Wackenhut Guards Sleep At Nuke Sites

[SecTrainer]

I had quite a bit of trouble getting this page to load, but it's very enlightening and worth the trouble.

Zzzzzz....Another Black Eye for Security

...and here's the cartoon referenced in the article:

[Mr. Chaple]

Again? Wasn't there a big controversy over Wackenhut guards sleeping on DOE sites back in 05/06. If I recall correctly it resulted in TWC getting in alot of trouble for working guards several 20 hr days in a row.

[Echos13]

Again? Wasn't there a big controversy over Wackenhut guards sleeping on DOE sites back in 05/06. If I recall correctly it resulted in TWC getting in alot of trouble for working guards several 20 hr days in a row.

This is kind of old news. From the street talk in the company some of the SO's are filling a law suit against TWC and the client for working so many hours. In fact, to really make it strange I got a monthly pamplet that condones sleeping on the job (cat naps). If the post allows it to be so of course.

[Bill Warnock]

SecTrainer, in the mid-70s NRC announced openings from their Atlanta Office and I applied. During the interview I was informed that inspections were not by the book as in the military; rather they gentle approaches due to the political nature of the sites and the power of the contractor operators. It is interesting based on a front page article in this morning's Washington Post, the NRC IG was accused of exaggerating the seriousness of the problems. Training documented where training was not given seems to be the norm. Inspections were well announced and preparations made to receive the inspectors. A friend of mine who worked in the field told me they were more like "grip and grin" sessions and reports perfunctory in nature and somewhat standardized even though visited locations differed somewhat from the final report. In other words, "thou shalt not ruffle feathers lest thou lose thy head."
Do not expect any great change anytime soon. The days of hard-nosed no notice inspections and surveys in a political atmosphere are long gone.
Problems solved: rearranged deck chairs on sinking ship.
Enjoy the day,
Bill

[SecTrainer]

Training documented where training was not given seems to be the norm. Inspections were well announced and preparations made to receive the inspectors.

We have no tolerance for subjecting anyone to the possibility of "failure" in this society anymore, whether in school or in life. We mustn't hurt anyone's feelings, or cause them to feel inferior. We mustn't create "distinctions" between people. We mustn't highlight anyone's shortcomings. We must pretend that "it's all good", to use a current expression.

"Cadet, I want to commend you for hitting the target twice out of those last 100 rounds. Of the other 98, you came darned close except for that one time when you shot the range master, but let's say no more about that. What the hell was he doing standing behind you anyway?"

I guess I'm an old futz, and I know how much the kids here probably dislike sentences that begin with "Back in my day...", but here goes anyway: Back in my day, failure was considered part of the learning process. If no one pointed out your failures, you probably weren't learning much. In that sense, I guess there's nothing new under the sun, is there?

[officerchick]

I guess I'm an old futz, and I know how much the kids here probably dislike sentences that begin with "Back in my day...", but here goes anyway: Back in my day, failure was considered part of the learning process. If no one pointed out your failures, you probably weren't learning much. In that sense, I guess there's nothing new under the sun, is there?

Hiya futz! I'm technically at the very tip-top of Gen Y (Sorry, I didn't plan it that way ) but I agree completely with you on this. We must fail if we are to succeed, and protecting kids (and adults) from "feeling bad" about themselves is doing nothing but making things worse. There's some degree of positive regard that I do think is necessary, but truly I have never learned so much about myself as when I got fired for stupidity, failed a school paper/project, got a write-up, or had a close friend call me out on something.

[gcmc security part 2]

This is kind of old news. From the street talk in the company some of the SO's are filling a law suit against TWC and the client for working so many hours. In fact, to really make it strange I got a monthly pamplet that condones sleeping on the job (cat naps). If the post allows it to be so of course.

I got that pamplet too! A week later when one of my supervisors caught a patrol officer sleeping on a couch in the pool house, he pooled it out and pointed it at him!! The supervisor pointed out where it says if allowed, geez what were they thinking!! West Palm needs to look at those things before they put them out.

[NRM_Oz]

Many S/O's work 2 jobs or O/T with some considering coming to work a paid sleepy time. I caught hundreds asleep during the 2000 Olympics and even a few police officers were transferred without notice after being found asleep on the job. 8 hour shifts are not difficult unless you were in an ER environment and most of those I caught sleeping on the job during the games were working night shifts to catch up sleep on work time to go directly to their factory jobs in the morning.

I would be lying if I said I have never had to take a cat nap on a 17 hour back to back shift with a 2 hour round trip + personal admin time which chews up your off time and makes it dangerous to drive to and from work. Our Ops Mgr condoned our naps as only 2 of us were permitted to work the long shifts due to internal theft by our own staff and if it had not been for the empty building plus perimeter alarms we would have been looking for new jobs the next day.

[bpdblue]

SecTrainer, absolutely correct once again!

It amazed me, while on my old police department why they would keep trying to retain very nice, but absolutely worthless (for the job of police officer, not for other jobs) recruits.

The reasons given included, among others, we were short handed and needed to get more people on the street, or the recruit was a relative of a high ranking officer of another department, or a 5'0", 98 pound weakling, who honestly could not qualify at the firing range (with a pistol, no less) because it was too heavy to hold up and point at the target at the necessary times during the shoot, was allowed to stay on, because she was a female.

The department wanted a few more ladies. This one sounds sexist, but when it might be my life on the line, I want somebody that could save my butt in an emergency, be it male or female. In this nice gal's case, it took a situation where she was in training with an FTO, who got into a fight with two bad guys, and the recruit was afraid, and just stood and watched. She then was off the department. It should have never gotten that far.

