Courthouse Security Firm Is Suspended : Guards: U.S. Marshals Service replaces N.Y. company as FBI probes contract. Allegations include overbilling, underpayment of taxes.

The U.S. Marshals Service has abruptly replaced the company that provides security at nearly half of the nation’s federal courthouses as the FBI investigates the firm’s handling of its multimillion-dollar contract.

A spokesman for the Marshals Service said the company supplying courthouse guards, Central Security Systems Inc. of New York, was “temporarily suspend(ed) from contracting with the U.S. government” and that a new firm took over the job Thursday.

Spokesman William M. Dempsey would not detail the alleged practices that led to replacement of Central Security, which hires retired law enforcement officers to help U.S. Marshals protect courthouses.

But officials of the Marshals Service and other law enforcement agencies said the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general are investigating allegations ranging from overbilling to underpayment of taxes.

Court records in New York list a series of liens filed against Central Security in recent years by state tax and labor agencies for amounts up to $225,000.

In addition, the leader of a group of self-styled whistle-blowers who worked for Central Security in the Los Angeles Federal Courthouse said they had complained to “the proper authorities” that the company provided minimum training while charging the government for services never provided.

A spokesman for the security firm, which is based on Staten Island, said Thursday that “there’s a new management” in the company and it would have no comment.

Authorities said Central Security began providing courthouse guards in 1989 and that its federal contract was not scheduled to go out for bids again until next year. But after officials in Washington exercised an option not to renew the firm’s contract for the final year, Pinkertons’ Security & Investigation Services was asked last weekend if it could take over the company’s duties.

Central Security’s service area included the federal courts’ sprawling 9th Circuit, which covers California and eight other Western states.

“Upon recommendation of the U.S. Marshals Service, the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a decision temporarily suspending CSSI (Central Security),” said Dempsey, the spokesman for the Marshals Service.

The uniformed and armed contract guards are highly visible in all federal courthouses; most are stationed at metal detectors inside the entrances.

Despite the change in management, authorities said personnel will remain largely the same. At Los Angeles area federal courthouses, for instance, Pinkertons’ hired most of the 81 guards used previously by Central Security.

But four guards who were not rehired complained Thursday that they were dropped for their complaints about the previous security contractor.

“The four of us were whistle-blowers,” said guard Joseph Vanderhoff, a retired New York City policeman. “We brought it to a head.”

Vanderhoff said his allegations prompted the local office of the Justice Department’s inspector general to seize Central Security’s files at the Los Angeles Federal Courthouse recently.

Craig Meacham, the head U.S. Marshal for the Central District of California, confirmed Thursday that payroll and other records of the company had been seized. But Meacham also defended Central Security’s work and said the complaints by the Los Angeles guards were not the reason for the national action against the firm.

“To the best of my knowledge, the (inspector general’s) investigation is continuing, and to the best of my knowledge, they have found nothing” in Los Angeles, he said.

Termination of the contract “has absolutely nothing to do with what was going on in the West Coast,” he said. “It was a matter between . . . Washington and Central Security. . . . The company was not performing to the satisfaction of the Marshals Service. I had no complaint with the service here in California.”

Meacham attributed the Los Angeles complaints to a failed unionization effort among guards this summer.

FBI spokesman would not disclose the thrust of their investigation. But one official cited the alleged overdue taxes, and another said there were accusations of “discrepancies in the procurement process--the way contracts were let.”

Lieberman reported from Los Angeles and Ostrow from Washington.