Leaked emails warned G4S over Iraq murders

The sun never sets on the UK’s armies of private security firms (Image via Shutterstock)

In the wake of the Olympic Games vetting scandal, private security company G4S may have hoped that its period on the public rack had come to an end. But G4S’s vetting, it appears, is fraught with failure abroad just as it is in East London – only with far deadlier consequences.

Tonight on BBC Scotland, reporter Samantha Poling investigates the the deaths of private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lax security standards of the mutil-billion pound firms that send young men to war zones and arm them with deadly weapons.

In the summer of 2009, former British paratrooper turned private security contractor Daniel Fitzsimons shot dead two colleagues in Baghdad’s highly-securitised Green Zone. In a vodka-fuelled squabble and only 36 hours after arriving in the sandy nation, Fitzsimons killed Paul McGuigan, from Peebles in Scotland, and Australian Darren Hoare.

The three men had come to Iraq to work for the British private security company ArmorGroup Iraq, which G4S now owns.

While the media widely reported on the deaths at the time and on Fitzsimon’s subsequent trial before the Supreme Court of Iraq, BBC Scotland tonight reveals a shocking new fact: a whistleblower had sent G4S numerous emails only days before Fitzsimons arrived in Iraq warning the company that the lives of fellow contractors would be put at risk if he were given a weapon.

‘I am alarmed that he [Fitzsimons] will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public,’ the whistleblower wrote, who signed off as ‘a concerned member of the public and father.’

‘I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.’

Fitzsimons had a criminal record, including firearm and assault convictions. The former British paratrooper was also suffering post-traumatic disorder from the gruesome sights he had witnessed during previous work in war zones such as Kosovo. Despite this background, G4S employed Fitzsimons and sent him to Iraq.

The mother of slain British contractor, Paul McGuigan, said, ‘[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.’

‘I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.’

Responding to the BBC Scotland investigation, G4S acknowledged that Fitzsimon’s ‘screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.’ G4S claims to have since improved.

The investigation shines a light into the murky world of private security. BBC Scotland spoke with security contactors who claim to have been forced to work on dangerous tasks with the wrong equipment. Numerous incidents have not been reported for the sake of G4S’s reputation, one of them alleged.

Bob Shepherd, a security contractor, told Poling, ‘We know when a soldier dies it’s all over the newspapers, it’s on the TV. But we never know when security contractors die.’

In response to the news that a whistleblower had repeatedly warned G4S about hiring Fitzsimons, the company told BBC Scotland that it was unable to find the email trail. It appears that a company selling security management software that allows businesses to monitor staff in the farthest reaches of the world is unable to carry out a simple email search; ‘I can’t track down the relevant individual so I am afraid we can not comment further on when we received the emails,’ G4S said.

G4S, one of the major players in the constantly growing yet constantly scandal-ridden private security sector, had a 2011 turnover of £7.5bn.

The International Code of Conduct for Private Service Providers is currently aiming to improve standards in the sector, which is dominated by UK-based companies. Out of the 511 companies to have signed up to the Code, 177 have headquarters in the UK – more than three times the number based in the United States of America.

Britannia may no longer rule the waves, but it does rule the world of private security.

BBC Scotland’s investigation, Britain’s Private War, airs on Monday October 1 at 21:00.
The editor of the Bureau worked with Sam Poling on the Scottish Bafta winning film Security Wars.
http://www.iainoverton.com/blog/?portfolio=security-wars-bafta-prix-circom

October 1st, 2012 | by Zlatina Georgieva | Published in All Stories, Bureau Recommends

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Scandal-hit G4S ‘was warned not to employ security guard’ before he murdered two colleagues in Iraq

Danny Fitzsimons, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in 2011 for killing Scot Paul McGuigan, 37, and Australian Darren Hoare, 37, in Baghdad in 2009
All were working for UK security firm G4S, operating as ArmorGroup
A BBC probe claims a G4S whistleblower warned them about Fitzsimons’ previous convictions and unstable behaviour before his posting
G4S claim nobody ever saw the email warnings
Victims’ families call for G4S to be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter
It comes a week after it emerged G4S chief Nick Buckles will keep his job despite review finding the firm guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract

Security firm G4S was warned not to employ an armed guard in Iraq days before he murdered two colleagues – one of them an ex-Royal Marine, a new BBC documentary claims.

Danny Fitzsimons, 31, was sentenced to at least 20 years in 2011 for killing Paul McGuigan, 37, from Peebles in Scotland, and Australian Darren Hoare, also 37, in Baghdad in August 2009.

All were working for UK security firm G4S, operating as ArmorGroup in the region.

G4S controversially failed to supply enough staff during the Olympics this summer and was recently handed a £13million Government contract to monitor sex offenders in Scotland.

