Danielle Brian called it a 'Lord of the Flies' environment. Former AGNA director of operations James Gordon was the whistleblower who filed the lawsuit—he will receive $1.35 million from the $7.5 million AGNA has agreed to pay. According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release, these are the whistleblower allegations that were resolved by the settlement: •"AGNA submitted false claims for payment on a State Department contract to provide armed guard services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan"; •"[I]n 2007 and 2008, AGNA guards violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) by visiting brothels in Kabul, and that AGNA’s management knew about the guards’ activities"; •"AGNA misrepresented the prior work experience of 38 third country national guards it had hired to guard the Embassy"; and •"AGNA failed to comply with certain Foreign Ownership, Control and Influence mitigation requirements on the embassy contract, and on a separate contract to provide guard services at a Naval Support Facility in Bahrain." Gordon’s lawsuit was filed in September 2009. Nearly a year and a half later, DOJ joined Gordon’s whistleblower lawsuit on April 29, 2011. Slightly more than two months later, AGNA settled. According to DOJ statistics, whistleblower lawsuits (or qui tam lawsuits) that allow insiders to sue on behalf of the federal government have a much higher success rate when the government intervenes and joins the whistleblower, known as a relator, in their lawsuit (or parts of their lawsuit). In 2009, Gordon stated that he filed his lawsuit “to hold ArmorGroup accountable for the blatant disregard of its obligations to ensure the safety and security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. In an industry where good people are required to face extreme risk on a daily basis it is essential that those companies who disregard the rules be removed as they not only endanger their own staff but also endanger the mission, all in order to increase profit.” On September 14, 2009, POGO’s Executive Director Danielle Brian provided testimony on the breakdown of discipline among many of AGNA’s employees in Kabul before the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shortly after the Commission hearing, Brian was contacted by Samuel Brinkley, Wackenhut Services, Inc. (WSI)’s Vice President of Homeland and International Security Services, who offered to work with POGO on behalf of WSI and AGNA to identify and remedy mistreatment of victims of this hazing, retaliation against some of the whistleblowers who had come to POGO, and other matters raised in POGO’s disclosures. WSI is AGNA’s parent company. During the intervening months, Brinkley and Brian had many discussions regarding the fair and appropriate treatment for POGO’s whistleblowers and others not involved in the wrongdoing. As a result, POGO was pleased that WSI/AGNA resolved the employment concerns of those five personnel at issue. WSI issued a statement yesterday as well in response to the DOJ press release announcing the settlement. WSI disputed the DOJ’s assertion that there was a violation of the False Claims Act, that it did not have an anti-trafficking policy in place, and that it violated rules regarding third country nationals, and foreign mitigation requirements. It also said “the sole individual confirmed to have frequented prostitutes was fired by AGNA in normal course when his conduct became known.” WSI noted that the period of AGNA’s alleged behavior predated WSI’s acquisition of AGNA. Regarding the violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, Gordon’s allegations are more serious than they sound in the DOJ press release. Last year, the Washington Post/Center for Public Integrity wrote about Gordon’s case in the context of a perceived lack of U.S. enforcement regarding alleged sex trafficking by U.S. contractors and subcontractors: In Afghanistan, evidence of trafficking came to light when 90 Chinese women were freed after brothel raids in 2006 and 2007. The women told the International Organization on Migration that they had been taken to Afghanistan for sexual exploitation, according to a 2008 report. Nigina Mamadjonova, head of IOM's counter-human trafficking unit in Afghanistan, said the women alleged in interviews that their clients were mostly Western men. In late 2007, officials at ArmorGroup, which provides U.S. Embassy security in Kabul, learned that some employees frequented brothels that were disguised as Chinese restaurants and that the employees might be engaged in sex trafficking. A company whistleblower has alleged in an ongoing lawsuit that the firm withheld the information from the U.S. government. James Gordon, then an ArmorGroup supervisor, alleged that a manager "boasted openly about owning prostitutes in Kabul" and that a company trainee boasted that he hoped to make some "real money" in brothels and planned to buy a woman for $20,000. The settlement is a victory for accountability, but ultimately may be unsatisfying for critics of the government's less-than-robust oversight of contractors. Can we really expect other contractors to see this settlement as a wake-up call? The State Department fell asleep at the switch with AGNA and still has yet to prove that it's serious about contract oversight and enforcement of trafficking in persons regulations.

October 8, 2010 CBS News
U.S. reliance on private security in Afghanistan that is poorly monitored and often results in the hiring of Afghan warlords is profiting the Taliban and could endanger coalition troops, according to a Senate report. Military officials warn, however, that ending the practice of hiring local guards could worsen the security situation. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee which issued the report, said Thursday that he is worried the U.S. is unknowingly fostering the growth of Taliban-linked militias and posing a threat to U.S. and coalition troops at a time when Kabul is struggling to recruit its own soldiers and police officers. The investigation follows a separate congressional inquiry in June that concluded trucking contractors pay tens of millions of dollars a year to local warlords for convoy protection. "Almost all are Afghans. Almost all are armed," Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said of the army of young men working under U.S. contracts. State Dept. Awarding Contractors Up to $10B -- "These contractors threaten the security of our troops and risk the success of our mission," he told reporters. "There is significant evidence that some security contractors even work against our coalition forces, creating the very threat that they are hired to combat." "We need to shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests and contribute to the corruption that weakens the support of the Afghan people for their government," he added. A well placed source in the Afghan government told CBS News' Fazul Rahim that the senate report "is what we have been saying for the past couple of years. This report confirms our suspicions." The Defense Department doesn't necessarily disagree but warns that firing the estimated 26,000 private security personnel operating in Afghanistan in the near future isn't practical. This summer, U.S. forces in Afghanistan pledged to increase their oversight of security contractors and set up two task forces to look into allegations of misconduct and to track the money spent, particularly among lower-level subcontractors. The Defense Contract Management Agency has increased the number of auditors and support staff in the region by some 300 percent since 2007. And in September, Gen. David Petraeus, the top war commander in Afghanistan, directed his staff to consider the impact that contract spending has on military operations. The military says providing young Afghan men with employment can prevent them from joining the ranks of Taliban fighters. And bringing in foreign workers to do jobs Afghans can do is likely to foster resentment, they say. Also, contract security forces fill an immediate need at a time when U.S. forces are focused on operations, commanders say. "As the security environment in Afghanistan improves, our need for (private security contractors) will diminish," Petraeus told the Senate panel in July. "But in the meantime, we will use legal, licensed and controlled (companies) to accomplish appropriate missions." Levin says he isn't suggesting that the U.S. stop using private security contractors altogether. But, he adds, the U.S. must reduce the number of local security guards and improve the vetting process of new hires if there's any hope of reversing a trend that he says damages the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. His report represents the broadest look at Defense Department security contracts so far, with a review of 125 of these agreements between 2007 and 2009. The panel's report highlights two cases in which security contractors ArmorGroup and EOD Technology relied on personnel linked to the Taliban. Last week, EOD Technology was one of eight security companies hired by the State Department under a $10 billion contract to provide protection for diplomats. A statement released by EOD Technology said the Lenoir City, Tenn.-based company had been encouraged to hire local Afghans and that it provided the names of its employees to the military for screening. The company said the military has never made it aware of any problems with its handling of the contract. In the case of ArmorGroup, the Senate panel says the company repeatedly relied on warlords to find local guards, including the uncle of a known Taliban commander. The uncle, nicknamed "Mr. White" by ArmorGroup after a character in the violent movie "Reservoir Dogs," was eventually killed after a U.S. raid that uncovered a cache of weapons, including anti-tank land mines. ArmorGroup, based in McLean, Va., lost a separate contract this year protecting the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after allegations surfaced that guards engaged in lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, said the company only engaged workers from local villages upon the "recommendation and encouragement" of U.S. special operations troops. Pitcher said that ArmorGroup stayed in "close contact" with the military personnel "to ensure that the company was constantly acting in harmony with, and in support of, U.S. military interests and desires." In August, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year. The workers, he said, would have to either join the government security forces or stop work because they were undermining Afghanistan's police and army and contributing to corruption.

