The fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University should force a much larger conversation about campus policing and security in America. One year after Kirk was killed during an outdoor event attended by approximately 3,000 people, his family served a notice of claim signaling its intent to pursue a wrongful-death lawsuit alleging that a series of security failures by the university and its police department contributed to his death, including inadequate staffing, insufficient risk assessment, failure to adequately secure surrounding areas and insufficient coordination with outside law enforcement.
Those allegations will appropriately be addressed through the legal process and should not be treated as established findings, but the questions raised by this tragedy extend well beyond one university, one police chief or one event. For those of us who have spent our careers in policing and homeland security, the larger question is whether we have given America’s campus police and public-safety departments a 21st-century security mission while continuing to resource, train and sometimes even view them through a model that belongs to another era.
| RELATED: What we can learn about event security from the Charlie Kirk assassination
For generations, campus policing occupied an unusual place in American law enforcement. There have always been outstanding campus police departments and extraordinary chiefs, but the profession has at times been treated by traditional law enforcement as something separate from mainstream policing and, perhaps more troubling, by university administrations as an institutional necessity rather than a strategic asset. These departments were expected to handle student safety, theft, alcohol-related incidents, demonstrations, special events and the daily challenges associated with communities populated largely by young adults.
That world no longer exists.
Today’s major American university can simultaneously be a residential community, hospital system, research institution, international destination, major employer, political gathering place, entertainment venue and repository for some of the most valuable intellectual property in the world. Some campuses house research involving artificial intelligence, nuclear science, biotechnology, advanced engineering, medicine, defense applications and technologies with significant economic and national-security implications. The modern university has therefore become something else as well: a potentially attractive target for sophisticated actors whose interests extend far beyond traditional campus crime.
Federal authorities have warned higher-education institutions about foreign malign influence, attempts to obtain sensitive research and technology, and transnational repression. The FBI has specifically identified risks involving efforts to influence academic environments, misappropriate research and intimidate individuals inside the United States on behalf of foreign governments. These concerns now exist alongside targeted violence, hate crimes, extremist activity, cyberattacks, swatting, stalking and political violence, while demonstrations and controversial speakers can create additional planning and public-safety demands. Emerging challenges presented by drones and artificial intelligence further complicate the environment. The threat environment has changed dramatically. In too many places, the resources surrounding campus public safety have not.
This is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable. Campus police chiefs and public-safety directors are overwhelmingly dedicated professionals, many with extensive experience in municipal, state, federal or military service. Yet some are being asked to manage increasingly sophisticated threats while struggling with staffing, recruitment, compensation, training, technology and access to intelligence. At the same time, they can operate beneath layers of university administration whose leaders understandably come from academic and administrative backgrounds rather than policing, intelligence, emergency management or protective security. That structure may have been workable when campus public safety was largely viewed through the lens of traditional crime and student conduct. It becomes much more problematic when a chief is expected to manage an event involving thousands of people and a nationally prominent speaker, recognize indicators of targeted violence, understand extremist threats, coordinate mutual aid, protect sensitive research, respond to suspicious drone activity and determine whether something happening on campus may have implications far beyond the university itself.
We cannot treat the police chief as another administrative function on Monday and expect that same individual to become the institution’s counterterrorism, intelligence, crisis-management and protective-security expert on Tuesday because television trucks have arrived at the front gate. That is neither fair to the chief nor responsible for the institution.
Utah Valley should be a case study, not a scapegoat
The wrong lesson from Kirk’s killing would be to simply identify individuals to blame and move on. The far more useful question for every university president, police chief and governing board in America is whether the vulnerabilities alleged in Utah could exist on their campus. According to the family’s notice of claim, six Utah Valley University police officers were assigned to the event along with Kirk’s private security personnel. The family’s attorneys have alleged that the university failed to conduct an adequate risk assessment and did not employ measures such as sufficient rooftop monitoring, a secure perimeter and greater coordination with surrounding law enforcement. The university has said it will respond to the notice through its established processes. Those competing positions should be allowed to proceed through the appropriate legal channels.
The rest of us, however, do not need to wait for litigation to begin asking questions. What does an adequate security assessment look like for a controversial speaker expected to attract thousands of people? When should a campus request municipal, county or state assistance? Who examines elevated positions and surrounding structures? When should drones be deployed for situational awareness where legally and operationally appropriate? What medical resources should be immediately available? Who makes the decision to relocate an event, establish a perimeter or require additional screening? The answer cannot be the same for every event, because risk is not the same for every event. Professional security begins with understanding the threat, assessing vulnerabilities and matching resources to the mission.
That requires trained people, adequate staffing, intelligence and the support of university leadership.