BBC Scotland Investigates: Britain’s Private War, to be screened on BBC2 tonight, claims that a G4S whistleblower sent a series of emails to the company in London, warning them about Fitzsimons’ previous convictions and unstable behaviour.

Signing one email ‘a concerned member of the public and father’, the anonymous worker warns G4S: ‘I am alarmed that he will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public. I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.’

Another email, sent as Fitzsimons was due to start work in Baghdad, says: ‘Having made you aware of the issues regarding the violent criminal Danny Fitzsimons, it has been noted that you have not taken my advice and still choose to employ him in a position of trust. I have told you that he remains a threat and you have done nothing.’

The programme reports that Fitzsimons had worked as a private security contractor before in Iraq, but he had been sacked for punching a client.

In the documentary, the parents of Paul McGuigan, whose fiancée Nicci Prestage gave birth to his baby daughter in October 2009, call for the company to face criminal charges over the killing.

In the documentary, Mr McGuigan’s mother Corinne Boyd-Russell, from Innerleithen, in the Borders, said: ‘[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.

‘I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.’
The parents of Fitzsimons were also shocked to hear about the existence of the emails.

Fitzsimons’ mother Liz, from Manchester, said: ‘And they still took him out there? They [G4S] need to be taken to task for that.

‘The people who we feel are responsible, who we hold responsible for putting that gun in Danny’s hand, are without a shadow of a doubt G4S.’

Fitzsimons became the first Westerner to be convicted by an Iraqi court since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when he was convicted in February last year, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

The former security contractor from Rochdale admitted shooting the men but claimed it was self-defence.

The men had been out drinking and the other two tried to kill him during an altercation, Fitzsimons said during previous testimony. He also claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

A G4S spokesman said: ‘We are aware of the allegation over emails but following an internal IT investigation it is clear that no such emails were received by any employee before the incident.

‘We have not been shown any formal documentation which proves Mr Fitzsimons had post-traumatic stress disorder.

‘This was a tragic case and our thoughts remain with the families of both Paul McGuigan and Darren Hoare, who were valued and highly respected employees of the company, and who continue to be sadly missed by their families, colleagues and friends alike.

‘We confirmed publicly on September 15 2009 that, in this particular case, although there was evidence that Mr Fitzsimons falsified and apparently withheld material information during the recruitment process, his screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.

‘Our screening processes should have been better implemented in this situation but it is a matter of speculation what, if any, role this may have played in the incident.’

Since his conviction G4S has been roundly criticised for its handling of Olympic security arrangements.

Last week, it emerged G4S chief Nick Buckles will keep his job despite an independent review finding the bungling security firm guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

Mr Buckles, whose pay and benefits package was worth £5.3million last year, had been widely expected to lose his lucrative post over the fiasco.

But instead, two of his deputies will pay the price for the group’s failures during the Games.

The company’s UK boss David Taylor-Smith and events chief Ian Horseman Sewell have both resigned.

…

By Graham Grant

PUBLISHED: 08:30 GMT, 1 October 2012 | UPDATED: 09:33 GMT, 1 October 2012

Find this story at 1 October 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
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Olympics security Seventh Report of Session 2012–13 Volume I and Olympics security written evidence – United Kingdom Parliament

Olympics security Seventh Report of Session 2012–13 Volume I

and

Olympics security written evidence – United Kingdom Parliament 

Senior G4S executives resign over Olympics security failure

But board decides chief executive Nick Buckles should keep his job in ‘best interest of company and all its stakeholders’

G4S’s chief operating officer David Taylor-Smith has resigned but chief executive Nick Buckles keeps his job. Photograph: PA

Two senior executives at G4S have resigned over the company’s failure to deliver its contract for the London 2012 Olympics, but chief executive Nick Buckles has kept his job.

David Taylor-Smith, chief operating officer, and Ian Horseman-Sewell, managing director for G4S Global Events, are stepping down following the firm’s failure to meet its Olympics commitments. The G4S board, though, has concluded Buckles should stay on “in the best interest of the company and all of its stakeholders”.

Taylor-Smith and Horseman-Sewell are leaving following an inquiry into the Olympics debacle by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found G4S had failed to strengthen its management and its “structures and processes” to handle the “unique and complex” task of delivering more than 10,000 trained guards to protect Olympic venues.

G4S summarised PwC’s conclusions in a statement to the stock market on Friday morning. It said: “The company has management and other structures and processes that have proved highly effective in delivering the company’s regular business over many years but it did not recognise these structures and processes needed augmenting for the Olympic contract.

“The monitoring and tracking of the security workforce, management information and the project management framework and practices were ineffective to address the scale, complexities and dependencies of the Olympic contract. Together this caused the failure of the company to deliver the contract requirements in full and resulted in the identification of the key problems at a very late stage.”

G4S’s failure meant the British army was called in to provide security during the Olympics fortnight.

