By JACK BROOK
The Utah faculty the place conservative chief Charlie Kirk was assassinated lacked a number of key public security measures and practices which have change into commonplace safeguards for safety at occasions across the nation, an Related Press evaluate has discovered.
Utah Valley College’s outside courtyard, the place Kirk confirmed up on Sept. 10 to debate college students, was surrounded by a number of tall buildings, leaving Kirk susceptible. That was made all of the stronger as a result of campus police didn’t fly a drone to watch rooftops or coordinate with native regulation enforcement to safe the occasion. It deployed solely six officers from a pressure that was already small for a campus its dimension. There have been no bag checks or metallic detectors.
A sniper took place on a close-by roof and killed Kirk with a single shot about 20 minutes after the occasion started, escaping discover from campus police.
Safety at Utah Valley College will come into sharper focus within the coming months as lawmakers and the general public search solutions about what might have been performed otherwise.
“Completely there have been safety failures; it left him uncovered,” mentioned Greg Shaffer, who oversaw Kirk’s safety from 2015 to 2022. “It was egregious sufficient that somebody was in a position to take benefit and kill him.”
In an interview, the AP requested the college president, Astrid Tuminez, if there was a safety failure on campus surrounding the Kirk assassination. “Any person was killed and that’s a tragedy, I feel that’s what I’d say proper now,” she responded. Tuminez declined to reply extra detailed questions on campus safety, citing a pending exterior evaluate. A college spokesperson additionally declined to reply questions on staffing, tools, safety planning and budgets.
No drones monitoring rooftops
The day Kirk spoke at UVU, it was clear and sunny — the right climate for a drone to have had a transparent view of the roofs of the encompassing buildings, together with the place the murderer fired a lethal shot from a bolt motion rifle at Kirk from about 400 toes away.
However no drone had been deployed, although safety consultants mentioned rooftop sniper assaults had been a transparent menace. That was evident as just lately as final yr when a rooftop gunman in Butler, Pennsylvania, fired pictures at a rally held by President Donald Trump throughout his marketing campaign, killing one, injuring two and wounding Trump.
Ty Richmond, president of occasion companies for safety agency Allied Common, mentioned the tried assassination Trump uncovered the danger of failing to safe elevated areas. He mentioned drones, which price as little as $2,000, and video surveillance needs to be a part of the instruments used to evaluate and handle threats at any outside occasion.
“It was both not performed comprehensively or not performed in any respect, as a result of that ought to have been a pure capacity to determine and detect any excessive floor threat and exposures that you’d have in a scenario like that,” Richmond mentioned.
The UVU campus had quite a few cameras, together with at the very least one overlooking the buildings across the courtyard. A college spokesperson declined to say whether or not somebody was actively monitoring it or if it was working.
A smaller than common police pressure
UVU has an enrollment of 48,000 college students, although Tuminez mentioned that features 16,000 college students who’re in highschool and don’t take courses on campuses.
The college has 23 cops, or one for each 1,400 on-campus college students, in accordance with a 2024 UVU report. The common public college has round one officer for each 500 college students, in accordance with a 2024 U.S. Division of Justice examine.
“There may be not a campus police division on this nation that would present the extent of safety crucial for a big scale outside occasion with 3,000 individuals,” mentioned S. Daniel Carter, a campus security marketing consultant. “They would want assist, usually from an area regulation enforcement company.”
UVU had six campus cops current on the occasion together with Kirk’s private safety element, campus police Chief Jeffrey Lengthy mentioned after the taking pictures. Utah County Legal professional Jeffrey Grey mentioned throughout a information convention {that a} UVU police officer had been watching the group from an “elevated place.”
Officers on the Utah County Sheriff’s Workplace and Orem Police Division, each of which have drones, mentioned they weren’t concerned in safety for the occasion.
A UVU spokesperson mentioned not like different colleges with bigger safety staffs, they don’t have dormitories to safe. Nonetheless, different Utah colleges of comparable dimension with largely commuter populations have greater ratios of officers to college students.
