A South Carolina state House panel met Tuesday to talk college campus safety and security and to hear from state law enforcement and university police chiefs about what they need to better protect students, faculty and visitors.
State Rep. Tim McGinnis, who led the hearing, said it was important to hear from the police chiefs in particular after the August hoax shooting call on the University of South Carolina Columbia campus and the shooting death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at a Utah college.
"This (the hearing) is triage in my mind," McGinnis, R-Horry, said.
Five university police chiefs, including from Clemson and S.C. State universities, walked lawmakers through how they plan, coordinate and cover events and speakers on campus.
All said they work well with state law enforcement, often called on to assist with campus risk and threat assessment and to help with campus security for speakers, events, games and university parades.
Planning, the campus police chiefs said, is ever evolving.
That is especially true, they said, after the Sept. 10 assassination of Kirk, who was shot and killed by a suspect from a rooftop from hundreds of feet away at Utah Valley University.
USC Police Chief Chris Wuchenich said extended-range threats are now part of their planning.
"Our approach reflects continuous improvement, strong interagency collaboration — both local, city, county, state, federal — and a commitment to both safety and free expression," he said.
Among their needs, police chiefs suggested stronger active shooter training and better tools to combat hoax threat calls on campus that require emergency response, known as swatting. They also recommended digitally mapping South Carolina university and college campuses — technology the state education department has for K-12 schools.
At S.C. State University, South Carolina's only four-year public historically Black college, Public Safety Chief Richard Johnson said he needs more sworn officers.
S.C. State has only 10, he said. Ideally, he said he needs 20 or, at minimum, 16.
Officers are working seven days a week, 12 to 16 hour days, he said.
They are fatigued, said Johnson, who added he will himself return to campus to help in certain cases.
Recruitment and retention can be extremely difficult, he said.
“Some of them come (candidates for hire) and they realize that, ‘Well, police on a college campus, I just don’t have the temperament for it,’ and they leave," he said.