The G4S chairman, John Connolly, said the company admitted it had not delivered. He said: “G4S has accepted responsibility for its failure to deliver fully on the Olympic contract. We apologise for this and we thank the military and the police for the vital roles they played in ensuring the delivery of a safe and secure Games.”

Buckles faced heavy criticism when he appeared before the home affairs committee in July, where David Winnick MP told him the company’s reputation was in tatters.

The G4S board, though, has concluded that Buckles should not lose his job.

“Whilst the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympic contract,” it said.

…

Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 September 2012 08.08 BST

Find this story at 28 September 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Two G4S directors resign in wake of Olympics fiasco… but chief executive Nick Buckles keeps his job Chief operating officer and head of global sales to go after Olympics blunder

Report found monitoring and tracking of security workforce was inadequate
Also concluded that management failed to appreciate scale and exact nature of the project

The head of bungling security firm G4S will keep his job despite an independent review finding the company guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

Embattled Nick Buckles, whose pay and benefits package was worth £5.3million last year, had been widely expected to lose his lucrative post over the fiasco.

But instead, two of his deputies will pay the price for the group’s failures during the Games.

The company’s UK boss David Taylor-Smith and events chief Ian Horseman Sewell have both resigned.

G4S signed a £284million contract to provide 10,400 Games security guards, but just 16 days before the opening ceremony it admitted it had only fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts and could not deliver and the army was drafted in.

A damning report by accountancy firm Pricewaterhouse- Coopers found the company’s handling of the deal was ‘ineffectual’.

It said the group was ‘capable of fulfilling the contract’ but ‘did not recognise’ the scale of the work, and listed a catalogue of errors, including bad management.

Controversially, however, PwC said it was not ‘in the best interests of the company’ for Mr Buckles to leave, despite the fact he was twice dragged in front of MPs to explain the fiasco.

G4S said in a statement: ‘Whilst the CEO has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympic contract.’

Labour MP Keith Vaz, who is chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and led the hearings into the G4S blunders, said the decision to keep Mr Buckles was ‘not closure’.

But G4S chairman John Connolly said: ‘[Mr Buckles] couldn’t be expected to in detail be responsible for every large contract.’

Chief operating officer David Taylor-Smith, pictured left, is one of two senior directors to have resigned after the G4S Olympics security fiasco

The report said the contract problems were largely specific to the Olympics, with the company not planning sufficiently for the scale and complexity of what was needed.

Taylor-Smith was responsible for the contract and for ensuring it was delivered on budget and on time, while Sewell was the account director who said just before the Games that the company could have delivered two events of that scale at the same time.

However, Buckles, who has been with the world’s biggest security group for 27 years, has been the face of the Olympic failure, taking to television and radio to apologise to the British public and twice being hauled in front of a Parliamentary Committee to explain what had happened.

London Mayor Boris Johnson told LBC 97.3 radio it was right the G4S bosses quit over the Olympics fiasco.

He said: ‘The rank and file, the troops on the ground, did a wonderful job, but when you look at what happened in the management of those hordes of G4S employees who did a great job, I’m not going to try and persuade them to stay this morning.’

G4S fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts at the Games, but failed to provide the required 10,400 contracted security guards
G4S PRISONER ESCAPES

Police have issued a photograph of a prisoner who escaped from custody by climbing out of a window at a court.

Michael Davidson, 27, absconded from Tain Sheriff Court in the Highlands on Tuesday afternoon.

Northern Constabulary said that while he is not dangerous, he should not be approached.

They urged anyone who sees him to contact police immediately.

The force said that the man was the responsibility of security firm G4S at the time.

It is believed the prisoner escaped through a window in the building.

G4S said they are carrying out a full investigation into the incident and will be working closely with the Scottish Prison Service and relevant authorities to investigate the circumstances.

G4S has largely prospered under Buckles, who has presided over a share price rise of some 76 percent since being elevated to group CEO in July 2005.

But investors have worried that the Olympics affair could jeopardise G4S’s relationship with the government, a core customer, at a time when Britain wants to heavily involve the private sector in running public services.

Government deals account for over half of G4S’s £1.8billion of British revenue and make up more than 20 per cent of its pipeline of potential UK work, which includes prison management deals and electronic tagging contracts.

G4S, which has estimated its loss on the Olympics contract at around £50 million, is the world’s biggest private security company with more than 650,000 staff worldwide.

…

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 08:00 GMT, 28 September 2012 | UPDATED: 23:51 GMT, 28 September 2012

Find this story at 28 September 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

A sorry end for the ‘scapegoats’ at sharp end of G4S fiasco

Olympian hubris prompts world’s second-largest employer to sacrifice its senior executives. Kim Sengupta reports

Asked in an interview not so long ago what had been his best experiences in life, David Taylor-Smith responded that one of them was “being chased by a rhino”. The chief operating officer of G4S must have felt he was undergoing something similar in the aftermath of the Olympics debacle with the sensation perhaps not so enticing this time around.

