UVU Campus Security, Surveillance & Camera Timeline
This is the institutional layer of September 10, 2025: what Utah Valley University was told before the event, what it did and did not deploy, which cameras were recording, and how footage was released, trimmed, or withheld afterward. It is not a suspect timeline — for the movements attributed to the accused see the pre-shot campus timeline. Nothing here establishes wrongdoing by any UVU employee; the record is drawn from GRAMA releases, sworn hearing testimony, and attributed public commentary.
Before the event: planning and warnings
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September 3, 2025 — Orem Police Department emails UVU the Charlie Kirk ticket link, subject line "Charlie Kirk Tickets," per the Daily Caller News Foundation GRAMA production. After the shooting Orem PD publicly said it was "not involved," even though UVU pays Orem PD annually for a joint Public Order Unit built for exactly this kind of event. The unit was never activated — see the UVU GRAMA records page.
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September 8, 2025 (claim) — A UVU maintenance eyewitness reported seeing a crew testing non-standard drone technology near campus engineering buildings and described it as "not normal." This is an unverified single-witness account logged alongside the UVU no-drones dispute and the Provo counter-UAS thread.
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September 9, 2025 — 2:23 PM MDT — An email moves through UVU Police Chief Jeff Long's communication chain with the subject line "FYI," reading: "He wants us to get a message to Charlie Kirk. His phone number is [REDACTED]." The sender's name and number are redacted, and whether the message was delivered is not documented anywhere in the 112 pages — see pre-shooting warnings.
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September 9, 2025 — 10:35 PM MDT — Document UVU 25-330:0023 records that two unidentified men came to UVU offices asking to speak with police about "a plan." Staff escalated it to the university cabinet, the president's office, per the GRAMA warnings page.
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September 9, 2025 — 11:19 PM MDT — Forty-four minutes later someone replies in the same chain that the two men "are NOT from a senator's office. They are GOP reps who played like they knew more than they did!" Nobody in the chain asks what the plan was. Both men's names remain redacted under Utah exemptions for "security of public property" and "privacy" — see the UVU administration response.
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Pre-event posture (as later documented) — Six campus police officers, about a quarter of the department, were assigned to a crowd the chief later described as roughly 3,000. Faculty had never been trained on active-shooter protocols, no ambulance was staged on site, and no outside law enforcement was coordinated — see six officers and no ambulance and campus security gaps.
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Rooftops and counter-snipers — No counter-sniper element was posted and nearby rooftops were reportedly not swept, a decision examined on no counter-snipers and perimeter and rooftop failures.
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Harpole–Long text exchange (later public) — Per Brian Harpole of the private detail and screenshots circulated from his Shawn Ryan Show interview (~Nov 2025), he texted UVU Police Chief Jeff Long about student-accessible roofs near the setup and asked for controlled access or one of his people on the roof. Long replied to the effect of "I got you covered." Harpole later said rooftops were not secured as he understood. UVU has pointed to crowd size exceeding estimates and a six-officer allocation. Analytical replies often frame private detail as responsible for stage/close protection and campus LE for distant roofs after warning — a follow-through dispute, not an adjudicated finding. Campus Safety Magazine and Salt Lake Tribune–style coverage of the security-chief critique recirculated into 2026.
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Competing staffing claim (2026) — @brandisiciliani reported an anonymous source saying local officers offered extra personnel and rooftop surveillance before the event and were told the detail already had everything covered — the reverse of Harpole's public narrative. This is an uncorroborated second-hand claim; both sides should be shown without asserting that either party lied.
Day of: the camera picture
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Morning, September 10, 2025 — UVU's institutional CCTV network records the parking, tunnel, garage-stairwell, and building-edge angles later stitched into the state's narrative; the camera map is on the UVU surveillance page.
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Pre-event, September 10 — TPUSA production ran its own broadcast cameras including a Canon XA55 (whose audio track drives the acoustic dispute), and — per a TPUSA birthday tribute video posted October 14, 2025 — at least one drone shot overhead, which citizen investigators contrast with the "campus police banned drones" explanation. See the TPUSA production drone page and the cease-and-desist drone contradiction.
