Migliaccio & Rathod LLP is investigating whether security officers assigned to the St. Elizabeths Department of Homeland Security campus were paid for all required reporting, transportation, inspection, screening, standby, and post-relief time.
What is the issue?
The St. Elizabeths campus is a large, controlled federal site with multiple buildings, gates, checkpoints, roadways, and security posts. Officers may report to a central location, obtain equipment, receive an assignment, and then travel to a gate, perimeter position, lobby, command center, or other post.
When an employer requires an officer to report at a particular time and place but begins paying the officer only after arrival at the final post, the intervening time may constitute unpaid work.
The same issue can occur after a shift when officers must wait for transportation, return equipment, complete reports, or remain until another officer takes control of the post.
Security officers may have experienced:
- Unpaid time passing through employee screening.
- Unpaid roll call and post-assignment procedures.
- Unpaid transportation between a reporting area and an assigned checkpoint.
- Unpaid walking time across the campus after receiving instructions or equipment.
- Automatic meal deductions while remaining armed, on radio, or responsible for a post.
- Waiting without pay for relief or campus transportation.
- Unpaid vehicle, gate, perimeter, or equipment inspections.
- Mandatory holdovers without proper overtime.
- Hours split between posts, buildings, or payroll companies.
- Unpaid reports or equipment return after the posted shift.
Signs you may be affected
- You worked as an armed or unarmed security officer, patrol officer, dispatcher, or access-control officer at the St. Elizabeths DHS Campus.
- You worked for a private security contractor rather than directly for the federal government.
- You reported early for roll call, equipment issuance, weapons inspection, or post assignments without being paid for all of your time.
- You worked more than 40 hours in a week but did not receive proper overtime pay.
- Your employer automatically deducted meal breaks even though you remained responsible for your assigned security post.
- You waited for relief, completed required reports, or returned equipment after your scheduled shift without compensation.
Officers at the St. Elizabeths DHS Campus may remember a checkpoint, building number, post order, gate, shuttle, patrol route, vehicle, or supervisor without knowing the prime security contractor. Those details can be used to reconstruct the contracting and employment relationships.
If you performed armed or unarmed security, access-control, screening, patrol, dispatch, checkpoint, control-room, perimeter, vehicle-inspection, or other protective-services work at the St. Elizabeths DHS campus and believe required time was unpaid, please contact Migliaccio & Rathod LLP through the form below, by email at [email protected], or by telephone at (202) 470-3520.