April 27, 2010 RTTNews
An Afghan court has jailed a British manager of a firm providing security to the British embassy in Kabul on graft charges. Bill Shaw, serving for British security firm Group 4 Securicor, was found guilty of corruption by an anti-corruption court partly funded by British government, reports said Tuesday. He was sentenced to a two-year jail term, and fined $25,000. His lawyers said they were planning to appeal the verdict in a higher court. During trial, the defendant admitted that he had paid money to get two armored cars impounded by Afghan authorities under the belief that it was an official release payment. The prosecution case was that Shaw struck a deal with one Eidi Mohammad to secure the release of the vehicles, confiscated by Afghanistan's National Directorate over licensing irregularities, after agreeing to pay $25,000. However, Shaw denied this. Shaw, who was arrested on 3 March, will shortly be moved to the notorious Pul-e-Charkhi prison located outside the capital Kabul. Shaw served in the British army for 28 years and was awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire). Reports say Shaw's case is being used by Afghan authorities to show the world that foreign nationals were responsible for most of the corruption in the country.

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
November 9, 2010 BBC
A dentist who tricked the NHS out of more than £300,000 by claiming twice for working in a private jail has been jailed for two and a half years. John Hudson, 58, admitted two counts of dishonestly retaining wrongful credit from the NHS, and was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court on Tuesday. Hudson was paid by HMP Altcourse but also claimed £307,000 over two years. Patients from his practice at Whitworth near Rochdale, wrote letters of support for him to the court. 'Blatant dishonesty' -- Judge Graham Morrow QC said Hudson had been a pillar of the community in Whitworth, but was guilty of "calculated, blatant and persistent dishonesty" in taking money which should have gone for patient care. The court heard that dental services at the privately-run jail near Liverpool were also privately run. But Hudson exploited a weakness in the NHS system. When the NHS changed the way it ran prison dental contracts in 2006 Hudson should have ticked a box which stated he was already being paid privately at Altcourse. Box ticking -- The prosecution said that when he did not tick the box he was fully aware of what he was doing - effectively getting paid twice for the same work. The dentist approached Liverpool Primary Care Trust about a contract at the jail demanding £247,000 a year but accepting half that figure. Despite lengthy negotiations Hudson never revealed his private payments. The court heard he spent some of the money on holidays and education fees for his three children, but he is also more than £40,000 in debt and the NHS is suing him for £500,000.

October 5, 2010 Liverpool Echo
A PRISON dentist defrauded the NHS of more than £300,000 – and could now face jail himself. John Hudson treated inmates at HMP Altcourse, in Fazakerley, for more than two years. But the 58-year-old, who was paid £130,000 a year by the private jail, wrongfully billed the NHS for the work. Between May 2006 and July 2008, £306,961 flowed into his NatWest bank account. At Liverpool crown court yesterday, Hudson pleaded guilty to 27 counts of dishonestly retaining wrongful credit. Judge Graham Morrow QC granted the dentist unconditional bail, but warned him he could receive a custodial sentence when he returned to court on November 9. It was also alleged Hudson cheated East Lancashire primary care trust out of £32,000 at his private practice in his home town of Whitworth, Rochdale. Hudson denied those two offences and five further charges of dishonestly retaining wrongful credit of £65,385 from the NHS over four months between August and December 2008. Kevin Slack, prosecuting, told the court he did not think it would be in the public interest to pursue those charges.

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
September 6, 2011 The Australian
THE refugee lawyer who helped extract a multi-million-dollar payout for Cornelia Rau from the Howard government is preparing multiple civil lawsuits on behalf of asylum-seekers who claim they were assaulted and drugged on Christmas Island during mass escapes and rioting in March. George Newhouse will also ask West Australian police to investigate alleged assaults, sedations and wrongful detention of boatpeople as far back as July 2009 when Labor awarded a five-year contract to security firm Serco. Mr Newhouse told The Australian he was acting for detainees who had been isolated at Christmas Island's high-security "behaviour management unit" called Red Block, had their possessions taken from them and who believed sedatives had been put in their food without their knowledge. "I have been approached by a number of former detainees from Christmas Island who say that they were sedated without their consent and we are putting together a brief for the West Australian police," he said. Mr Newhouse intends to advertise in the Arabic and Farsi press for other detainees to come forward. The advertisement, entitled "A Message to All Former Immigration Detainees", states in part: "If you were assaulted, had your possessions taken from you, sedated without your consent and/or moved into restrictive custody, you may be entitled to pursue your legal rights and entitlements." The push comes six years after Ms Rau, an Australian resident, won a payout reported to be $2.6 million over her wrongful detention at Baxter detention centre. The treatment of Ms Rau, a psychiatric patient, sparked a government inquiry into the possible wrongful detention of more than 200 people. Mr Newhouse worked on that case and said yesterday he still had serious concerns about the use of force on immigration detainees, who were "obviously seriously mentally unwell". He said he regarded any sedation of anyone without their knowledge or consent as an assault. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship was not aware of any instance of detainees being sedated without their knowledge or consent. "The department requires medical intervention to occur with the person's consent within immigration detention facilities at all times. This includes sedation," a spokesman said. The Australian has been told at least two detainees allege they were assaulted and sedated on Christmas Island between March 13 and March 17 after being deemed ringleaders.

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.

Birmingham Prison, Birmingham, UK
January 23, 2012 BBC
A prison officer has been arrested by police investigating missing keys at the privatised HMP Birmingham. Inmates were locked in their cells for almost 24 hours after a master set of keys went missing in October. West Midlands Police confirmed that a man in his 30s was arrested in December and has been released on bail while investigations continue. G4S, which runs the privatised prison, said it was aware a member of staff was helping police with their enquiries. The company said it would not comment further while the matter was subject to an investigation. HMP Birmingham, in Winson Green, is the first jail in the country to be transferred to the private sector.

October 21, 2011 BBC
Birmingham Prison inmates were locked in their cells for almost a full day after a set of keys fitting every cell door went missing. Keys to the jail, which was taken over earlier this month by private security firm G4S, disappeared on Tuesday. The firm said all prisons had established contingency plans for incidents of this nature and there was no risk to public safety. The jail is the first in the UK to be transferred to the private sector. It is not known if the keys have since been found or what action is now being taken at the prison.

Brook House, Sussex, UK
July 12, 2010 The Guardian
Conditions at the privately run immigration deportation centre at Gatwick airport are fundamentally unsafe, according to a damning report by the chief inspector of prisons published today. Dame Anne Owers says that a year after the opening of G4S-run Brook House immigration removal centre she and her inspection team were disturbed to find one of the least safe immigration detention facilities that had been inspected. Her report says bullying and violence were serious problems at the time of their inspection in March and – unusually for immigration detention centres – drugs were also a serious problem. Those who were about to be deported or had been recalcitrant were placed in two oppressive holding rooms, which are windowless and seatless. Owers says they should be decommissioned immediately. Many of the 400 male detainees held at Brook House are ex-prisoners facing deportation. A number of them told the inspectors their experience at the removal centre was worse than their time in prison. "Our surveys, interviews and observations all evidenced a degree of despair amongst detainees about safety at Brook House which we have rarely encountered. At the time of the inspection, Brook House was an unsafe place," says Owers's report. Although the centre – which is built to the same standards as a category B prison – is designed to hold detainees for no more than 72 hours, the report says the average time spent in Brook House is three months, with one man having been there for 10 months. Its design as a short-term holding centre meant there was insufficient activity or education facilities. A significant number of staff left after an outbreak of serious disorder in June last year when detainees started fires and damaged one wing. "While many staff tried hard to maintain order and control, many felt embattled and some lacked the confidence to manage bad behaviour," says the report. "A number of staff reported feeling unsupported by managers, detainees claimed that some staff were bullied by more difficult detainees." The result was a confrontational approach in the treatment of detainees with a high use of force, separation often used as punishment, – which is against detention centre rules – and restrictions on freedom of movement in an attempt to combat violence. The report says force had been used to restrain detainees by staff 78 times in the previous six months. The chief inspector said force was generally used in line with approved techniques. However on one recent occasion a detainee was moved to temporary confinement after urinating through his door. The report says: "The officer's own record read: 'I entered first with the shield. A was standing up by the table and I hit him with the shield.' Another officer in the team had recorded that (officer N) used the shield to hold the detainee against the table in the room. Detainee folded his arms behind the shield." In a later incident in the same the same officer N is recorded having used his shield to pin a detainee to his bed. The chief inspector also details the use of the separation unit and cites the case of a detainee who was taken to a psychiatric institution after more than 80 days in separation for disturbed and disruptive behaviour. "The challenges of opening a new immigration removal centre should not be underestimated, particularly with inexperienced staff and challenging detainees, many of them ex-prisoners," said Owers. "But none of this can excuse the fundamentally unsafe state of Brook House, which must be urgently addressed by G4S and United Kingdom border agency."

