Published: May 29, 2007 11:26 pm      

Private guards: Weak link in homeland security

WASHINGTON — Richard Bergendahl fights the war on terrorism in Los Angeles for $19,000 a year, one of the legions of ill-trained, low-paid private security guards protecting tempting terrorist targets. Down the block from Bergendahl’s post is an even taller skyscraper identified by President Bush as the target for a Sept. 11-style airplane attack.

Bergendahl, 55, says he often thinks: “Well, what am I doing here? These people are paying me minimum wage.”

The security guard industry found itself involuntarily transformed after September 2001, from an army of “rent-a-cops” to protectors of the homeland. Yet, many security officers are paid little more than restaurant cooks or janitors.

And the industry is governed by a maze of conflicting state rules, according to a nationwide survey by The Associated Press. Wide chasms exist among states in requirements for training and background checks. Tens of thousands of guard applicants were found to have criminal backgrounds.

West Virginia doesn’t require FBI background checks for security guards and only requires fingerprints from license holders, essentially the top executive of a company.

The state requires companies to keep records for all employees and make sure they don’t have criminal records, said Ben Beakes, chief of staff for Secretary of State Betty Ireland. “If there ever was a question, we have a right to inspect those documents,” Beakes said.

Charleston-based Security America Inc., the state’s largest contract security firm, runs applicants through the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Specially Designated National and Blocked Persons list, said founder Bill Signorelli.

“I think almost all the national contract security companies and the larger regionals are using that as one of their mechanisms,” he said.

Security America also checks police records and — though not required by state law — has all applicants fingerprinted and screened by the state. It pays another company to perform national criminal checks.

“There’s no perfect search,” Signorelli said.

A New Jersey Democratic congressman, Rep. Robert Andrews, said he’s confident that lawmakers will support a bill he sponsored to upgrade the industry by requiring criminal background checks for all U.S. security guards.

“How much is it worth not to have one criminal guarding a nuclear power plant?” he asked.

Andrews said the checks will have the effect of raising pay, because they will weed out many guards whose criminal histories lead them to accept the lowest salaries.

“This is one area where doing things on the cheap is a really bad idea,” Andrews said.

“A security officer is ... not trained to be a G.I. Joe,” said Paul Maniscalco, a senior research scientist at George Washington University.

More than five years after the attacks, Maniscalco is helping to change the security guard culture. He recently developed an anti-terrorism computer course for shopping mall guards, who are being taught they now have more concerns than rowdy teenagers and shoplifters.

The middle ground pay for security officers in 2006 was $23,620, according to a new Labor Department survey. The low pay reflects cutthroat competition among security firms, who submit the lowest possible bids to win contracts. Lowball contracts also mean lower profit margins and less money for training and background checks for guards.

Some states require FBI fingerprint checks for every guard job applicant. Others let the industry police itself. These states don’t regulate the industry: Alabama, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kentucky, Wyoming and Idaho. The city of Boise and many Idaho communities do regulate guards. Some states require background checks for company owners but not guards.

In states that keep such records, the AP found more than 96,000 of 1.3 million applicants, about 7.3 percent, were turned down — mostly, state officials said, for having criminal histories.

The most important number, however, can’t be found: individuals convicted of serious crimes who were hired in states without background checks or in states where they slipped through the system.

Congressional investigators reported last year that 89 private guards working at two military bases had histories that included assault, larceny, possession and use of controlled substances and forgery. The Army says it has purged guards with criminal histories from its bases.

“I frankly was shocked, after 25 years in the FBI; I assumed those in the private sector had gone through criminal background checks,” said Jeffrey Lampinski, the former FBI special-agent-in-charge of the Philadelphia office who is now an executive with AlliedBarton Security Services.

The security businesses’ own trade group, representing the largest firms, acknowledges the industry as a whole isn’t ready to recognize signs of terrorism and respond to an attack.

“I would have to say no,” said Joseph Ricci, executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, when asked whether most guards are trained to protect the homeland. “Companies that hire private guards began spending more for security after September 11, 2001, but then began cutting back. We’ve become complacent because we haven’t had attacks.”

For guards at the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons facilities, failure to protect nuclear materials from terrorists could be catastrophic. That’s why their training is far more exhaustive than that of most security officer recruits.

At the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles from Las Vegas, contract guards working for the Wackenhut Corp. train in desert camouflage and military helmets, fire automatic weapons, put on gas masks and kick up the desert dust in military Humvees with gunners on top.

They crouch behind cactus plants to shoot at targets, stalk “intruders” with drawn sidearms and burst through doors of buildings, first dropping “flash-bang” devices that have an explosive sound and fill the room with smoke.

“Failure on our part is failure to protect a vital national security asset,” said David Bradley, the Wackenhut general manager at the test site. “We don’t see that ever occurring.”

Other sites protected by the security industry include drinking water reservoirs; oil and gas refineries; ports; bus and rail commuter terminals; nuclear power plants; chemical plants; food supplies; hospitals; and communications networks.

Bergendahl, the Los Angeles guard who protects the 52-story high rise near the formerly named Library Tower — now the US Bank Tower — thinks often of President Bush’s disclosure last year that terrorists with shoe bombs planned to take control of a jetliner and crash it into the 73-story landmark building. Bergendahl helps protect a building occupied by 6,000 workers and a Japanese consulate.

“It scares me,” said Bergendahl, who has spent 28 years as a security guard.

Bergendahl said his training usually consists of a real estate manager reading security measures to him every few months. His building rarely has evacuation drills. Management’s advice? “Keep your coat buttoned. Keep your shoes shiny,” Bergendahl said.

Franklin Bullock, 51, a guard at the busy bus and rail commuter station in Kent, Wash., said he’s had no drills with police and fire responders despite terrorist bombings of trains and buses overseas.

A supervisor once tested Bullock by walking him down the platform to see whether he would spot a package he could hardly miss. It had “BOM” written on it. That was the end of his useful hands-on training, Bullock said.

“Everybody’s so afraid he’s going to make a mistake,” said the $25,000-a-year guard, who spent most of his working life as a security guard or correctional officer. “There’s no security at all.”