Security guards at a firm that holds tens of millions of dollars in government contracts routinely falsified timesheets to claim hours when they weren’t on the job at New York City Housing Authority developments, putting residents in danger, a report by the city Department of Investigation released Wednesday alleges.
FJC Security (also known as Allied Universal) — which also has $6.5 million security contract with the mayor’s office — has provided security and fire watch guards at public housing developments for years, most recently under a $76 million contract awarded in 2019 that has since ballooned to $155 million, records show.
DOI alleged that security guards “frequently abandoned their posts or failed to show up for work,” covering their tracks by falsifying handwritten timesheets claiming to have worked an entire shift when they were absent for hours — and in some cases not on site for their full eight-hour shift.
“These failures jeopardized the safety of NYCHA residents, including at NYCHA buildings dedicated to seniors,” DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber said, noting that the Housing Authority failed in its responsibility to properly monitor FJC’s activities at its developments.
This no-show trend wound up “causing NYCHA to be billed for services that were not in fact provided,” according to the report, which resulted from DOI investigators randomly visiting NYCHA developments across the city where FJC was supposed to be on the job.
The DOI visits at randomly selected developments also uncovered problems with missing-in-action fire watch guards, with investigators finding 23 cases out of 60 where an FJC fire watch employee was not present for the duration of their shift. That included scheduled guards absent when fires broke out in buildings at three NYCHA developments: Douglass Houses and Taft Houses in Upper Manhattan and Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
Minor injuries resulted from two of the fires and investigators discovered guards had falsified their time sheets, DOI alleged.
FJC did not immediately return THE CITY’s calls seeking comment.
DOI informed NYCHA officials of its preliminary findings in June 2023, and that fall NYCHA began “phasing out” its work with FJC, ending the contract in March 2024. During that time, DOI continued to document more instances of security and watch guards claiming to work full shifts but going off the clock for hours at a time.
NYCHA spokesperson Michael Horgan noted that NYCHA has agreed to “substantially accept” 12 recommendations DOI made to improve oversight of security and fire watch contracts. He also noted that the authority has reduced the number of buildings requiring fire watch from 150 in 2023 to 50 buildings this year.
Last year THE CITY reported that FJC was performing security and fire watch guard services at a city-funded migrant shelter opened on Third Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn, because the building was at the time not up to fire code.
At the time, the former monitor overseeing NYCHA, Guidepost Solutions, had already raised questions about FJC guards going AWOL at NYCHA developments.
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