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.

Dungavel Immigration Centre, South Lanarkshire, Scotland
September 11, 2011 Scotland on Sunday
HUNDREDS of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is being spent holding asylum-seekers at Dungavel detention centre for months at a time. Scotland on Sunday has learned that almost £500,000 has been spent housing 13 long-term detainees, several of whom have been at the former prison in South Lanarkshire for more than a year. Asylum-seekers are supposed to stay at so-called pre-departure centres for no more than a week. But in a number of cases, delays in the deportation system mean the UK Border Agency is holding people for an unspecified period. For the duration of detention, the Home Office pays security firm G4S £110 a day for each asylum-seeker. At Dungavel, two men have been held for two years and four months, while others have been held for more than a year, at a cost to taxpayers of about £480,000. Detaining Christian Likenge, 27, a former law student from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has been held for 28 months, has cost £100,000 to date. Likenge, a Christian preacher, is being held after the UK rejected his application for asylum but officials in his native country refused to give him the necessary identification to return home. "It's very difficult and frustrating being here this long," he said. "It's mental torture. I feel depressed. You miss your people, you miss your friends. You feel half-dead."

May 19, 2010 Morning Star
Concrete evidence of the Con-Dem government's contempt for the most vulnerable was already surfacing on Wednesday after one of their headline pledges was shown to be a farce. Anger erupted among human rights campaigners after it emerged that the coalition's announcement that it was committed to ending child detention for immigration purposes had already been severely undermined. Immigration Minister Damian Green boasted on Wednesday of the new government's quick progress that, "with immediate effect, children will no longer be detained overnight at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre. "This is something which many groups in Scotland have been calling for and we are now delivering this positive outcome." But it emerged that the detention of those children and their mothers would continue, as they are instead being transferred to the notorious Yarl's Wood Immigration Centre in Bedfordshire. And Scottish Education Secretary Mike Russell wrote to new Home Secretary Theresa May on Wednesday detailing his "strong concerns" when he found out that, on Monday, Pakistani woman Sehar Shebaz and her eight-month-old daughter Wanya were taken into Dungavel. The two are due to be moved to Yarl's Wood. Glasgow MSP Anne McLaughlin said: "The House of Commons has been highly critical of child detention in Yarl's Wood and we must see this practice brought to an end across the UK as soon as possible." Yarl's Wood made the headlines earlier this year after women, many of whom are rape and torture survivors, went on hunger strike against the alleged inhumane treatment they were suffering at the hands of the centre's staff, who are employed by security giant Serco. Black Women's Rape Action Project co-ordinator Cristel Amiss said the pledge to end child detention should be extended to mothers, pointing out that the trauma of a mother and child being separated causes suicidal feelings in mothers and symptoms such as nightmares and bed-wetting in children. She said there was no evidence that detention of mothers and children was necessary as the UK Border Agency itself has admitted that there is no risk of absconding. "No mother wants to rip her child out of school and put them through lying low somewhere - it doesn't happen." Ms Amiss also highlighted that Britain was a signatory to the UN Convention for Refugees, but "successive governments have dismantled that to the point where Britain does not give protection and safety, particularly for those who are the most vulnerable. "Women have told us they had to seek asylum and had to come to Britain because Britain has been involved in promoting wars they have fled and providing arms for rebel forces." The Home Office insisted that detention would continue while a review was carried out into alternatives. End Child Detention Now spokeswoman Esme Madil said: "We see absolutely no reason to delay this while the review is taking place. "Immigration detention should have ended immediately."

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
Companies Use Immigration Crackdown to Turn a Profit: Expose on immigration by Nina Bernstein at the New York Times, September 28, 2011
Duty of Care: Expose by Clare Sambrook on G4S and the death of Aboriginal elder Mr. Ward. June 8, 2011

April 15, 2011 All Africa
The Mozambican judicial authorities on Thursday ordered the release of the 24 workers from the firm Group Four Securicor (G4S) who were jailed in Maputo awaiting trial on charges relating to demonstrations outside the G4S offices on 6 April. The decision was made by Judge Ana Felisberto Cunha of the Maputo Judicial Court, on presentation of declarations of identity and residence by the strikers. The release of the workers comes after the company withdrew the criminal complaints it had made against the group. According to G4S managing director, Pedro Baltazar, the decision to withdraw the charges was taken during a meeting of the Board of Directors held in Maputo on Monday as part of efforts to find a peaceful solution to the labour dispute at the company. The workers' lawyer, Salvador Nkamati, said that the 24 will have to wait for new developments, and must comply with certain obligations imposed by the law. "They will have to appear before the Court whenever requested, as well as other relevant authorities such as the police and prosecutors" he explained. Riot police used excessive force to disperse workers who were protesting outside the human resources department of the Maputo branch of G4S. A riot police unit was ordered to the scene after protestors broke windows and tore up fencing. According to the newspaper "O Pais", despite having been beaten and arrested, the security guards are still loyal to the company and are all set on returning to work. However, the General Secretary of the National Union of Private Security Workers (SINTESP), Julio Sitoe, argued that they should be entitled to compensation from the company for injuries sustained when members of the riot police violently attacked the demonstration.

February 8, 2011 The Guardian
The Guardian has obtained a training video used by Securicor - now G4S - to instruct guards deporting asylum seekers on flights. The footage forms part of a dossier of evidence produced by G4S whistleblowers. The inaugural flight to Afghanistan should have been a showcase for a multinational company vying for the lucrative contract to deport foreign nationals on behalf of the British government. The plane heading to Kabul on 26 January 2004 had been chartered by a company that would go on to become part of the world's largest private security firm – G4S. Its cargo included refused asylum seekers in handcuffs. A number had their legs bound with tape and had been placed in the first-class cabin. But according to new evidence some of the guards on that flight, recruited to supervise the deportation, had not completed a full training course, and they included a number of inexperienced prison staff. Some had not even received Home Office accreditation. Shocking details about that flight and dozens more are contained in previously unseen evidence to parliament obtained by the Guardian. The documents reveal how G4S employees spent several years raising concerns about the potentially lethal methods being used on refused asylum seekers. The most disturbing technique involved bending deportees over in their seats and placing their head between their legs. The procedure became known within the company as "carpet karaoke" because it would force detainees, struggling for breath, to shout downwards toward the floor. Although an apparently successful method of keeping disruptive detainees quiet, it can lead to a form of suffocation known as positional asphyxia. Its alleged use is documented in written testimony by four G4S whistleblowers, submitted to the home affairs select committee in the aftermath of the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan who died on a British Airways flight from Heathrow in October last year. The cause of Mubenga's death remains unknown. Passengers on BA flight 77 reported seeing three guards heavily restraining the 46-year-old, who they said had been bent over and complained of breathing difficulties before his collapse. Police later arrested the guards in connection with the death and recently extended their bail until next month. Grievances -- All four whistleblowers have registered personal grievances against G4S, including some that have been settled out of court. Some are understood to have been themselves accused of inappropriate behaviour or later barred from conveying their concerns to the press. However, they now accuse G4S managers of presiding over a "macho" corporate culture that ostracised staff who showed compassion towards detainees or questioned the safety of their treatment. One of the whistleblowers, the company's serving charter operations manager, concedes that his detailed dossier to parliament is likely to result in his dismissal. The dossier records how he repeatedly wrote to his seniors expressing concerns, including one letter in which he stated that some G4S employees were playing "Russian roulette with detainees' lives".

January 18, 2011 The Age
THE wife of an Aboriginal elder who died of heatstroke in the back of a prison van says she is ''happy and relieved'' that Western Australia's work safety watchdog will lay charges over his death. WorkSafe WA has laid four charges under the Occupational Safety and Health Act against the state government, the transport company and the two staff involved. Mr Ward, 46, who cannot be fully named for cultural reasons, died of heatstroke in the prison van in January 2008. He was being transported from Laverton to Kalgoorlie on a drink-driving charge. WorkSafe charged the Department of Corrective Services with failing to ensure non-employees were not exposed to hazards. Transport contractor G4S was charged with failing to ensure the safety and health of a non-employee for the transportation of people in custody. Drivers Nina Stokoe and Graham Powell were charged with failing to take reasonable care to avoid affecting the safety or health of the person in custody. Mr Ward's wife said the charges had been ''a long time coming''.