Weber State College, a largely commuter public faculty with greater than 33,000 college students, about half of whom are additionally enrolled in highschool, has a public security drone and 41 full and part-time cops. And the College of Utah, with 36,000 primarily commuter college students, has 46 officers.
General spending on public security various at these universities in 2025 — $2.3 million at Weber State and $16.2 million on the College of Utah the place a 2018 homicide of a scholar led to extra spending on safety. UVU officers declined to share a present price range for his or her division, however a legislative audit confirmed $1.6 million was earmarked for public security in 2020 out of a virtually $250 million campus price range.
Security sources didn’t match faculty’s progress
UVU, situated between Salt Lake Metropolis suburbs and Brigham Younger College in Provo, grew from a neighborhood faculty of lower than 9,000 within the early Nineteen Nineties to roughly 48,000 this yr because of the addition of four-year levels and campus expansions. However public security did not sustain, mentioned two former campus public security leaders. Each spoke on situation of anonymity as a result of they feared repercussions.
Val Peterson, UVU’s vp for administration & strategic relations, rejected pleas for extra security sources, together with hiring extra officers and providing greater salaries to maintain expert personnel, the previous public security leaders mentioned. Peterson, who can also be a Republican state lawmaker main state appropriations, oversees UVU’s public security and has been with the college for greater than 30 years.
Each former campus public security officers every recalled Peterson telling them a number of instances in conferences associated to public security funding a couple of decade in the past that as a result of a taking pictures had not occurred on campus in a long time, it will not occur sooner or later. Peterson believed the sleepy campus was secure from hurt, they mentioned. UVU’s president declined to touch upon Peterson’s alleged remarks.
Former UVU police Sgt. Bryan Cunningham additionally recalled these feedback and, he mentioned, officers warned the administration in price range discussions associated to public security that the campus may very well be the scene of an “lively shooter nightmare” attributable to its structure and understaffed police division.
Peterson didn’t reply to requests for remark despatched by cellphone and e-mail to his personal and public workplaces.
A sub-par emergency response system
On the time of the taking pictures, the college was with out a fireplace marshal to assist plan for security at massive occasions. And as just lately as 2023, two of the college’s three emergency radio channels didn’t meet state requirements for sign power, in accordance with an inner evaluate shared with the AP. The evaluate didn’t embody details about the third channel.
Patchy reception was a significant issue that would hamper public security personnel from coordinating throughout emergencies, one of many former campus public security officers famous.
The college boosted the sign at one constructing prior to now yr, Utah Communications Authority Govt Director Tina Mathieu mentioned. She was not conscious of another enhancements.
A college spokesperson didn’t reply to questions on campus emergency radio sign power.
Campus security assessments faraway from proposed state regulation
Utah lawmakers pushed to enhance public faculty safety after the lethal 2022 elementary faculty taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas, by making a job pressure, appointing a state safety chief and requiring an “armed guardian” be current at each public faculty. In addition they mandated all Ok-12 colleges conduct rigorous security assessments.
Rep. Ryan Wilcox, a Republican who chairs the duty pressure, launched laws this yr to require public universities to conduct the identical assessments, however the provision was eliminated by the state senate.
“I don’t consider the supply within the invoice would have modified the result of the present scenario,” mentioned Republican Sen. Ann Millner, who co-chairs the duty pressure. She mentioned that public universities needs to be entrusted to implement their very own public security practices “aligned with institutional realities” and that any assessments would probably have taken a very long time to finish.
However Wilcox mentioned the dearth of necessary safety assessments can permit for vulnerabilities to go unnoticed: “As a result of these assessments haven’t been performed, I don’t know what I don’t learn about how ready we’re.”
“We’re going to study every thing we will presumably study from that,” he mentioned of Kirk’s dying. “It’s an entire catastrophe.”
Related Press reporter Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report. Brook is a corps member for The Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.
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