Examining Campus Police Staffing at Charlie Kirk's Speaking Events
Showing 6 Campus Police videos from Charlie Kirk's video collection.
Investigators examining security at Charlie Kirk's Utah Valley University event found the venue was staffed with six university police officers plus two plainclothes officers for a crowd of roughly 3,000, without a security checkpoint or bag check, and with no one specifically posted to monitor nearby rooftops. By comparison, the University of Wyoming deployed 15 officers, including campus police and a local partner agency, for an indoor Kirk event with about 1,800 attendees and stricter rules barring bags, weapons, and signs. Turning Point USA's former security director, Greg Schaefer, says the 2017 Las Vegas shooting reshaped how his field thinks about protecting public figures, forcing security teams to plan around the possibility of a sniper rather than only close-proximity threats, a lesson he says two more recent attacks on Donald Trump reinforced. Separately, footage from an unrelated campus incident shows officers using pepper spray and a taser on a student in mental health crisis after a dispute over pronouns escalated and de-escalation attempts failed, illustrating a harder edge to routine campus policing.