December 26, 2010 The Guardian
A security company has recruited two former senior civil servants, sparking an outcry about the "revolving door" between Whitehall and the company. G4S, formerly Group 4 Securicor, hired Dr Peter Collecott, the one time director of corporate affairs at the Foreign Office, and David Gould, the Ministry of Defence's former chief operating officer in charge of defence equipment, according to a government report. The company, whose guards are under investigation over the death of deportee Jimmy Mubenga, supplies armed guards for embassy staff around the world. It has recruited former ministers including Lord Reid as well as senior figures in offender management. The disclosure comes two weeks after Sir George Young, the leader of the Commons, said he would examine the "revolving door" between Whitehall and defence companies. Denis MacShane, the Labour MP for Rotherham, called for a closer examination of civil servants before they are allowed to take private sector roles that may overlap with their former public duties. "There is great excitement over politicians and outside interests but the real issue is the gilded path from Whitehall where billions of pounds worth of public spending decisions are made into employment with companies that gained from such contracts and contacts," he said. "We need new rules so that anyone in public service cannot go straight into employment with companies to which they previously awarded contracts." Harry Fletcher, the assistant general secretary of the probation union Napo, who has been critical of the way G4S has recruited senior civil servants from the Home Office, said: "Appointments such as these give G4S a commercial advantage over their rivals and will encourage others to go down the same route." The appointments are listed in the latest report from the Advisory Committee of Business Appointments, released earlier this month. Collecott, 60, was the ambassador in Brazil from 2004 to 2008. He was a member of the Foreign Office's senior leadership forum that brought together the most senior heads of mission overseas. G4S said he has worked for their company on two separate domestic projects – once in 2009 and again this year, a contract which ended in September. The company has declined to explain the nature of the project. Gould, the MoD's former chief operating officer of defence equipment and support – which put him in charge of billions of pounds worth of procurement contracts – took up a consultant post with G4S last year. He left the MoD in 2008, and has also had roles at Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems Ltd. A spokesman for G4S said he worked on a specific project with G4S in 2009. Last month, G4S prompted an outcry by hiring Philip Wheatley, the former director general of the National Offender Management Service. Wheatley's G4S role, which he takes up just as Ken Clarke launches a plan to privatise much of the probation service he managed until June, has been criticised by probation unions. Wheatley's appointment is part of a pattern of G4S lobbying over probation privatisation. The company paid for a meeting at the last Conservative conference, where G4S "offender management" executive Jerry Petherick, spoke alongside the prisons minister, Crispin Blunt.

November 17, 2010 CBS 4
After watching the movie "The Hangover" with her brother and his friends, the 17-year-old girl headed off to her room. "She was undressing to get ready for bed, she had just taken her top off, she had taken off her shorts, and when she reached down to get her T-shirt, she saw a phone in her window and she screamed, grabbed something to cover herself and charged at the window, banged on it and yelled," the teen's mother said. "I heard that, it was loud and it was fear." For the first time since that August 15 incident the mother of the teenage girl is speaking out. In order to protect the identity of her daughter, CBS4 News has agreed not to use the family's name. "She was angry, she was hysterical because someone had completely violated her life, they were in her window that's so frightening," the mother said. "She just kept repeating the same things that she was naked, she was naked. She was totally mortified." The teen and her mother raced to the living room where her brother and his friends were still hanging out. When they discovered what happened the young men rushed outside to see if they could catch the Peeping Tom. All anyone spotted were the tail lights of a small SUV off in the distance. "One of the boys said, `Should I get the security guard?'" the mother said. "And I said, `Yes, absolutely.' Because they were just down the street." The family lives inside a gated community, agreeing to pay more than $3,500 a year in additional taxes for the added security provided by Wackenhut, now known as G4S. "If somebody wants to do harm they are not going to come into a neighborhood that has security sitting outside and security driving around 24 hours," She said. "You just feel safe in your home." When the family friend ran down to the guard house a block away, he saw the Wackenhut guard sweating and out of breath. The family friend told the guard that someone had been spying into the one of the bedrooms. "He goes, `I know, I know, I know,'" the mother recounted. "He was totally out of breath and he said, `I was just chasing the guy, I have a complete description of him, I'm just writing it down, I'll be there in a minute, I'm calling the police.'" A few minutes later the Wackenhut guard showed up to the house and introduced himself. His name: Eric Michael Owens. He reassured the mother and the teenage girl that everything would be fine, that they were safe now. He even added the reassuring biographical detail that he was a former Marine. "I patted him on the back and put my arm around him and said, `I'm so glad to have you here, especially to know you are an ex marine,'" The mother said. "`That makes me feel really good.'" The mother asked Owens if he had called the police. Owens assured her he did, but warned they might not come out on something like this. He even tried to make it seem that the Peeping Tom may not have been peeping at all. He may have been trying to break into the cars parked in the driveway. The teenage girl, however, made it clear there was a voyeur. She described the phone she saw pressed against her window – the new iPhone 4. At one point Owens, 28, raised the possibility that perhaps one of the boys in the house may have been responsible, telling the mom, "You can't trust anybody today." "It kind of just went over my head that he said that," she offered, "but my son caught it, and when we came inside he said, `That's weird that he said that mom. Did you ask to see his phone?' and I said, `No, why would I ask a security guard to see his phone?' It didn't even cross my mind." Other issues made the mother suspicious. In describing the man he chased, Owens gave a nearly perfect description of himself. Besides describing his own height, weight and hair color, he also said the Peeping Tom was wearing a track suit with a pair of stripes running up the side of the leg. Wackenhut guards have two stripes down the side of their pants. After about 30 minutes, the mother began to wonder why Coral Gables hadn't responded. When she called to check she was told by dispatchers that there was no record of anyone having called to report a prowler or a voyeur. When the police finally did arrive it didn't take long for them to focus on Owens. They asked Owens what type of phone he carries. He said he has an iPhone, but he told detectives he had left it with his girlfriend and didn't have it with him that night. But at the same time he was telling this to detectives, another security guard was telling police that she had indeed seen Owens with his iPhone earlier that evening. Police spread out to look for places where Owens might have hidden the phone and eventually they found it stashed at a construction site a few houses away. Police not only found images of the teenager naked on Owens' cell phone, but they also discovered he had secretly recorded video of her while she slept ten days earlier. Confronted with this evidence Owens confessed, according to police. "This was someone waiting outside our house, waiting for her, stalking her," the mother said. Owens was charged with burglary of an occupied dwelling and video voyeurism. His attorney, Christopher Pole, declined to comment on the criminal case which is scheduled for trial next year. Amazingly, it was soon uncovered that Owens had been arrested twice and convicted once in California for being a Peeping Tom. "They did a lousy job of screening this employee in particular," said Melissa Visconti, an attorney with The Ferraro Law Group, which is representing the family. Wackenhut issued a statement to the CBS4 I Team blaming "the peculiarities of California law" which list voyeurism under disorderly conduct. "Given all the information available to the local hiring manager at the time, the decision to employ Mr. Owens was reasonable," the statement argued. For the mother of the young victim, Wackenhut's response is far from good enough. She notes with amazement that no one from Wackenhut ever came by the house to check to see if the family was okay or to apologize for what happened. Two weeks after the incident, Wackenhut's president, Drew Levine, sent a rather sterile letter noting that, "Unfortunately, sometimes people do unexpected things that hurt others. We regret that Mr. Owens caused you harm." The letter, however, was addressed to the wrong person and the name of the street they live on was misspelled. "I want this company to take responsibility for their negligence in this, for hiring someone who had a history of doing this and putting them in a neighborhood where we were meant to feel safe in," the mother said. "This is a classic case of putting the fox in the hen house," added Jeffrey Sloman, the former U.S. Attorney in South Florida who, along with Visconti, is representing the family. Sloman noted that Wackenhut advertises itself as the leader in background security investigations and yet here, in this case, they fail to adequately investigate the people they hire. "In this case a public company which holds itself out to be the world's leader in background investigative services," Sloman said. "And then you find out they hire a previously convicted voyeur and place him in the very environment in which he thrives. It's appalling."