Campus police cannot operate on an island
Perhaps the most important issue going forward is information sharing. A municipal police chief typically operates within an established ecosystem that may include county law enforcement, sheriffs, state police, fusion centers, federal task forces and regional intelligence networks. Campus departments may participate in those systems as well, although the degree of integration varies by institution and jurisdiction. That is no longer sufficient.
Something observed at one university may mean very little in isolation. A suspicious inquiry involving a researcher may appear innocuous, a threatening social-media post may look like an isolated campus issue, repeated drone activity near a sensitive facility may initially appear to be a nuisance, and unusual activity surrounding a controversial event may not immediately suggest a larger threat. Any one of those situations may have an innocent explanation, but information held elsewhere can completely change its significance. This is one area where the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) deserves recognition. IACLEA has spent decades professionalizing campus public safety through training, standards, accreditation, government relations and information sharing, while giving campus chiefs and directors a national and international professional network through which to confront common problems. Its work reflects something that many outside the campus environment are only beginning to fully appreciate: today’s campus public-safety mission is substantially more complex than it was a generation ago.
IACLEA and its members cannot solve this problem alone, nor should they be expected to. What is needed is stronger integration between campus public safety and the broader law-enforcement and homeland-security architecture, with IACLEA serving as an important professional partner alongside state and local law enforcement, fusion centers, federal agencies, emergency management and other appropriate organizations.
What we should be doing
We should begin by recognizing campus public safety as part of the broader homeland-security environment, particularly at major research universities and institutions with elevated threat profiles. That does not mean turning campuses into intelligence operations or compromising the openness and academic freedom that define American higher education. It means acknowledging that an institution conducting advanced nuclear, AI, biotechnology or defense-related research may face risks that cannot be addressed solely through traditional campus security.
We also need a stronger national campus public-safety information-sharing capability. Campus chiefs should have reliable mechanisms for receiving relevant threat information and for sharing what they are seeing with appropriate government partners and other institutions. The goal should not be another bureaucracy; it should be the ability to connect information before an incident rather than reconstructing it afterward.
That does not mean every campus police department should develop its own counterterrorism, cyber, foreign-influence or research-security capability. The better approach is integration. Campus chiefs need direct access to the agencies and specialists who already possess that expertise. They do not need to become experts in every emerging threat, but they do need to recognize the indicators, know who to call and have those relationships in place before a crisis occurs.
Training must also catch up with the mission. Today’s campus officer and public-safety executive increasingly need exposure to behavioral threat assessment, OSINT training, targeted violence, hate crimes, indicators associated with mobilization to violence, public-order policing, foreign influence, transnational repression, research security, cyber threats, drone operations, counter-UAS awareness and intelligence practices that respect constitutional protections and civil liberties. University executives need some of that education as well. A police chief cannot effectively manage a sophisticated threat environment if the people approving staffing, technology, mutual aid and security policies do not understand the environment the chief is trying to manage.
We also need an honest discussion about staffing and compensation. If universities expect highly qualified officers, intelligence analysts, emergency managers and public-safety executives, they must compete for those professionals. We cannot repeatedly describe student safety as an institutional priority while failing to provide the people responsible for it with sufficient personnel and resources to accomplish the mission. Technology should become part of that strategy, but technology cannot become a substitute for it. Drones can provide situational awareness, real-time crime centers can connect information, and video, access-control, communications and analytical technologies can dramatically improve an agency’s ability to understand and respond to an incident. Those capabilities must be accompanied by policy, training, governance, transparency and community engagement if they are going to remain sustainable.
Finally, university presidents and governing boards need to reconsider where public safety sits within institutional governance. At major universities, the police chief or senior public-safety executive should have meaningful access to executive leadership when decisions involving major events, sensitive research, international activities and institutional risk are being made. That is not about allowing police to run universities. It is about allowing public-safety professionals to do the jobs universities have hired them to do.
Our most precious responsibility
For all the discussion about foreign actors, sophisticated technology and national security, there is a much simpler reason why this matters. Parents entrust universities with their children. Every fall, families drive onto campuses, unload dorm rooms, hug their sons and daughters and eventually drive away believing that the institution will do everything reasonably possible to protect them. The men and women of campus policing and public safety carry an enormous part of that responsibility, often without the visibility or recognition afforded to other parts of the law-enforcement profession.
They deserve more than recognition. They need the training, intelligence, technology, staffing and professional partnerships required by the environment in which they are now operating, and they need university leaders who understand that public safety cannot suddenly become a priority only after an incident makes national headlines.
The fatal shooting at Utah Valley University will appropriately be examined through litigation, investigation and after-action analysis. The rest of us should use it to examine something much larger. America’s campuses have changed. The threats confronting them have changed, the strategic importance of what exists within many of these institutions has changed, and the responsibilities placed upon campus police chiefs and public-safety directors have expanded accordingly.
Campus policing has moved from the back burner to the front line of American public safety. It is time our resources, training, intelligence systems and institutional priorities caught up.