The rhino has caught up with Mr Taylor-Smith with painful consequences. He is one of two executives who have paid the price for the security firm’s failure to provide enough guards for the London Games and the humiliation and opprobrium that followed.

The way Mr Taylor-Smith was treated at the end, say his friends, was grossly unfair towards someone who has worked hard for the company for the last 14 years. The news of his departure was leaked to Sky television 36 hours before the board made their decision public; he was, they held, being made a scapegoat for failings which go far wider in the management.

Mr Taylor-Smith’s detractors, and there are a few in G4S, hold that he was the author of his own misfortune and that the Olympics shortcomings were the result of his management style which was characterised by an unwillingness to listen to the views of others and surround himself with yes men.

Following the company’s failure to provide the 10,400 security guards for the Olympics, G4S commissioned an inquiry by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found that G4S had failed to strengthen its management and its “structures and processes” to handle the “unique and complex” task it faced.

Although Mr Taylor-Smith and Ian Horseman-Sewell, managing director of global events, resigned, the chief executive, Nick Buckles, has kept his job, the board deciding on this “in the best interest of the company and all its shareholders”. Whilst the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympics contract.

Until the recent turn of events, allies of Mr Taylor-Smith hoped that he would one day succeed Mr Buckles, heading the world’s largest security company with branches in 125 countries, and, with 657,000 employees on its books, the third-largest global employer after Wal-Mart and Foxconn.

According to some former colleagues, a private dinner in January celebrating the chief operating officer post was described as in honour of “the king-in-waiting”.

The Olympics put paid to that. It is ironic that the military had to step in to make up the shortfall in the security numbers. Mr Taylor-Smith had been an Army officer and, during his tenure, there was a dramatic increase in the numbers of ex-servicemen who were employed with huge excitement, it was said, on his part if they were SAS or from the Special Boat Service. Some of these appointments, say colleagues, were successful. But others not.

After the Army, Mr Taylor-Smith worked in conservation programmes in Latin America and Africa – where he had his rhino experience – before joining Securicor, which later formed part of G4S, in 1998. In 2006 he was appointed CEO of G4S in the UK and Ireland when the company was undergoing rapid expansion which saw it swallow up firms such as ArmorGroup and Chubb.

One of Mr Taylor-Smith’s main claims to fame in the company, and a great boost to his upward trajectory was the acquisition of justice sector, contracts from the Government enabling them to operate detention centres. The business was highly lucrative but also led to controversy. There were highly publicised and embarrassing cases of prisoner escapes. Last year it was claimed that G4S guards had been repeatedly warned about the use of force on detainees and asylum seekers after the death of an Angolan deportee, Jimmy Mubenga, on a board a departing British Airways flight. An internal document urged management to “meet this problem head on before the worst happens” and that G4S was “playing Russian roulette with detainees’ lives.”

…

Kim Sengupta
Saturday, 29 September 2012

Find this story at 29 September 2012

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Olympic error: UK government to answer for hiring human rights abuser

The British government is up for questioning from Parliament over why it has handed over the Olympic Games’ security to a company accused of human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The UK-based G4S, which describes itself as the “world’s leading international security solutions group,” was selected as the “official provider of security and cash services for the Olympics.”

Moreover, it has already taken on 10,400 new employees for the 2012 Olympiad.

However, the company’s activities in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the UK considers illegal, have raised questions in Westminster.

The matter of fact is that G4S is a known provider of equipment for several Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank as well as for security systems at the Ofer detention center in Ramallah. That facility houses a jail and a military court, where Palestinian political prisoners, including children, are held and tortured. British Parliament strongly criticized the detention center for human rights abuses in 2010.

G4S also provides equipment to and secures the perimeter of several other Israeli prisons in which prisoners, illegally transferred from Palestinian territories, are held in breach of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It remains unclear how a company with such a questionable reputation could have been chosen to provide security during the London Olympics. G4S seems to be “about the worst you could pick in the world to do this job,” investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT.

“This is basically the privatization of the British police force. It’s being sucked in by the G4S,” Gosling says. He added that G4S are even “starting to operate police stations, they are also starting to do a lot of civilian support work for the police.”

And, Gosling adds, the company seems to be receiving the UK’s support – in the form of official contracts. “They are bidding for contracts in Birmingham and elsewhere to actually operate detention facilities inside existing police stations.”

G4S already runs six private prisons in the UK, where several hundred detainees are hired for full-time work paying under $3 a day. The privatization of prisons by companies like G4S creates a very dangerous financial incentive to criminalize poor people and “incarcerate them for private profit,” according to Gosling.

The parliamentary grilling next week will be led by Labour peer Lord Hollick. He will prepare questions to the government on Monday concerning steps it has taken to prevent G4S from continued cooperation with Israeli officials in the illegal Jewish settlements.

