They wouldn’t be trusted for anything serious like that. They aren’t there to provide security, just the illusion of security. They would not, for instance, be trusted with guns or anything like that.
In theory, they were doing CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checks on the people undergoing the training.
No, you definitely can’t trust them with guns.
Looking at the literature sent to Olympic Ticket holders I think the main task of these so-called guards is to search you to ensure you don’t sneak any cans of Pepsi into the ground. We don’t want to upset Coca Cola do we?
I never heard of this company prior to this debacle, but per the Wikipedia article, they have about 650,000 employees and run the security for places all over the world. So they’re not amateurs. (And they own Wackenhut in the the US, which was the subject of a couple of exposés in the old Spy Magazine back in the 1990s.)
They are better remembered as Group 4, who took over escorting prisoners from the jails to the courthouse and back again, with similar results to the Red Shirts in Star Trek (get shot, get beaten up, lose prisoners) in the 1990s.
Fortunately, after a long and expensive rebranding effort, they managed to shake of that reputa… oh.
:smack:
You should look up some of the stories of embezzelment when they were known as Wackenhut here in the US. Mrs. Cad says that there standard way of resolving the hit their reputation takes whenever there is a scandle is to change their corporate name.
<derail> Three weeks in advance, and the bomber checked in to the hotel as a guest. Also, the Conservative party had expressly requested light security for the convention (perhaps to make the political process seem more open & transparent?), so only a few rooms had been swept for explosives. </derail>
So, how was this security firm picked?
Was expense a major consideration? If so, well…you get what you pay for.
Ah, good old G4S.
A colleague of mine was invited to be an event Marshall - he was a priority since he is a registered cycle coach as well as being very well security cleared.
He was offered this attractive role, with no pay, no accommodation, and he would have had to use his own leave from his own job to do it - you can imagine his response. G4S and the idiot UK Olympic committee seem to think that just being anywhere near the Olympic rings is such a great honour and privilege that people should be grateful to volunteer to do the marshalling for nothing, nay, at considerable expense to themselves.
What I like most is that this is from a government that knows the price of everything and is a great promoter of the red in tooth and claw type of capitalism - and yet it can’t understand why people expect to be paid or why they would prefer not to do business with them, especially when a better offer comes along.
G4S got the contract to run Birmingham prison, they made 122 staff redundant. The arrangements were handled so incompetently that they broke employment law, with most of those dismissed making successful unfair dismissal claims. The compensation however was not paid by G4S. Our idiot government had signed an agreement that it would meet the costs of redundancies, and ultimately this included the compensation - which then leads on to significant payments to compensate staff in their pensions schemes. It has cost what I would call significant amounts of taxpayers money to make workers redundant at the behest of a private enterprise.
There is a very serious scheme to make many more prisons in the UK become part of the private sector and G4S will win many of those contracts. Its likely that there will be serious collective operational issues, such as where will the manpower come from to handle serious prison disturbances, because one thing is certain, G4S and their like will not staff their prisons in such a manner that there will be capacity to send a reserve to other prisons in crisis.
Like any army, they are underworked or overmanned until the fighting starts, but when it does start, its way too late to recruit and train more staff.
When these prisons are sold off, you will see it hit the news again, but this time the riot response will be too little too late and the incident boil on for far longer than needed and the damage massive, it will cost tens of millions to put right.
I reckon you will see this in the next three years - seems like a long time eh? You will not miss these events, they will be huge headliners, the commission of enquiry will be long drawn out and try to lay the blame wherever it can, but the responsibility is purely upon this current crop of idiot politicians and their love of running institutions right on the edge of viability for minimum cos and maximum profit for their greedy fat little businessmen who fund their election campaigns
Sorry for the very bad language to follow, but this from the latest edition of Private Eye;-
*When it comes to running secure training centres for troubled and often disturbed youngsters G4S can at least boast of having ‘committed people’ to care.
This ‘commitment’ was evident in comments on the Facebook page of a custody officer who suffered minor burns after a scalding cheese toastie was thrown at him at a training centre in Kent.
‘What those cunts done now’ asked one colleague…
A former manager said ‘Dangerous… about time they learn a lesson’ prompting another colleague to add "The fucking cunts. Now this is a whole new level’ while her colleague merely called them ‘fucking arseholes’
*
As *Private Eye *adds:-
Just the people to provide “support, guidance” and "self-proclaimed “child care best practice”
Am i right in thinking G4S still intend to claim the full contractual bounty (51 million £?)
The Olympic committee here in the UK are deluded as are any connected service providers. We did some work for them, they insisted we do it at cost price then made us pay them for the privilege of doing it by giving them sponsorship money… and buy tickets for crap events on one wanted to see.
How lucky of us…
With the reputation this company has why in the world would the government, or Olympic Committee, hire them? Are they just too cheap to care?
Most Olympic organising committees are borderline corrupt and.or incompetent, as far as I can tell. And it’s never the top priority for the national governments of the city in question, especially when you consider that the governments tend to change between the awarding of the games and their taking place. So basically it’s just a crappy administrative job that tends to get overseen by lightweights. Chaos ensues.
As a Private Eye subscriber for some years now, it seems to me that this sort of nonsense is unfortunately not just confined to the Olympics. A prime example is rail contracts in the UK, whereby the government awards franchises to the bidder who promises the most return to the government, but in practice the rail company ends up needing huge taxpayer-funded bailouts because the franchise has not proved as profitable as they hoped. Meanwhile, the paying customer gets shafter by ever-rising ticket prices for very little increase (and often a decrease) in the quality of the service. Governments of both colours are guilty of this but sadly it seems it will never end.
Having said that, I agree that G4S do appear to be particularly incompetent, in this case and others. The only comparable company that immediately springs to mind is C[r]apita.
The obvious way that they could make up the shortage of employees would be to use the ones already working for the company in the greater London area. Of course, if I’m a current customer of theirs, I’d then be worried that they’re leaving me understaffed.
I don’t know about the OC but I can tell you that often in Spain there is some rule about hiring the lowest bidder - period. Not “the lowest bidder against whom we do not have three pending suits” (true case), for example.
Often the, ehrm, exchanges of gifts do not involve being granted a contract breaking that rule: it involves being told what other people’s bids are, and being allowed to change yours.
Looks like the TSA is coming over to help out.
Oh, good. I was afraid they might ask for help from a competent organization.