LONDON — The security company that employed the shooter in the Orlando nightclub massacre has been tarred by a series of blunders and scandals that have raised questions about its competency and ethics.
London-based G4S acknowledged Monday that Omar Mateen, whose rampage left 49 people dead and more than 50 wounded, worked for the firm at a residential community in south Florida.
Founded in Denmark more than 100 years ago, G4S entered the U.S. market in a big way in 2002 with its purchase of The Wackenhut Corp., the country’s second-largest security services firm at the time.
G4S is now the world’s largest security company, measured by employees. It has 610,000 workers, including about 50,000 in the U.S., according to its website.
In recent years, G4S has had trouble protecting its own reputation.
It created a huge headache during the 2012 London Olympics when it didn’t deliver the number of security guards promised in its contract. The British military had to be called in to fill the gap.
G4S came under fire again in 2013 when it and a competitor were found to have overbilled the U.K. government for the electronic tagging of criminals. The scandal cost G4S 116 million pounds in settlement charges and 45 million pounds in lost profits.
In a mortifying gaffe, G4S staff in 2011 attached an electronic monitoring tag to the false leg of a criminal, who was able to simply remove the prosthetic — and the tag — during his court-ordered curfew.
In Florida, G4S has been faced allegations of inadequate training and screening of workers in some of its juvenile residential centers.