The move follows recent international condemnation of Israel’s settlement expansion. On May, 7 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to build another 850 homes in four settlements in the occupied West Bank. New settlements were said to be built to compensate for the “evacuation of 30 apartments” ordered by the Supreme Court.

The British government’s eager cooperation with G4S is in spite of the fact that in September 2011, the firm’s contract to deport migrants from the UK was canceled after it came to light that some 773 complaints of abuse had been filed against it, and following the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum-seeker who died as a result of being “restrained” by G4S staff.

…

Find this story at 10 June 2012

Report of Human Rights Watch 2010

Published: 10 June, 2012, 01:43
Edited: 10 June, 2012, 01:43
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005 – 2011. All rights reserved.

G4S Israel (Hashmira)(ג’י פור אס ישראל (השמירה

The company has provided equipment for Israeli-run checkpoints and terminals in the West Bank and Gaza, including luggage scanning machines and full body scanners by Rapiscan and L-3’s Safeview to the Erez checkpoint in Gaza and to the Qalandia, Bethlehem and Irtah (Sha’ar Efraim) checkpoints in the West bank.

G4S Israel is one of the major security systems provider to the Israeli government, including the Ministry of defense building (“Hakiria”) in Tel Aviv. It also provides security systems to the Israeli armored corps base of Nachshonim, which was donated by the US army in accordance with the Wye River Memorandum. The company operates security patrol units which secure oceanic facilities, vehicles and transport routs, buildings and equipment of the security and finace industries. These units, as the company states, are manned by “worriers who graduated elite combat units in the Israeli army”.

G4S Israel installed and operates the entire security system of the Ktziot Prison, the central control room of the Megido Prison and security services to Damon prison. The Ktziot, Megido and Damon Prisons, located inside Israel, are incarceration facilities designated for Palestinian political prisoners. G4S Israel clearly indicates in its website that it operates in prisons which hold “security prisoners”, that is Palestinian political prisoners. Ktziot prison is the biggest incarceration facility in Israel and populates 2,200 Palestinian political prisoners, Megido prison populates over 1200 Palestinian political and Damon prison populates over 500 Palestinian political prisoners and illegal aliens from the occupied West Bank. some of these prisoners have not been charged yet and some are administrative detainees.

The company also installed peripheral defense systems on the walls surrounding the Ofer prison and operates a central control room for the entire Ofer compound. Ofer is an Israeli prison for Palestinian political prisoners, located in the West Bank, near the settlement of Givat Ze’ev. The prison populates 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners and includes a military court which judges detainees from the West bank on a daily basis.

In addition, G4S Israel also provides the entire security systems and the central control room in Hasharon compound – Rimonim prison, which is mostly a criminal prison but includes a wing for Palestinian political prisoners.

The company also provided security systems for the Abu Kabir, Kishon (“Al-Jalameh”) and Jerusalem (“Russian Compound”) detention and interrogation facilities. Palestinian political prisoners are usually held in detention facilities without legal proceeding for long periods of time. Human rights organizations have collected evidence showing that Palestinian prisoners are regularly subjected to torture in these facilities.

G4S Israel is the sole provider of electronic security systems to the Israeli police. It provided equipment to the West Bank Israeli Police headquarters, located in the highly contested E-1area next to the Ma’ale Adomim settlement (the Judea and Samaria Police headquarters – “Machoz Shai”).

The company offers its security services to businesses in illegal settlements, including security equipment and personnel to shops and supermarkets in the West bank settlements of Modi’in Illit, Ma’ale Adumim, Har Adar and the settlement neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. In addition, after the company purchased Aminut Moked Artzi, one of the oldest private security companies in Israel, it took over its entire business operations, which includes security services to businesses in the Barkan industrial Zone.

G4S Israel also maintains cooperation with Ariel College in the settlement of Ariel in the West Bank, which included the company’s participation in an open career day in the college.

Click here to read a full report about the activities of the company March 2011

G4S: Greater privatisation of police should be a major cause for concern

Recently, the head of the UK branch of G4S, the largest private security firm in the world, predicted that within the next few years an increasing amount police work will be allocated and outsourced to private security companies – like G4S.

The comments were made by the director of the UK led private security firm, off the back of G4S having secured lucrative contracts to carry out policing duties on behalf of West Midlands and Surrey police – and ultimately the taxpayer.

One of the immediate criticisms raised at this prospect was of the need for all individuals contracted to carry out police duties to be held equally accountable to the IPCC (Independent police complaints commission) – at present this will not the case.

G4S are also set to have a massive presence at this year’s Olympic Games, with around 13,000 staff allocated for the games which are set to begin in a couple of weeks time. Mainstream news reports have described the makeup of east London as looking increasingly more like an occupied military zone rather than the sight for one of the greatest spectacles on Earth. Coincidentally, we are talking about the same G4S that carries out duties for the Israeli government and the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Despite concerns raised over the last couple of days regarding the ability of G4S to deliver, the Home Secretary Theresa May today maintained that the Olympic games were safe to go ahead and that london is prepared.

