The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has questioned planned cuts to the Federal Protective Service, the police force charged with protecting federal buildings and installations, and increasing reliance on private security companies.
DHS’s transformation plan for FPS would cut the number of authorized law enforcement officers and civilian employees by about 25 percent to below 1,000 and would strip proactive patrols and retain only reactive response.
Committee chair James L. Oberstar, D-Minn., said federal officers get more training and are more skilled than contract guards who sometimes are only authorized to observe and report events, or otherwise try to detain a suspect until an FPS officer arrives. He invoked the Oklahoma City bombing to underscore the importance of the role.
FPS uses about 15,000 contract guards to protect federal buildings and installations, and before being moved to DHS was in GSA, as it was considered a building-function.
Oberstar criticized the DHS plan as an instance where an agency was placed within DHS, stripped of assets and resources, "ultimately, destroying the agency’s ability to perform their critical functions." He suggested that a similar fate befell FEMA.