As the Statue of Liberty guard scandal spreads, the state has moved to fine or revoke the licenses of 21 security compa-nies that allegedly employed ex-cons, grifters and thugs at facilities throughout New York.
At the heart of the scandal is International Services Inc., a California-based security company exposed by the Daily News for hiring ex-cons to guard the Statue of Liberty and Camp Smith, a National Guard facility in Westchester County.
But in the past few days, the state also has charged 20 other companies with employing unregistered or unqualified guards at airlines, shipping and trucking companies, transit facilities, banks and a number of city and state agencies.
The action was triggered by state controller's office audits that found more than 440 guards employed illegally throughout the state.
The investigation is continuing, and more companies may be cited, state officials said.
State investigators said they found no wrongdoing on the part of government officials in the guard debacle. But, they conceded, unscrupulous security companies, which pay many of their guards only a few dollars above minimum wage, are encouraged to cut corners by the state's policy of hiring the lowest bidder. Cutting corners International, for example, had millions of dollars in low-bid government contracts, including a single $1 million deal to provide guards at nine state sites, four of which demanded top security clearances.
"When a company cuts corners, it may find it can't pay for screening or training," said Mark Peters, chief of the At-torney General's Public Integrity unit. "It hires unqualified personnel and may ship them off to facilities that assume they are dealing with honest vendors and getting qualified guards."
Last week, the attorney general filed a lawsuit against International seeking punitive damages and restitution of millions the company allegedly bilked from state and city agencies.
Lax state laws compound the security guard crisis.
Guards in New York have long been required to be fingerprinted and to pass a criminal background check. But in 1994, bowing to industry pressure, the state softened the law to limit screening to crimes committed in New York. Out-of-state criminals, those convicted in federal jurisdictions and illegal aliens easily skirt detection.
Among them was the ex-con at the Statue of Liberty, who managed to get a New York state guard license despite an armed robbery conviction in North Carolina.
The law also exempts certain New York State convictions. The rap sheets of guards at Camp Smith included con-victions for drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident - but they still had valid guard licenses, though at lev-els lower than required.
Indeed, state regulations are so lax that guards can be hired - and put to work - even before required background checks have been completed, officials said.
New York Secretary of State Randy Daniels submitted legislation in Albany on Thursday to close loopholes in the law. The bill would forbid companies from hiring guards before they have been screened. It would reinstate the re-quirement of a federal fingerprint check and increase fines for using unregistered guards to as much as $10,000 per vio-lation.
In the past, guard companies resisted federal checks because they took too long. But current technology can provide results in 14 days and improvements are soon expected to provide a full screening within as little as two days, said De-partment of State spokesman Eamon Moynihan.
At city homeless shelters, 208 of 450 International guards hired under a $12 million contract were unregistered and working illegally, according to the attorney general's office.
Guards at one shelter beat and robbed a resident, according to the attorney general's complaint. A guard at another allegedly assaulted his supervisor.
Police brass have complained repeatedly of problems with International guards at Brooklyn's notorious Bedford-Atlantic Men's Shelter. The Department of Homeless Services has penalized the company about $150,000 for a variety of contract violations and used its own unarmed police force to bolster weak security. Lack of enforcement A company memo indicated that International "was never in compliance with the contract and never had any intention of being so," according to court papers.
But no action was taken to terminate International's contract until Friday, when the Department of Homeless Ser-vices announced the company was being replaced at the seven shelters it was hired to guard.
In a June 21 letter to the agency, the company asked to get out of its contract because "an act of war . . . perpetrated on Sept. 11, 2001, has made it impossible to prosecute the work required."
In the letter, International's vice president, Bunce Pierce, made no mention of the contract violations and offered no explanation of how the terror attacks affected shelter guards. But he did complain that the department "is severely be-hind" in payment and asked to be "paid in full by June 30."
A department spokesman said the issue was under review.
Courtesy of the NY Daily News
June 30, 2002, Sunday
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