[EMTGuard]

I started a thread about this very subject back in October.

http://forums.securityinfowatch.com/showthread.php?p=41837#post41837

[OccamsRazor]

The reasons given included, among others, we were short handed and needed to get more people on the street, or the recruit was a relative of a high ranking officer of another department, or a 5'0", 98 pound weakling, who honestly could not qualify at the firing range (with a pistol, no less) because it was too heavy to hold up and point at the target at the necessary times during the shoot, was allowed to stay on, because she was a female.

The department wanted a few more ladies. This one sounds sexist, but when it might be my life on the line, I want somebody that could save my butt in an emergency, be it male or female. In this nice gal's case, it took a situation where she was in training with an FTO, who got into a fight with two bad guys, and the recruit was afraid, and just stood and watched. She then was off the department. It should have never gotten that far.

My old PD had a female officer who never should have been...I've met a lot of really good female cops, but this one should've gotten a job walking dogs or something. She was terrified of anyone bigger than her, sloughed off more work than all the brass combined, lied in court, was caught and told not to do it anymore (!), sprayed more officers than suspects in fights (I was one of them), and nearly got thrown out of her academy class for sleeping with a classmate. She finished out with her class under a cloud of suspicion in a cheating scandal that saw 4 other recruits fired, but nothing was ever proven.

Whenever anyone asked (other officers, court officials, local government officials, etc) why she still had a job, it was explained that she was our only female officer.

[NRM_Oz]

There are just some people who should not be placed on certain sites. Some of these do not speak English, cannot follow basic orders (ie. do not place your hands inside a customer's bag), do not leave your site without calling someone for a pitstop break and do not tie up the radio on BS calls. I have worked with a few female officers who needed to grow male body parts to prove they were tough and 1 in particular in a training course had been working for 12 months only and had to be told to STF Up in class when the instructor (an ex partner) told her to breath through her nose only.

I once had a 4' 10" female guard of indian origin whom we had for LP work 1 Xmas who got lost from site amongst the clothing racks and of course comments were made of a homing device if she got lost. Before she came back from lunch, I arrested a suit S/L and her b/f and before I knew it, this little lady had the b/f in a wrist lock and had him under control as the female became compliant with me. I later found out she was a Sergeant in the Indian police before having kids and moving to Australia.

[junkyarddog]

Another opportunity for me to complain about what a joke critical infrastructure security is, in America. My site is in the process of a major transformation, but not more than several months ago, things were really really really bad. As in some security officers refusing to patrol certain sites because of the (percieved or real) danger, a couple of the supervisors being more concerned that a guard have the issued uniform belt (not his own!) than being concerned about control building door handles being smashed off and unlockable, big holes in fence lines, letting alarms go at the end of the shift etc. "Oh, the control building door is off its hinges and a man with a turban and a beard is video taping the post from across the road, don't worry about THAT, but you BETTER be wearing the proper belt next time I see you!". Ya, almost literally.

[SecTrainer]

Another opportunity for me to complain about what a joke critical infrastructure security is, in America.

It's one of those jokes that's hard to laugh at, isn't it? Wealthiest nation in the world, and we can't get anything right where CI security is concerned. Name any of the enumerated critical infrastructures, and a child of 7 could defeat most of the so-called "security measures" that have been implemented since 9/11. The main problem is in the CI areas that are "privately owned" (most power plants, telecom, healthcare, agriculture, financial, etc.) and where the owners still have unfettered authority to put profit over security concerns. We've done a little better in government-controlled areas of CI...but not a lot.

It is not a lack of expertise, either. On this very board there are a number of highly-qualified security specialists who, if they had the cooperation of their CI clients AND/OR the real power and commitment of the federal government behind them, could immediately identify and implement systems that would be significantly better than those we see now. You'd see no sleeping guards at nuke plants, I think I can guarantee.

What we get, instead, is equivocation, delay and quibbling while, in Washington, the Congressional Research Service, the GAO and others file reports that clearly state what a miserable job we're doing with security.

If you yourself wish to read any of these reports while you're in DC, check the toilet stalls of Federal buildings, where they're being put to good use as both laxatives and toilet paper. No matter how constipated you are, you WILL sh1t when you read one of these, and then you can wipe your a$$ with it just like administrative officials and Congressmen do. Gives you a special feeling for these people, but watch out for the stink.

Whoops! Senator Snottbucket is out of paper. Quick, somebody - commission another report for Senator Snottbucket! We need the stall.

[N. A. Corbier]

Another opportunity for me to complain about what a joke critical infrastructure security is, in America. My site is in the process of a major transformation, but not more than several months ago, things were really really really bad. As in some security officers refusing to patrol certain sites because of the (percieved or real) danger, a couple of the supervisors being more concerned that a guard have the issued uniform belt (not his own!) than being concerned about control building door handles being smashed off and unlockable, big holes in fence lines, letting alarms go at the end of the shift etc. "Oh, the control building door is off its hinges and a man with a turban and a beard is video taping the post from across the road, don't worry about THAT, but you BETTER be wearing the proper belt next time I see you!". Ya, almost literally.

I'm gonna be mean here for a moment. Is this a contract security firm? If so, then the supervisor may not actually be required to care about client security breaches. His job is to supervise his employees. "Your," and by "Your" I mean the guard assigned to the post's, job is to observe the security breaches and report them to the proper client point of contact for them to decide what to do with.

What is in the scope of the supervisor's responsibility is that the guard force follows all company policies and post orders. If you are not reporting these security breaches, then he is supposed to... remedy this through counseling or disciplinary action. If the guard force refuses to patrol, then the supervisor should be notified (or discover it through lack of reporting on those areas / guard management tour system showing failure to patrol / whatever) and take disciplinary action against the employees who are failing to patrol.

Basically, his job isn't to care about terrorists filming the plant unless that's part of his scope of authority. That's the individual guard's job. His job actually is to make sure that the proper belt is worn, because that's what they pay the man for.