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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTime to look at G4S. Security Company lied to state about Mateen's mental health
I've been thinking a lot about this company so I did a little bit of research. They used to be known as Wackenhut which was around for a long time, before being taken over by G4S.
Nine years ago, the state of Florida received documentation from a security company vouching for the mental health of Omar Mateen, who launched a bloody attack this week on Orlando nightclub patrons.
But the psychologist whose name appears on the document in state records said on Friday that she never evaluated a man who now ranks as the worst mass killer in American history. In fact, she was not even living in Florida when the evaluation was supposedly completed.
The revelation on Friday became another source of scrutiny for the G4S security company, which was known as Wackenhut at the time. The psychological evaluation done for the company, which is required under state law, cleared Mateen to carry a firearm as a private security guard.
“What I do know is that in September 2007, I was not living or working in Florida, I was not performing any work for Wackenhut, and I did not administer any type of examination to Omar Mateen,” Dr Carol Nudelman, who now lives Colorado, said in a statement released through her attorneys to The Miami Herald and other papers who had published her name.
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http://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article/1977077/security-firm-g4s-under-scrutiny-over-mistakes
Here's a bit from an AlterNet piece about G4S:
Before Orlando, Omar Mateen Worked for Human Rights Abusers
<snip>
More troubling still, Omar Mateen worked for a company that was perpetrating systemic violence against vulnerable people long before he took up arms against his LGBTQ neighbors. For nine years Mateen worked for G4S Security, a British-based corporation that contracts with the U.S. and Israeli governments for work that often violates human rights on a massive scale.
G4S, which brags about having 600 staffers on the southern border, has contracts with U.S. immigration authorities to detain and deport people back to Mexico, as well as to run private juvenile detention facilities. In Israel, meanwhile, G4S profits from providing equipment and services in Israeli prisons and interrogation centers where Palestinians are routinely tortured. It’s also involved in running Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Incidentally, G4S is the company that trained Mateen to work as an armed security guard, which licensed him to carry and use weapons. And although his coworkers told supervisors that Mateen “frequently made homophobic and racial comments,” the company did nothing. It kept him on board—and kept him armed.
Should this company continue to profit from multi-million-dollar contracts with the U.S. government?
Since 2012, there’s been a major campaign against G4S, resulting in decisions by major mainstream institutions—like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Methodist Church, numerous European universities, important charities in South Africa and the Netherlands, UN agencies in the Middle East, and more—to divest from G4S holdings, or to cancel or not renew service contracts. G4S is profiting from exactly the kind of anti-Arab and anti-Latino racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia that are all on the rise in the U.S. right now.
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read:http://www.alternet.org/world/omar-mateen-worked-g4s-human-rights-abusers
Wiki link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G4S
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enough
(13,262 posts)by Alex Emmons 6/14/16
snip>
G4S has previously been accused of improperly vetting its employees. In 2009, Danny Fitzsimons, a former British paratrooper and employee of a G4S subsidiary, killed two colleagues in Iraq, claiming to be “the antichrist” and saying he “must satisfy” his “bloodlust.” An official investigation concluded that his employer did not properly vet his psychological health.
In 2007, G4S signed contracts with five Israeli prisons and “interrogation centers,” leading to accusations that it was complicit in torture and the imprisonment of children. In 2010, three G4S security guards killed an Angolan national during a deportation flight from the U.K., by restraining him in an asphyxiating position.
In January, five G4S officers were arrested after a BBC expose revealed systematic abuse and neglect at a G4S-run youth jails.
G4S has also become a focal point for the Israel-focused Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement over its partnerships with Israeli prisons and military checkpoints. Activist pressure has led to divestment from the company by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Methodist Church, and UNICEF in Jordan. G4S has since announced that it would end its Israeli prison contracts.
In 2002, G4S acquired the United States-based Wackenhut Corporation, a private security and prison contractor with a deeply troubled history, including the widespread sexual assault of inmates at a Texas detention center in 1999.
snip> more at link
cali
(114,904 posts)
midnight
(26,624 posts)G4S SECURE SOLUTIONS USA
633 W Wisconsin Ave 593, Milwaukee, WI 53203
Map & Directions
(414) 277-7622
View Website
http://www.citysearch.com/profile/11010264/milwaukee_wi/g4s_secure_solutions_usa.html
Scott Walker hired them in 2011 for the court house with the understanding that they would save money… It was later discovered that there wasn't much of a savings and that better background checks of these security people was needed.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... is the fact that this info on G4S has not been covered by M$M. The free online media is beating the M$M when it comes to plain old investigative journalism.
PADemD
(4,482 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)
NightWatcher
(39,343 posts)I wonder if it was the private contractor USIS who until they lost the USOPM, were busted granting thousands of clearances without ever checking the people out.
appalachiablue
(41,171 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)How the racist, homophobic, violent, Far-Right Christian evangelizing culture of G4S
may have led Mateen to act as he did.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027917219
cali
(114,904 posts)CanSocDem
(3,286 posts)...of the Industrial Ruling Class. Getting their hands dirty so you won't have to...
.
Ford_Prefect
(7,919 posts)I'm wondering who they bought for cover in Congress, state governments and maybe elsewhere?
Anyone seen their name in the donation lists or the PACs?
PADemD
(4,482 posts)G4S PLC Lois J Frankel (D) in 2016
G4S PLC to Candice S Miller (R) in 2014
http://www.opensecrets.org/usearch/?q=G4S&cx=010677907462955562473%3Anlldkv0jvam&cof=FORID%3A11
hunter
(38,326 posts)This kind of unsanctioned violence against oppressed peoples is as American as apple pie.
Sell some weak-minded fools some guns, call them patriots, men of god, protectors of our way of life, whatever, and PROFIT!!!
Ask any number of American Indians, Black Americans, LGBT Americans, American union workers...
mestyle
(2 posts)I haven't heard much mention of this, focus seems to be on Wackenhut, but G4S is part owned by Securitas right? All of these companies are related to the events 9/11. Argentbright, and Global Aviation which handled all the airports on 9/11 are tied to this one company G4S? There is also a Burn's security connection in this mix?