October 29, 2010 Financial Times
G4S, the security group, is to be replaced on a £30m-a-year ($48m) contract to deport detainees from the UK, the Home Office said. The loss comes after three security guards employed by G4S were arrested over the death of an Angolan man last week. However, the UK Border Agency said its decision to award a new four-year “escort services” contract to Reliance Security rather than G4S, which had done the job for the past five years, had no connection with the incident. Jimmy Mubenga, a 46-year-old deportee, died after he collapsed onboard a British Airways flight that was preparing to depart to his homeland from London’s Heathrow airport. The Home Office declined to disclose the sums involved in the G4S or Reliance contracts, citing commercial confidentiality. However, G4S said that it would take a hit of £30m in revenues and £2m in profits next year – a fraction of the company’s £7.4bn forecast sales and £393.7m pre-tax profits in the year to the end of December. Shares in G4S fell 4.8p at 261.7p. G4S said it was disappointed at the decision to hand the contract to its privately owned rival.

October 15, 2010 Bloomberg
Computer Sciences Corp., an information-technology company that relies on government business for almost 40 percent of its revenue, won $4 billion in U.S. contracts in fiscal 2009 after failing to pay more than 250 employees the wages and benefits they were owed. Computer Sciences, based in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, topped a list of 15 companies that received more than $6 billion in federal contracts despite records of wage, health or safety violations, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office. Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S. chicken processor; Corrections Corp. of America, the nation’s biggest private operator of prisons; and Wackenhut Services Inc., owned by U.K.- based security contractor G4S Plc, are also among the contractors identified. The names of the companies, not revealed in the public report released Oct. 1, were provided by Representative Robert Andrews, a New Jersey Democrat who criticized the awarding of contracts to companies that didn’t meet required standards. “If a company has a pattern of violations, at the very least, it should raise greater scrutiny before they get government contracts,” Andrews, chairman of the panel that requested the investigation, said in a telephone interview. “There doesn’t seem to be much incentive to follow the laws because you can still get a contract anyway.” The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, covered a sample of contracts in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2009. ‘Work to Do’ -- Computer Sciences, which was awarded the $4 billion from the Defense Department and NASA, was assessed $1.6 million in back pay by the Labor Department covering a five-year period. Tyson, with more than $500 million in Defense, Agriculture and Justice department contracts, was cited for more than 100 health and safety violations by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the GAO said. Wackenhut, which received $200 million in security contracts with the Defense, Agriculture and Homeland Security departments and NASA, violated fair-labor laws, according to Labor Department data cited by the GAO. “Some companies that continue to receive lucrative government contracts not only pay rock-bottom wages, but have long histories of labor and workplace safety violations,” Representative Patrick Murphy, a Pennsylvania Democrat who joined in requesting the GAO report, said in an e-mailed statement. “We have a lot of work to do to ensure that the federal contracting process encourages safe and good-paying jobs.” Workers Misclassified -- In addition to the pay violations, Computer Sciences didn’t provide protections against cave-ins for employees working in a trench more than 10 feet (3 meters) deep, according to a 2006 inspection by the occupational safety agency cited by the GAO. Chris Grandis, a company spokesman, said Computer Sciences paid the back wages to employees assigned to a U.S. immigration office in Vermont in 2009, after the Labor Department found they had been misclassified as contract workers entitled to less compensation. The company also received a minor citation from the occupational safety agency and agreed to pay a small fine, he said. Computer Sciences, a government contractor since 1961, received 37 percent of its $16.1 billion in revenue from federal contracts in the fiscal year ended April 2, according to a regulatory filing. Army, Immigration -- It ranked 12th in U.S. government contracts in fiscal 2009, the year studied by the GAO, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its biggest federal contract that year was with the U.S. Army to provide engineering and logistics support for the Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command. Computer Sciences also has a contract with the Homeland Security Department for a processing system used in applications for immigration benefits and services. The company said on Oct. 4 that it was one of four firms that will share in a $2.8 billion contract by the Social Security Administration for consulting and information technology services. Tyson has received more than 100 U.S. health and safety citations, including for an incident in which a worker died after being asphyxiated in a pit of wastewater debris, according to the GAO report. Last year, Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson won $500 million in federal contracts, the GAO’s report showed. Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman, said the company seeks to comply with federal regulations and the report doesn’t give “the full context of the issues involved, nor does it report the measures our company takes to operate responsibly.” Corrections Corp. -- Corrections Corp., based in Nashville, Tennessee, was cited for five safety violations since 2005 and for failing to follow labor laws when firing an employee for union participation, according to the GAO. Last year, it was awarded $800 million in contracts, the agency said. Steve Owen, a Corrections Corp. spokesman, said the U.S. contracts are subject to oversight and accountability. He declined to comment on safety and labor violations cited in the GAO report. Wackenhut, based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, received $200 million in contracts, the GAO said. From 2005 through 2009, the Labor Department said the company owed $4.4 million in back wages to more than 2,100 employees, and OSHA cited the company for seven cases of health and safety violations, resulting in $9,000 in fines. The company agreed this year to pay $290,000 in back pay and interest to 446 rejected black job applicants. Susan Pitcher, a Wackenhut spokeswoman, said the company had no response to the report. Violations by other federal contractors included hiring undocumented workers, failing to meet environmental standards and fraudulently billing Medicare or Medicaid, according to the report.

October 8, 2010 CBS News
U.S. reliance on private security in Afghanistan that is poorly monitored and often results in the hiring of Afghan warlords is profiting the Taliban and could endanger coalition troops, according to a Senate report. Military officials warn, however, that ending the practice of hiring local guards could worsen the security situation. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee which issued the report, said Thursday that he is worried the U.S. is unknowingly fostering the growth of Taliban-linked militias and posing a threat to U.S. and coalition troops at a time when Kabul is struggling to recruit its own soldiers and police officers. The investigation follows a separate congressional inquiry in June that concluded trucking contractors pay tens of millions of dollars a year to local warlords for convoy protection. "Almost all are Afghans. Almost all are armed," Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said of the army of young men working under U.S. contracts. State Dept. Awarding Contractors Up to $10B -- "These contractors threaten the security of our troops and risk the success of our mission," he told reporters. "There is significant evidence that some security contractors even work against our coalition forces, creating the very threat that they are hired to combat." "We need to shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests and contribute to the corruption that weakens the support of the Afghan people for their government," he added. A well placed source in the Afghan government told CBS News' Fazul Rahim that the senate report "is what we have been saying for the past couple of years. This report confirms our suspicions." The Defense Department doesn't necessarily disagree but warns that firing the estimated 26,000 private security personnel operating in Afghanistan in the near future isn't practical. This summer, U.S. forces in Afghanistan pledged to increase their oversight of security contractors and set up two task forces to look into allegations of misconduct and to track the money spent, particularly among lower-level subcontractors. The Defense Contract Management Agency has increased the number of auditors and support staff in the region by some 300 percent since 2007. And in September, Gen. David Petraeus, the top war commander in Afghanistan, directed his staff to consider the impact that contract spending has on military operations. The military says providing young Afghan men with employment can prevent them from joining the ranks of Taliban fighters. And bringing in foreign workers to do jobs Afghans can do is likely to foster resentment, they say. Also, contract security forces fill an immediate need at a time when U.S. forces are focused on operations, commanders say. "As the security environment in Afghanistan improves, our need for (private security contractors) will diminish," Petraeus told the Senate panel in July. "But in the meantime, we will use legal, licensed and controlled (companies) to accomplish appropriate missions." Levin says he isn't suggesting that the U.S. stop using private security contractors altogether. But, he adds, the U.S. must reduce the number of local security guards and improve the vetting process of new hires if there's any hope of reversing a trend that he says damages the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. His report represents the broadest look at Defense Department security contracts so far, with a review of 125 of these agreements between 2007 and 2009. The panel's report highlights two cases in which security contractors ArmorGroup and EOD Technology relied on personnel linked to the Taliban. Last week, EOD Technology was one of eight security companies hired by the State Department under a $10 billion contract to provide protection for diplomats. A statement released by EOD Technology said the Lenoir City, Tenn.-based company had been encouraged to hire local Afghans and that it provided the names of its employees to the military for screening. The company said the military has never made it aware of any problems with its handling of the contract. In the case of ArmorGroup, the Senate panel says the company repeatedly relied on warlords to find local guards, including the uncle of a known Taliban commander. The uncle, nicknamed "Mr. White" by ArmorGroup after a character in the violent movie "Reservoir Dogs," was eventually killed after a U.S. raid that uncovered a cache of weapons, including anti-tank land mines. ArmorGroup, based in McLean, Va., lost a separate contract this year protecting the U.S. Embassy in Kabul after allegations surfaced that guards engaged in lewd behavior and sexual misconduct at their living quarters. Susan Pitcher, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services, ArmorGroup's parent company, said the company only engaged workers from local villages upon the "recommendation and encouragement" of U.S. special operations troops. Pitcher said that ArmorGroup stayed in "close contact" with the military personnel "to ensure that the company was constantly acting in harmony with, and in support of, U.S. military interests and desires." In August, Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced that private security contractors would have to cease operations by the end of the year. The workers, he said, would have to either join the government security forces or stop work because they were undermining Afghanistan's police and army and contributing to corruption.

