Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
CEDAR CITY — Southern Utah University is in preliminary talks with the Cedar City Police Department on possibly merging services and allowing the city's force to serve the campus community, the school president said this week.
President Scott Wyatt spoke about the potential change during a Tuesday community forum held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. He said the university is waiting on the police department to deliver a proposal on how the transition might work, but said nothing is finalized yet and the school is merely exploring the feasibility of such a move.
"The full intent of that is to simply ask the question," Wyatt said during the forum. "In a community as small as Cedar City, should we have two police departments? Or can we combine our resources and have a stronger, full-community police force that serves the community and university together?"
Wyatt said the potential move isn't because of any problems with the SUU force.
"This isn't a reflection of anybody not doing their job well," he said. "It's just a reflection of, it's a small community with a small university. Could we combine our resources and come out a little bit better?"
KSL's Southern Utah News Section
Looking for more news from the southern part of the state? Visit our southern Utah section for more stories, events and features.He said the Cedar City police proposal may not eliminate any school officers' positions, but rather absorb them into the city department. If officers are let go, he said, they'll receive severance packages, but the "hope is that they all would" remain.
On Friday, Cedar City Police Chief Darin Adams said the city force has 39 sworn officers and the campus police have six. Adams said it would be difficult to replicate some of the unique services of the SUU police — for example, making rounds each night to check campus dormitories.
"They do things with other departments on campus ... locking up buildings, securing buildings, escorting students," he said. "That would be a challenge for us, just because of the amount of call volume that we have."
Adams said hiring additional officers to the city force might allow them to continue such services.
"We're doing so much together already," Wyatt said of the city and university forces. He added that the city department regularly interacts with students and helps SUU with things like event security.
That begs the question: "Should we, or should we not, merge?" Wyatt said there is "absolutely no answer to that question" as yet. He said if the process of merging is a baseball game, the first pitch hasn't even been thrown yet.
The university is awaiting a proposal from the Cedar City PD, Wyatt said. Adams hopes to have one to the university within the next several weeks.
