Federal Protective Service

The Federal Protective Service (FPS) provides both security services and law enforcement to more than 8,000 federally owned and leased buildings nationwide. These buildings include office buildings, courthouses, border stations, and warehouses. FPS's headquarters is in Washington, D.C., but because[Page 673] of the large number of buildings for which it is responsible, it also operates regional offices in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Fort Worth, Kansas City, and Washington, D.C. In addition, FPS operates a megacenter in each state and in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico that serves as a dispatch network to provide emergency communications for police business and routine monitoring of security alarms in federal facilities.

The FPS traces its history to 1790, when President George Washington appointed three commissioners to establish a federal territory that was to become the permanent seat of the government. The commissioners hired six night watchmen to guard the buildings that the government occupied, including those occupied by Congress and by the president. The creation of the FPS was an outgrowth of Americans’ reluctance to create a national police force, requiring establishment of a protective service designated to prevent attacks on governmental personnel and facilities. Because of this diffusion of responsibilities, protection of the White House and Capitol is currently provided by the Capitol Police and uniformed Secret Service officers. Since its creation, many of the FPS's federal guard force operations were transferred and divided among several departments.

In 1948, Congress enacted Title 40 U.S.C. 318, which gave federal guards arrest powers and the new role of police officers. Congress directed the appointment of special police officers to have the same powers as sheriffs and constables. One year later, the newly formed General Services Administration (GSA) assumed leadership of the federal police, which were known as U.S. Special Police.

In 1971, the GSA administrator signed an order formally establishing the FPS to provide a uniformed force to protect government occupied buildings. However, over the decades, the FPS provided only reactive fixed guardposts. Until 1995, the agency operated in relative obscurity, and legislators, in their effort to shrink governmental spending, diminished the number of FPS officers. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, changed legislators’ minds. Soon after, the Department of Justice recommended increasing the level of security at vulnerable buildings and upgrading the role of the FPS. As a result, the FPS doubled its size to 724 officers and shifted its strategy to a mobile, proactive police force.

In 2000, GSA relinquished control of governance of security and law enforcement to the FPS's assistant commissioner, who was the agency's head, and in March 2003, the FPS was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security. The FPS was incorporated into the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the head of the FPS was retitled director.