September 29, 2010 NBC Miami
When eight current and former employees, supervisors and executives for Wackenhut Security, now called G4S, were arrested recently and charged with racketeering, one man felt justice. "I felt vindicated, vindicated," said Marty Bair. Bair was a senior supervisor for Wackenhut when he told top executives there that the company was dramatically overbilling Miami-Dade County for empty guard posts on transit systems. They fired him. "They did everything they could to try to destroy me, and prevent me from telling the truth," said Bair. Wackenhut says they fired him for other reasons and have attacked his credibility as well as his findings, but Bair is suing Wackenhut over the firing. And his lawyer says Wackenhut owes him. "They fired him because he took part in uncovering their cover up," said attorney Gary Costales. Costales is referring to allegations from Miami-Dade County and from a separate whistleblower lawsuit accusing Wackenhut management of "systematically" overbilling the county for empty guard posts and fraudulent timesheets. The lawsuit claims the overbilling amounts to $17 million over the life of the contract while the county, which sampled a much smaller timeframe, found the overbilling amounted to several million dollars. Wackenhut says both allegations are wrong and points to supportive statements from judges. In an NBC Miami investigation in 2007, more than a dozen current and former guards and supervisors who worked for Wackenhut and its contractor gave detailed accounts of how they were routinely instructed to work a few extra hours yet sign timesheets declaring they worked a full 8-hour shift. They were also offered overtime for extra hours so timesheets could place them in two guard posts. Even though it was like free money to them, they told NBC Miami they knew it was wrong and spoke up. When they did, many were fired. Wackenhut has insisted previously those employees were let go for other reasons. Drew Levine ran Wackenhut's Florida operations at the time of some of the questionable billings, and now Levine is Wackenhut's (G4S) top executive in North America. But did Levine know about the widespread overbilling of taxpayers back then? Wackenhut says Levine was not involved in day to day operations. But Bair says he informed Levine face-to-face. "I briefed him personally, in 1999," Bair said. Wackenhut has consistently said it did nothing wrong and disputes the Miami-Dade County audit that lead Mayor Carlos Alvarez to demand Wackenhut repay taxpayers millions of dollars. And on Monday, a Wackenhut spokesman said Levine's attorney says he's been told by prosecutors he will not be arrested, as the other current and former employees have. One of them, Eddy Esquivel, who runs G4S' operations in Miami-Dade, sent an internal executive memo five days before his arrest Friday. His memo discusses the arrest of several current and former employees September 10, calling the case full of "grave injustices," and that Wackenhut "stands squarely behind me" amid a "malicious corporate campaign" against Wackenhut and warns his colleagues, "Do not be tempted to buy into the negative and sensationalistic media spin." A new internal memo from Levine offers talking points to managers in the wake of the arrests. He says Wackenhut made mistakes due to timesheets filled out by hand, but without any intent to defraud taxpayers. And the lawyer for Rene Pedrayes, who ran Wackenhut in Miami-Dade before being promoted to run the Florida region, says they'd been assured he, too, would not be arrested, and blamed the arrest on a lying, disgruntled former employee. As for Bair, is he sorry he told his employer the unflattering information? "Nope, not at all," he said. "Anyone who knows me, knows I will tell the truth."

September 25, 2010 NBC Miami
The man at the head of Wackenhut security services in Florida at the time of a 2007 NBC Miami investigation was arrested and charged with racketeering Friday, NBCMiami has learned. Rene Pedrayes, 49, was general manager of Wackenhut's state operations when he left the company amid allegations that the company systematically overcharged Miami-Dade taxpayers million of dollars for empty guard posts on county transit. [Read the arrest affidavit (PDF).] State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle also announced the arrest of two other high-ranking Wackenhut officials who oversaw the transit contract. Eduardo "Eddy" Esquivel was the top Wackenhut official in Miami-Dade County, managing the firm's lucrative security contract for MetroRail and Peoplemover train systems as well as the county's juvenile detention center, and Erika M. Ryan worked as a secretary and assistant to then-project manager of the Wackenhut Miami-Dade Transit contract, Elijah G. Pendleton. Pendleton was himself arrested and charged with racketeering two weeks ago. Two others were also arrested with Pendleton during the first wave of arrests related to the Wackenhut case. All are charged with racketeering, a felony. A county audit found Wackenhut overcharged taxpayers by several million dollars over three years, while an independent audit linked to a whistleblower lawsuit against Wackenhut found the amount as high as roughly $17 million over the life of the contract. Wackenhut has said it did nothing wrong, while investigators on the lawsuit case claim to have gone through every single invoice and timesheet. Will there be more arrests? Fernandez Rundle's office isn’t saying. But documents have made reference to the possibility of Wackenhut being charged as a corporation, a possibility that would make government contracts more difficult for Wackenhut nationwide. Government contracts are an important part of the security giant, which was founded in South Florida but has since been taken over by a British firm. Its American operations are still based in Palm Beach Gardens, where it is run by president Drew Levine -- the same executive who presided over the firm during the unfolding scandal in Miami-Dade County.

September 10, 2010 Miami Herald
Miami-Dade authorities have charged five former employees of security firm Wackenhut -- which has been accused of overbilling taxpayers for millions of dollars -- with racketeering, court records show. The arrest warrants issued for Nathan Holmes, Robert Alvarado, William Acosta, Roberto Pereira and Elijah Pendleton, have been sealed as part of the ongoing probe, according to documents filed in Miami-Dade court. A Miami-Dade audit previously found that Wackenhut -- which guarded Metrorail stations for more than a decade -- overbilled the county from $3.3 million to $5.8 million for work it never performed. Other estimates put the number much higher. In February, county commissioners voted to approve a settlement in which Wackenhut would pay the county $3 million in compensation. Documents filed in court this week do not detail the allegations against the four men. At least one man, Pendleton, was removed from working on the Metrorail contract after a Miami Herald story in 2006 detailed a whistle blower lawsuit against Wackenhut. A spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office declined to comment. According to court records, the warrants were sealed by a judge so that Miami-Dade police public corruption detectives can ``seek cooperation of one of more of the said Defendants in furtherance of the investigation.''

August 27, 2010 Yahoo
Judge James Cacheris of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has denied Defendants ArmorGroup North America ("AGNA"), ArmorGroup International, Wackenhut Services, Inc., and Cornelius Medley's motions to dismiss whistleblower James Gordon's lawsuit brought under the False Claims Act. On September 9, 2009, Mr. Gordon, former Director of Operations of AGNA, filed a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit under the False Claims Act in United States District Court for the District of Columbia, charging that ArmorGroup management retaliated against him for whistleblowing, internally and to the United States Department of State ("DoS"), about illegalities committed by ArmorGroup in the performance of AGNA's contracts with the United States to provide security services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan and at the U.S. Naval base in Bahrain. The Complaint charges that during Mr. Gordon's seven-month tenure as Director of Operations, he investigated, attempted to stop, and reported to DoS a myriad of serious violations committed by ArmorGroup, including: •Severely understaffing the guard force necessary to protect the U.S. Embassy; •Allowing AGNA managers and employees to frequent brothels notorious for housing trafficked women in violation of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act; •Endangering the safety of the guard force during transport to and from the Embassy by attempting to substitute company-owned subpar, refurbished vehicles from Iraq rather than purchasing armored escort vehicles as promised to DoS; •Knowingly using funds to procure cheap counterfeit goods from a company in Lebanon owned by the wife of AGNA's Logistics Manager; and •Engaging in practices to maximize profit from the contract with reckless disregard for the safety and security of the guard force, the U.S. Embassy, and its personnel. In his Memorandum Opinion (August 27, 2010), Judge Cacheris noted that "Plaintiff alleges and Defendants offer no facts to dispute that Defendants ... began to try to constructively discharge [Mr. Gordon] by 'making [his] working conditions intolerable.'" Judge Cacheris further noted that "Plaintiff alleges, and Defendants have not offered any evidence refuting the fact, that [Defendant] Medley excluded Plaintiff from management meetings, shunned him, and relegated him to a position of persona non grata in the office" and that "Medley made clear to Plaintiff by his behavior, and to other staff members by his direct boasts, that his priority was to force Gordon to quit." In denying Defendants' Motion for Summary Judgment, Judge Cacheris concluded that "there is a genuine issue of material fact regarding the continued nature and duration of the allegedly illegal acts Plaintiff was requested and required to participate in." The parties will now proceed into the discovery phase of the litigation. According to Debra S. Katz, counsel for Mr. Gordon, "this is an important victory for conscientious employees, like Mr. Gordon, who blow the whistle on fraudulent practices by defense contractors and wind up then paying the ultimate price. The court's decision today makes clear that such employees can bring federal claims under the False Claims Act to obtain redress."

