Thursday, March 24, 2011

Last Call

There's fail, and then there's Detroit fail.

In what appears to be a major security breach, components for a live bomb were allowed to remain in the federal building in Detroit for three weeks before the bomb squad was called in to remove it.

The Detroit Police Department bomb squad was finally called in March 18 to remove the device in the McNamara Federal Building, which houses the FBI, IRS and offices for Sen. Carl Levin. The pipe bomb device had apparently been discovered three weeks earlier by a building guard.

"A contract guard apparently saw this package outside on Feb. 26th," according to David Wright, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 918, which represents the Federal Protective Service Employees.

"Against all security protocols -- an unattended package should be treated with extreme caution -- he picked up that package and took it inside basically on the premise of 'lost and found' property. And apparently stored it. That was on Feb. 26. On March 18th, last Friday, someone got the idea to x-ray the package. At that point wires were seen... and it turned out to be a bomb."

The contract security guard has been suspended and in the coming days a special training team will be deployed to Detroit to re-train the building's security personnel on proper protocol, according to Chris Ortman, spokesman for Federal Protective Service.

Just...no. Look, I'm all for unions and employees fighting for a living wage, but I'm also for government employees not being stupid screw-ups, either. Especially in this environment of anti-government domestic terrorism, security training at government buildings in this country needs to be much better than it is.

Dude's lucky his face didn't get blown off.

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