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12:15–12:22 PM MDT — UVU cameras record a figure crossing a railing from a public walkway onto the Losee Center roof, about 430 feet from the stage — the sightline at the center of the whole security question. See the Losee Center page and the UVU campus maps.
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12:23 PM MDT — the shot. By the affidavit's own narration, the campus footage "does not capture the act of firing." For the second-by-second reconstruction see the minute-by-minute page and the shooting-time dispute.
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12:23:34 PM MDT (release start point, disputed) — The rooftop-view clip that was eventually released begins at 12:23:34, after a running figure is already well away from the alleged perch. Critics call the start point a deliberate trim; defenders note briefing clips are routinely cut to the segment officials consider relevant. Both readings are laid out on Rooftop Video Trimmed.
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~12:42 PM MDT (19 minutes post-shot) — UVU's first campus alert falsely states "suspect in custody." Roughly 10,000 students stayed on campus believing it was safe — documented in the GRAMA record.
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~1:51 PM MDT (88 minutes post-shot) — The Run-Hide-Fight alert goes out still carrying placeholder text: "Shooter in [INSERT location]." See pre-shooting warnings and the September 10 page.
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Afternoon, September 10 — An SD card is reportedly removed from event production equipment by a TPUSA executive who, per the master file, had never attended a university event before or after; see SD card removed and executive SD cards. This is an attributed claim about a living person's presence, not an accusation of any crime.
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Afternoon, September 10 — Separately, hospital security-camera footage handling at Timpanogos Regional Hospital is disputed on hospital security cameras removed and the FBI hospital-footage seizure page; why the regional trauma center was bypassed is argued separately.
After: release, withholding, and the scene itself
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September 11, 2025 — 7:55 PM MDT — The FBI releases person-of-interest photos (hat, sunglasses, long-sleeve black shirt, backpack) plus video of a person crossing the roof and walking off campus. The stills were later described as "enhanced" — see Enhanced Suspect Photos and Kash Patel's briefings.
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September 14, 2025 — Contractor Daniel Merrell of Hardscape Specialties states he was called by men working for the State of Utah to install pavers over the courtyard where Kirk was shot. Grass at the shooting spot was excavated and covered. See courtyard paved over, the pavers page, the paving timeline, and FBI crime-scene paving. Merrell's account of who authorized the urgency is his statement, not a documented order.
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Fall 2025 onward — the release posture — Only compressed, re-encoded derivatives of campus footage have appeared publicly; original DVR exports with embedded per-frame timestamps, and the tunnel, rooftop, and building-edge angles referenced but never shown, remain unreleased. See UVU HD footage withheld and selective 4K release.
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~November 2025 — behind-tent GRAMA denial — @BasedSamParker reported that UVU denied a GRAMA request for the camera feed from behind Charlie's tent — the angle that would show post-shot actions near the stage area involving staff such as Mikey McCoy, Blake Neff, and Terryl Farnsworth. The denial cited public-safety, enforcement-proceeding, and fair-trial concerns. This is a specific denied feed, not only the generic "HD withheld" complaint — UVU GRAMA Records.
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December 16, 2025 — Judge Tony Graf issues a broad gag order on his own motion, which citizen investigators argue further narrows what campus witnesses and counsel can say about the security and camera record. See gag orders and sealing and the judge's page.
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April 15, 2026 — @danksterintel publishes the Daily Caller News Foundation GRAMA production: 50 documents, 112 pages, containing the September 9 warnings, the Orem PD ticket email, and the alert failures. UVU acknowledges additional documents exist and declines to release them. See the UVU GRAMA records page.