Indeed, the security giant looks likely to secure lucrative contracts to undergo outsourced work on behalf of the NHS, and the police, and post Olympics, and does not look likely to be struggling for work, to put it politely.

Police forces across the country, as well as suffering from acute levels of public skepticism, and diminishing resources, will be headed by a company, driven by profit margins at the behest of our government.

Although according to government this is of course done in the name of efficiency and cost effectiveness, one might say that there is a direct conflict of interest. If we were to make any predictions as to how this were to translate into reality, looking at how the police, immigration officials, and prisons which have been privatised are operating in the US, and the resulting criticisms that have been leveled at them, we ought to surely be concerned.

Incidentally, here in the UK, we have already emulated the private prison system, with several currently outsourced to private companies.

In addition to the news that the police along with our other institutions, will now be further privatised and sold off, we have also had to digest the added revelation that we are likely to see an even greater drop in police numbers in the years leading up to 2015.

If alarm bells were not already ringing as a result of the fragility of the relationship between the police and the public, then they should be now.

There is no reason to believe that this will have a beneficial effect on the level of service provided. Or put another way, there is no evidence to suggest that in the long run this will benefit society. On the contrary many are voicing concerns saying the opposite; A climate under which it becomes more profitable to imprison people than to educate them, is not something we want. We only have to look across the pond to realise that.

Equally, the likes of G4S, securing the Olympics and carrying out increasingly more and more police duties holds just as many legitimate concerns.

As was revealed in a recent report, the extent to which some of the private companies awarded contracts to kickstart the coalition governments ‘work programme’ sought to actually cut the number of claimants claiming benefits- including G4S – was shockingly high. Many are concerned that they are more focused on cutting the number of benefit claimants, rather than actually getting people back to work.

Many groups and activists concerned about G4S have been trying to raise awareness and scrutinize G4S for many years, but in recent months and especially in the aftermath of the death of Jimmy Mubenga, which for many after a long list of incidents which brought into sharp focus the prospect of criminal charges being sought for possible criminal behaviour by G4S, that scrutiny has increased – and with good reason. Whether the staff that held Mubenga in their custody will now face criminal charges remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen whether the company itself will face criminal charges of manslaughter.

Just like the last New Labour government, which designated the contract for our census data to be gathered to Lockheed Martin, the arms manufacturer, with many other impressive titles to its name to boot, this coalition hasn’t flinched from its predictable ideological course, in shipping the important work of our already stretched institutions, over to private companies, and the reality is that we are poised to see more of the same. The fact that one of the big beneficiaries of this, has massive question marks hanging over it says much about our government’s willingness to ship out anything to the highest bidder, irrespective of the spin, which justifies such decision making in the name of cost effectiveness and efficiency. The question really, is what’s coming next.

Meanwhile the Olympics are awaited with bated breath from many and for many reasons. For sports lovers it’s the chance to enjoy the games the chance to inspire young people. For many police officers, the circumstances surrounding the Olympics, are just inviting the kind of scenes and trouble that we saw last year, possibly further rioting. Private companies, just like the big multinationals that go in to rebuild a destroyed infrastructure after a war, are poised to get rich either way.

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Richard Sudan
Notebook – A selection of Independent views -, Opinion
Friday, 13 July 2012 at 12:00 am

£284m debacle over security: As troops fill the Olympics gap, how did G4 get it all so wrong?

 

Army called upon to fill Games security shortfall
Fears G4S may even fail to meet reduced target
MP accuses firm – who were paid £284m – of letting the country down

The security firm G4S was reportedly paid a staggering £284million to provide up to 17,500 personnel for the 2012 Games.

But yesterday, in a major humiliation for company bosses and Olympic organisers, it admitted it would fall well short of the target, forcing ministers to pull in thousands of military personnel.

The company was contracted to provide a minimum of 15,400 security staff, with a target of 17,500.

Yesterday, as the Government confirmed the call-up of 3,500 extra troops, G4S claimed it would be able to bring in 13,800.

However, with 14 days to go to the Games, question marks remained whether it would meet even that target, as just a small fraction of that total is available for deployment. Only 4,000 are ‘boots on the ground’, working as ticket checkers and bag searchers at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London.

Another 9,000 are still in the training and vetting process – raising fears even the more reduced target might not be achievable.

The Armed Forces now make up the overwhelming majority of the security staff likely to be deployed during the Games.

The original plan for 7,500 military is bolstered by a special contingent of 5,000, plus the 3,500 announced on Tuesday, making a total of 16,000. In addition, there will be 3,000 unpaid volunteers.