August 19, 2010 Miami Herald
It's hard to be a security guard and a peeping tom at the same time. That's what police say Eric Michael Owens of Miami found out last Sunday when he was called to a home in the Old Cutler Bay neighborhood to help a family who reported spotting an intruder in the middle of the night. The security guard got into hot water after Coral Gables police arrived and questioned Owens, whose story did not add up, they said. The intruder was Owens, police said. Coral Gables police arrested him later Sunday morning. He is accused of entering the home and taking photos with his cellphone of an unidentified 17-year-old girl as she was undressing. The incident wasn't the first time Owens, a security guard for G4S Secure Solutions USA, formerly known as Wackenhut, had taken photos of the teenager, he later confessed. And it wasn't the first time Owens was charged with the same offense. He was convicted in 2004 in California for peeping into someone's home. That same year, Owens was also convicted of ``disorderly conduct'' -- a misdemeanor -- and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps, which he joined in 2001. Coral Gables police charged Owens, 28, with two felonies -- two counts of burglary -- and three misdemeanors -- two counts of video voyeurism and one count of providing false information to police. According to Sgt. Janette Frevola, a spokeswoman for the Coral Gables Police Department, this is what happened: Owens was on his Sunday shift when he entered a Coral Gables home and took photos of the unidentified 17-year-old girl as she was undressing. Frevola said she did not know how the security guard entered the property. At one point, the girl noticed someone with a cellphone. She screamed. About 2:48 a.m., another person in the house called the security guard at the front gate of Old Cutler Bay, and the guard asked Owens, who was on a roving patrol, to check it out. Frevola would not identify the address of the house or the victim. Owens came to the house and spoke with the girl's parents, telling them police were on their way. By 3:32 a.m., when police had not shown up, the family called the Coral Gables Police Department. Officers arrived and questioned Owens, whose story did not match the accounts of other people. Meanwhile, Owens' phone was missing. Police later found it after searching the neighborhood. It contained images of the teenage girl. Officers took Owens to the station for questioning. He confessed to the crime -- and to taking photos of the same teenager two weeks earlier, police said. "The officers did an excellent job of putting all the pieces together while it was happening,'' Frevola said. Owens was released Monday. Meanwhile, he is out of a job. "G4S takes these matters very seriously and is committed to upholding the highest standards of honesty and professionalism and to preserving the trust of the public and our clients. . . . Upon learning of Mr. Owens' recent conduct, G4S immediately terminated Owens' employment,'' a company statement said. Monica Lewman-Garcia, a G4S spokeswoman, said the company had conducted a preemployment background check before hiring Owens in 2008. Yet, until Owens' bond hearing Monday, G4S did not know he had been convicted of peeping into an inhabited dwelling in California in 2004, she said.

August 16, 2010 CBS 4
A suspected peeping tom was arrested over the weekend after he allegedly used a cell phone to spy on a woman in her Coral Gables home. Michael Owens, 28, was employed by Wackenhut and worked as a guard in the Old Cutler Bay Community. According to Coral Gables police spokeswoman Sgt. Janette Frevola on Saturday he snuck into a woman's yard and used a cell phone to video tape a young girl undressing in her bedroom. The girl reportedly spotted Owens who took off. Instead of contacting police, Frevola said the girl's mother called the gated community's gatehouse to report a prowler. According to the arrest affidavit, Owens went to the house and told the woman that he was there to investigate the incident. When asked if the police had been called, Owens reportedly lied and said yes they had. After talking with the woman, he went back to the gatehouse where allegedly told a co-worker that the woman said she was fine and that the police didn't need to be called in. Frevola said when the police never came, the woman called them directly. When they questioned Owens, he reportedly filed a false written statement concerning a prowler in the neighborhood. Owens was arrested and during questioning police say he admitted to taping the girl undressing in her room two weeks ago. He's been charged with two counts of burglary, two counts of video voyeurism and lying to a law enforcement officer.

August 8, 2010 Miami Herald
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek is proud of his résumé: state trooper, state legislator, member of Congress. But there's one job always left out of stump speeches and campaign ads: his nine-year stint selling security contracts for Wackenhut Corp., which also employed his wife and his mother as lobbyists. The reason Meek would not choose to highlight his ties to Wackenhut are obvious. The Palm Beach Gardens-based corporation was accused of overbilling Miami-Dade County for security at transit stations and agreed to a $7.5 million settlement earlier this year. Meek's chief rival in the Democratic primary, Jeff Greene, has pointed to Meek's work for Wackenhut as a prime example of the ``pay-to-play'' culture in politics. Wackenhut's political arm gave Meek the maximum campaign donation allowed under the law -- $5,000 for the primary and another $5,000 for the general election. "It is time to send Meek and his lobbyist cronies a wake-up call that the hardworking people of Florida have had enough of their politics as usual,'' said Greene, a billionaire bankrolling his campaign without special-interest money. In a brief interview Monday after voting early in Miami, Meek denied that he had ever given Wackenhut preferential treatment. As a state senator in 2000, he voted against a bill largely favored by the prison industry that established guidelines for bringing out-of-state inmates into Florida. "I've been against privatization of prisons,'' Meek said. ``Wackenhut had no undue influence over me whatsoever.'' Meek's mother, former U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek, quietly withdrew as a lobbyist for Wackenhut in November, just four months after Miami-Dade County commissioners cleared her of any conflicts of interest in her dual representation of the county and the security company. At the time, the county and Wackenhut were at loggerheads. Miami-Dade claimed the company bilked taxpayers out of between $3.3 and $5.8 million by doctoring time sheets and leaving county transit stations unguarded. Wackenhut countered with a lawsuit seeking $20 million in damages. The two sides reached a settlement in February, around the same time Carrie Meek stopped lobbying for the county and her son's Senate campaign was getting underway. Under the deal, Wackenhut agreed to pay $3 million to the county and $4.5 million to a former Wackenhut whistle-blower and her lawyers. In return, Wackenhut got permission to compete again for Miami-Dade government contracts. The dispute with the county emerged after Meek joined Wackenhut in 1994. He won a Florida House seat that year and remained with the company until he was elected to Congress in 2002. He earned as much as $68,500 annually with the security firm. Meek's wife, Leslie, picked up the Wackenhut lobbying contract from 2004 to 2006. His mother, Carrie, registered to lobby for Wackenhut in 2007.

August 2, 2010 News-Leader
Nassau County Sheriff's office detectives arrested a 19-year-old Yulee man Tuesday for allegedly forcing a 14-year-old girl to have sex with him. They arrested a 45-year-old Bryceville man July 19 for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old girl. Police arrested William Harry Steedley III, 19, of 85216 Joann Road in Yulee on a charge of sexual battery in an alleged February incident, and additional charges of grand theft and dealing in stolen property from an unrelated incident in April. Authorities said Steedley allegedly approached a 14-year-old girl from behind, covered her mouth and forced her to have sex with him. According to Steedley's arrest warrant, which was issued July 21, the incident occurred between Feb. 15 and Feb. 20. The additional charges of grand theft and dealing in stolen property stem from an April incident in which he allegedly stole a handgun from a friend's home in Yulee and sold it for $150. Steedley is being held in lieu of $135,006 bond at Nassau County Jail. Darren Robert Winslow, 45, of 14304 US 301 in Bryceville, an armed security guard employed by Wackenhut in Jacksonville, is charged with two counts of sexual battery and one count of lewd and lascivious behavior toward a minor. The victim allegedly told authorities she and Winslow had engaged in various types of sexual activity an estimated 29 times over the past month. Winslow reportedly admitted to one incident, in which he didn't immediately stop the victim from touching him, but denied any other sexual activity with her. Detectives collected DNA and other physical evidence from places where the sexual activity between Winslow and the victim was said to have happened. Winslow is being held in lieu of $450,006 bond at Nassau County Jail.

