Southern Utah University in Cedar City has more than 15,000 students. And, until recently, they were policed by just four campus law enforcement officers.
The school now has nine officers, and Chief Carlos Medina said that gives them more time to focus on investigations and prevent gaps between shifts.
“Our campus is growing. Our building square footage is growing,” Medina said.
SUU’s student population has seen a nearly 20% increase since 2020 and “with our nine officers, we are going to be truly 24-hour coverage.”
All the new officers have already started, Medina said. The money for their positions comes from the school’s annual budget, and not from a federal or state program.
In addition to their usual job duties like traffic accidents and patrol work, officers also need to have a presence at campus events, such as football games, concerts and the annual Utah Shakespeare Festival. Unexpected needs can quickly arise, too, such as last April’s campus lockdown during an active shooter scare. It ended up being a false alarm.
Student Colter Bennett came to SUU from Layton in 2021 and was elected student body president in March. During his time on campus, he hasn’t heard much talk from other students about requesting more officers.
“I honestly cannot think of a single time in the last three years that I've been at school where somebody has expressed to me — or even I've felt the need to express — that campus is unsafe. I don't think that that's where this is coming from.”
He welcomes the change, though.
One of the biggest positive impacts for students, he said, will be the ability to host larger campus events in the future. Campus officers who aren’t stretched so thin should also have higher job satisfaction, he said.
“Our officers were way overbooked and, quite honestly, overworked. … Now we have officers who are sharing the load a little bit and don't have to worry about doing as crazy of shifts.”
Even with its expanded police presence, SUU’s ratio of officers to students remains below average compared to other Utah universities.
With nine officers and 15,033 students, SUU has 0.6 sworn law enforcement officers per 1,000 students. That’s roughly half as many officers per capita as The University of Utah in Salt Lake City and Utah Tech University in St. George, which have 1.28 and 1.19 officers per 1,000 students respectively.
Medina believes having more officers will expand what the department can do, though. His staff can now assist and collaborate with Cedar City and Iron County law enforcement on cases and perhaps have an officer dedicated to investigative work for pressing cases such as sex offenses.
“The time it would take to solve those cases will hopefully be minimized,” Medina said, “and it'll help the victim get closure faster.”
One of the new officers, John Hill, came to campus after a decade of experience with police departments in Utah County and Cedar City. He made the switch because he wanted a change of pace.
“We have a smaller general area for the most part, where we can get out, walk around and interact with people … which I think in a city environment is a little bit hard to do.”