The number of staff needed to guard the Olympic venues more than doubled last December after the organising committee Locog wildly underestimated the total required. Originally Locog contracted G4S to provide 2,000 security guards, but in December the firm agreed to increase that number massively.

Yesterday Downing Street insisted there would be financial penalties for the firm for failing to meet the contract. But Locog refused to comment on the nature of any fines, claiming it would breach commercial confidentiality. That is despite taxpayers coughing up at least £9billion for the cost of the Games.

Insiders said the company had repeatedly claimed until last week that it would meet its obligations.

A Whitehall source accused the firm of ‘abysmal’ failure and said it had delayed completing training and vetting processes to save money by not having too many staff on the books before the start of the Games.

The source said: ‘Until yesterday officials from G4S were turning up and assuring us that the figures were getting better and going to be OK.

‘Then we learn there’s not as many as we need. They didn’t want to be throwing money at the problem six months ago because their staff would be sitting around doing nothing.’

Home Secretary Theresa May was hauled to the House of Commons to try to explain the shortfall.

She insisted: ‘There is no question of Olympic security being compromised.’

But Labour MP Keith Vaz, who called for the emergency statement, said: ‘G4S has let the country down and we have literally had to send in the troops.’

Mr Vaz, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, has written to Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, demanding he give evidence before MPs next week.

The debacle is the latest blow to the reputation of G4S which, while relatively unknown to the public, is one of the world’s biggest security companies.

In recent years its tentacles have extended into swathes of British life which used to be the preserve of the public sector, including running prisons and police custody suites.

From headquarters in Crawley, Sussex, company bosses run a sprawling multinational company with interests in more than 125 countries.

They provide security at Heathrow and other major airports, and for vans transporting cash on behalf of banks and other financial institutions.

Under its previous name Group4Security it had a contract for transporting prisoners, but in 2004 the company ‘lost’ two prisoners, sparking a major investigation.

It runs six jails in the UK including Birmingham, where an inspection report in October 2011 said drugs were regularly being thrown over the prison walls.

Three G4S guards are on police bail over the death in October 2010 of Angolan national Jimmy Mubenga, who was restrained while being deported from the country.

…

Find this story at 13 July 2012

By Jack Doyle

PUBLISHED: 22:39 GMT, 12 July 2012 | UPDATED: 10:30 GMT, 13 July 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Olympic security chaos: depth of G4S security crisis revealed

The depth of the crisis over G4S’s Olympic security preparations became increasingly clear on Thursday as recruits revealed details of a “totally chaotic” selection process and police joined the military in bracing themselves to fill the void left by the private security contractor.

Guards told how, with 14 days to go until the Olympics opening ceremony, they had received no schedules, uniforms or training on x-ray machines. Others said they had been allocated to venues hundreds of miles from where they lived, been sent rotas intended for other employees, and offered shifts after they had failed G4S’s own vetting.

The West Midlands Police Federation reported that its officers were being prepared to guard the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, which will host the football tournament, amid concerns G4S would not be able to cover the security requirements.

“We have to find officers until the army arrives and we don’t know where we are going to find them from,” said Chris Jones, secretary of the federation.

G4S has got a £284m contract to provide 13,700 guards, but only has 4,000 in place. It says a further 9,000 are in the pipeline.

G4S sent an urgent request on Thursday to retired police asking them to help. A memo to the National Association of Retired Police Officers said: “G4S Policing Solutions are currently and urgently recruiting for extra support for the Olympics. These are immediate starts with this Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday available. We require ex-police officers ideally with some level of security clearance and with a Security Industry Association [accreditation], however neither is compulsory.”

Robert Brown, a former police sergeant, told the Guardian that he pulled out of the recruitment process for the Games after seeing it close at hand.

He said: “They were trying to process hundreds of people and we had to fill out endless forms. It was totally chaotic and it was obvious to me that this was being done too quickly and too late.”

Another G4S trainee, an ex-policeman, described the process as “an utter farce”.

He added: “There were people who couldn’t spell their own name. The staff were having to help them. Most people hadn’t filled in their application forms correctly. Some didn’t know what references were and others said they didn’t have anyone who could act as a referee. The G4S people were having to prompt them, saying things like “what about your uncle?”

Tim Steward, a former prison officer, said he was recruited by G4S in March as a team leader but said he would not be working at the Games because of a series of blunders.

Steward said he provided documentation for vetting but G4S had said it did not have the information on record and so closed his file. The security firm then offered him a training session at short notice, which he could not attend, but it did not offer an alternative.

A recruit who was interviewed in March and completed training last month, said: “There are people like me that are vetted and trained in security and would be happy to work, but can’t. Some of the classes were of around 200 in size with only two trainers accommodating the training for a class of this size.

“I am yet to hear from G4S regarding my screening, accreditation, uniform or even a rough start date. I know many people also who will be commencing work on 27 July who have had absolutely no scheduled on-site training. They are simply being chucked into their role on x-ray machines, public screening areas and even athlete screening areas.”