July 29, 2010 WA Today
The family of an Aboriginal elder who roasted to death in searing heat in the back of a prison van will receive a $3.2 million compensation payment from the WA government, one of the largest such payouts in Australian history. It is an ex-gratia settlement by the government to the family of Mr Ward, whose full name cannot be used for cultural reasons, and includes a $200,000 interim payment already awarded. Attorney-General Christian Porter today revealed $1.4 million of the money would go to Mr Ward's widow, Nancy Donegan, with amounts of $400,000 to be placed in trust accounts for each of her four children. Mr Ward, 46, of Warburton, died in January 2008 while being transported 360 kilometres from Laverton to Kalgoorlie to face a drink-driving charge. Temperatures in the van, operated by private security company G4S, reached more than 50 degrees after it was revealed the air-conditioning in the van was broken. The compensation - which Mr Porter said was one of the largest ex-gratia payments by a government in Australian history, as well as that of common law countries - came after negotiations with the family's lawyers, the Aboriginal Legal Service, and on receipt of legal advice detailing what action could be brought against the state, and what that case might look like. It represented an "unequivocal apology" by the government. "It's meant to show contrition... deep, deep, remorse for what has occurred," Mr Porter said. It also took into account the fact that no criminal charges would be laid. While it did not come with an admission of liability, Ms Donegan could still take legal action if she chose. An "initial view" was that legal action would be likely, Mr Porter said. "I don't know if that position will change by virtue of this payment," he said. "If this does not bring finality to the family, (if civil action was to be launched), we don't want to stand in the way of Ms Donegan embarking on that action." ALS chief executive Dennis Eggington said that his organisation would consult with Mr Ward's family about possible civil proceedings against both the government and G4S. The ALS also requested further information to determine whether it would apply to have a coronial inquest into the death reopened. He described the culpability of G4S as "astronomical" and called on the company to apologise. "That's the least G4S can do," he said. "They have been very quiet in all of this. We've been very disappointed." ALS director of legal services Peter Collins said the role of G4S in Mr Ward's death was "absolutely diabolical". "It was their van, their employees driving the van, at a bare minimum (G4S) should be offering compensation to the family," he said.

July 28, 2010 Scoop
A private prison company that is bidding to run Mt Eden remand prison is under scrutiny in Australia for failing to make recommended changes after a high profile death in custody, said the Green Party today. An Australian parliamentary inquiry this week has heard that G4S has not implemented all the recommendations of an inquiry into the death of an Aboriginal elder in 2008. In particular, G4S has not been providing training to its workers in remote areas, according to Ian Johnston, the Australian Department of Corrective Services Commissioner. Green Party Corrections spokesperson David Clendon said “All of the prison corporations bidding to run Mt Eden remand prison have skeletons in their closets. It’s time for John Key’s Government to review whether any of these companies are suitable to operate in New Zealand,” said. “It is not good enough for the Minister to hide behind the tender process. She needs to let the public know what the minimum standards are for prison corporations who want to operate in New Zealand.” There had been two damning reports of G4S UK operations in the last month and now their Australian operations were coming under scrutiny, added Mr Clendon. “New Zealand’s public prisons are a long way from perfect but the evidence shows that privatisation is no magic bullet. It will not make our prisons safer, better or cheaper. “The community and public sector have lots of good innovative ideas about how the prison system can be improved. The Government should listen to them rather than flogging off prison management to corporations. “Private prisons have to make a profit, which means either cut backs on staff levels and rehabilitation, or charging more per prisoner. The perverse incentive to make a profit out of prisoners is at the heart of the problem,” said Mr Clendon.

July 2, 2010 APP
Protesters over an Aboriginal elder's death from heat stroke in a prison van have accused the West Australian Director of Public Prosecutions of racism for not laying charges. More than 100 people rallied outside DPP Joe McGrath's office in downtown Perth office on Friday chanting "Racist Police" and "Racist DPP". Mr McGrath announced on Monday that no charges would be laid against two security guards over the 46-year-old elder's death because there was insufficient evidence of criminal negligence.

June 27, 2010 The Western Australian
The State's top prosecutor has told the family of an Aboriginal elder who died of heatstroke in the back of a prison van that criminal charges will not be laid over his shocking treatment. The West Australian understands that DPP Joe McGrath flew to the remote community of Warburton over the weekend where he broke the news to relatives of Mr Ward. The decision is expected to get an angry reaction from family members who have long called for charges to be laid over the matter. The West Australian was unable to contact Mr Ward's relatives today. A spokeswoman for the DPP declined to comment. The latest development comes a year after State Coroner Alastair Hope handed down a damning report on the disgraceful treatment of Mr Ward, whose first name is not used for cultural reasons. Mr Hope found two transport guards, Nina Stokes and Graham Powell, the Department of Corrective Services and private prison transport company G4S had contributed to Mr Ward's death. Mr Ward died after being driven 360km in a prison van from Laverton to Kalgoorlie in 42C without air-conditioning in January 2008. Mr Ward's cousin told The West Australian earlier this month that that the matter had dragged on too long and the family wanted both drivers charged as soon as possible over the death. Daisy Ward said at the time that family members were getting frustrated about the lack of action and wanted justice. "I still want them to lay a charge," she said last month. "If it was an Aboriginal person that did that, they would get thrown behind bars. My cousin was like in a furnace…like he was cooked alive in the back of the van." Deaths in Custody Watch Committee Marc Newhouse said this afternoon that he was shocked and dismayed to learn that the DPP would not press charges against the two guards who transported Mr Ward. He said the information on how the DPP reached the decision needed to be released publicly. "There has basically been a lack of transparency in this whole process," he said. "It just highlights that there are some serious flaws in our justice system that when something of this nature happens and no-one is brought to account for negligence." Mr Newhouse said Mr Ward's family and community of Warburton would be devastated by the decision. "It is a complete kick in the guts," he said. "It is going to do nothing for Aboriginal people's confidence in the criminal justice system and particularly where Aboriginal people are the victims." "The community has been very, very patient, including the family, and that patience has just ended." Mr Newhouse said the Deaths in Custody Watch Committee would seek legal advice to determine whether charges could be brought against the Department of Corrective Services or private prisoner transport company, G4S. Mr Hope referred his report to the DPP under a section of the legislation which allows his findings to be sent to prosecutors on the basis that he believed indictable offences may have been committed. But in his written findings, Mr Hope recognised that legal issues relating to the involvement of various individuals and organisations were "complicated". "I do not wish to create unrealistic expectations on the part of the family or in the hope that they will see 'justice' as a result of such a report (to the DPP) being made," Mr Hope said.

April 7, 2010 Info 4 Security
G4S Wackenhut is changing its name to G4S, in turn reflecting the company’s vision of providing comprehensive security solutions. Brian Sims reports. By building on Wackenhut’s proven success in the States as "the premier supplier of manned security services" G4S has aggressively positioned itself to deliver a new category of integrated security solution that combines manpower and technology. Through a series of acquisitions that includes the Nuclear Security Services Corp, Touchcom Inc, Adesta and AMAG Technology, G4S will continue to evolve its core competencies from its Wackenhut roots to deliver integrated security solutions for greater performance and efficiency. “Our transformation from G4S Wackenhut to G4S is not something that happened overnight,” explained Drew Levine, president of G4S Secure Solutions. “Since before Wackenhut became part of the G4S family of companies, we’ve been developing new and more efficient means of supplementing our security officers with powerful technologies such as our Secure Trax Management Software platform." Levine added: "Now, with the global resources of G4S behind us, we can deliver a wider range of services – including security consulting, design and engineering; compliance and risk management; facilities management and remote video monitoring. That being the case, we can offer truly integrated security solutions, unlike any other company in the industry.”

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 Miam