Another guard who has been trained as an x-ray operator, complained that he was unable to get through to G4S to find out when and where he was meant to be working, and was once left on hold on the phone for 38 minutes.

One student applicant said he had already spent £650 on travel and hotel bills to attend training and was now worried that, because he had not received any accreditation or rota from G4S, he might not be given the shifts that would enable him to cover those costs. He said he had expected to earn about £2,000 over the period of the Games.

G4S’s own Facebook page for new recruits is littered with similar complaints.

“They’ve placed me in Manchester and I want to work in London,” wrote Glenn Roseman. “Some idiot has changed my location, I’m never going to get any work now.”

Christian Smith complained: “I did the training course, passed, and got my own security industry association licence, only to fail G4S vetting. Two days after I got their letter, they rang me, and asked me what days I could work.”

…

 

Find this story at 13 July 2012 

 

Recruits tell of chaos over schedules, uniforms and training while ex-police officers asked to help out
Robert Booth and Nick Hopkins
The Guardian, Friday 13 July 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

G4S chief predicts mass police privatisation

Private companies will be running large parts of the police service within five years, according to security firm head

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected most UK police forces to sign up to privatisation deals. Photograph: Guardian

Private companies will be running large parts of the UK’s police service within five years, according to the world’s biggest security firm.

David Taylor-Smith, the head of G4S for the UK and Africa, said he expected police forces across the country to sign up to similar deals to those on the table in the West Midlands and Surrey, which could result in private companies taking responsibility for duties ranging from investigating crimes to transporting suspects and managing intelligence.

The prediction comes as it emerged that 10 more police forces were considering outsourcing deals that would see services, such as running police cells and operating IT, run by private firms.

Taylor-Smith, whose company is in the running for the £1.5bn contract with West Midlands and Surrey police, said he expected forces across the country to have taken similar steps within five years . “For most members of the public what they will see is the same or better policing and they really don’t care who is running the fleet, the payroll or the firearms licensing – they don’t really care,” he said.

G4S, which is providing security for the Olympics, has 657,000 staff operating in more than 125 countries and is one of the world’s biggest private employers. It already runs six prisons in the UK and in April started work on a £200m police contract in Lincolnshire, where it will design, build and run a police station. Under the terms of the deal, 575 public sector police staff transferred to the company.

Taylor-Smith said core policing would remain a public-sector preserve but added: “We have been long-term optimistic about the police and short-to-medium-term pessimistic about the police for many years. Our view was, look, we would never try to take away core policing functions from the police but for a number of years it has been absolutely clear as day to us – and to others – that the configuration of the police in the UK is just simply not as effective and as efficient as it could be.”

Concern has grown about the involvement of private firms in policing. In May more than 20,000 officers took to the streets to outline their fears about pay, conditions and police privatisation. The Police Federation has warned that the service is being undermined by creeping privatisation.

Unite, the union that represents many police staff, said the potential scale of private-sector involvement in policing was “a frightening prospect”. Peter Allenson, national officer, said: “This is not the back office – we are talking about the privatisation of core parts of the police service right across the country, including crime investigation, forensics, 999 call-handling, custody and detention and a wide range of police services.”

Taylor-Smith said “budgetary pressure and political will” were driving the private-sector involvement in policing but insisted that the “public sector ethos” had not been lost.

“I have always found it somewhere between patronising and insulting the notion that the public sector has an exclusive franchise on some ethos, spirit, morality – it is just nonsense,” he said. “The thought that everyone in the private sector is primarily motivated by profit and that is why they come to work is just simply not accurate … we employ 675,000 people and they are primarily motivated by pretty much the same as would motivate someone in the public sector.”

In the £1.5bn deal being discussed by West Midlands and Surrey police, the list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources.

Chris Sims, West Midlands chief constable, has said his force is a good testing ground for fundamental change as he battled to find £126m of savings. He said the armed forces had embraced a greater role for the private sector more fully than the police without sparking uproar.

But a home affairs select committee report said many of the policing contracts being put up for tender amounted to a “fishing expedition”. MPs added that they were not convinced the forces understood what they were doing. The committee chair, Keith Vaz, said: “The Home Office must ensure it knows what services local forces wish to contract out before agreeing to allow expenditure of £5m on what is little more than a fishing expedition.”

Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire police announced this month that they were considering privatising some services in an attempt to tackle a £73m funding shortfall created by government cuts. Police authority members in the three counties will be asked to consider how services including HR, finance and IT could be outsourced in line with the G4S contract in Lincolnshire as part of a joint recommendation made by the three chief constables.

…

Find this story at 20 June 2012

Matthew Taylor and Alan Travis
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 June 2012 19.31 BST

• This article was amended on 21 June to add a quote from a Home Office spokesperson.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.