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July 2026 — Judicial Watch clean-up docs — @JudicialWatch released university documents on the clean-up of the assassination site, overlapping the facilities chronology on the Utah officials / Cox timeline (Fri hose-down narrative → deeper excavate → Sunday pavers). Harpole separately said the paving speed looked suspicious and urged FOIA on who ordered the tear-up while rejecting tunnel/trap-door theories.
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July 2026 — Bagley roof response — Former UVU officer Chris Bagley (later Spanish Fork PD) testified he responded to the Losee Center roof, confirmed a clear line of sight from the far south edge to the courtyard tent, and located a red-and-black screwdriver on the rooftop gravel later woven into the state's evidence narrative — see Gun Discovery Sequence and Bagley's bodycam gap on the roof.
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July 2026 — preliminary hearing testimony (Hull) — State agent David Hull walks the court through UVU surveillance covering the parking structure, courtyard, and Losee Center roof, plus chain of custody and the rooftop search; see Preliminary Hearing Day 2 and the Hull clothing-change page. Coverage describes enhanced / composite material presented in court; the judge reportedly restricted some zoomed versions, and native full DVR exports remain largely unreleased to the public. Influencer claims of "undeniable HD of the shot itself" are disputed (affidavit still: footage "does not capture the act of firing").
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July 2026 — the abandoned-items testimony — Sergeant Jennifer Faumuina of UVU Public Safety testified that officers recovered a backpack, jacket, and gloves along the route away from the Losee Center, near the Fulton Library, that the items went to the FBI for DNA analysis, and that testing stopped after the items were linked to Kirk security personnel and returned (per hearing coverage). Asked who ordered the stop, she testified she could not clearly recall. See discovery withholding and discovery and Brady disputes.
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Ongoing — A rooftop eyewitness who has not been called to testify is tracked on the uncalled roof eyewitness page, and the fight over the rooftop video itself on withholding rooftop video.
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2026 — institutional aftermath — UVU President Astrid S. Tuminez announced her resignation; the site records this as a documented leadership transition and does not assert any connection to the events above. See the UVU institutional response and institutional resignations.
Conflicts and Disputed Points
| Point | One account | The competing account |
|---|---|---|
| Drones over the event | Campus police banned drones, per the explanation given after the shooting | A TPUSA-posted tribute video appears to contain a drone shot from the event (page) |
| Rooftop responsibility | Harpole texts Long about roofs; Long: "I got you covered"; Harpole says roofs not secured (page) | UVU points to crowd size / six officers; anonymous reverse claim says locals offered help and were told security already had coverage (page) |
| Camera quality | Released stills were "enhanced" because source imagery was poor; judge limited some zoomed court versions | UVU runs an institutional HD system; native exports and the behind-tent feed remain unreleased / GRAMA-denied (page) |
| The 12:23:34 clip start | A routine editorial trim to the relevant segment | A start point chosen after the running begins, hiding the decisive seconds (page) |
| Orem PD involvement | Orem PD said it was "not involved" | Orem PD emailed UVU the ticket link on Sept 3 and is paid for a joint Public Order Unit (page) |
| Paving the courtyard | Campus restoration after a traumatic event | Excavation of a crime scene four days after the killing (page) |
| Abandoned-items testing | Items later linked to security detail and returned; testing stopped | Testing stopped without a clearly recalled decision-maker (page) |
Open Questions
- Who were the two men at 10:35 PM on September 9, and what was the "plan" they wanted to describe to police?
- Why was the joint UVU–Orem Public Order Unit never activated for an event both agencies knew about a week in advance?
- How many UVU cameras recorded the Losee Center roof and its approaches, and how many of those feeds have been shown to anyone outside the prosecution?
- Who authorized the 19-minute "suspect in custody" alert, and on what information?
- Who decided to stop DNA testing the backpack, jacket, and gloves recovered near the Fulton Library?
- What is in the additional GRAMA documents UVU has acknowledged exist but declined to release?
Laws (Charlie Kirk)
- The unredacted September 9 GRAMA communications naming the two men and the person who wanted a message delivered to Charlie Kirk, the full UVU camera inventory and original DVR exports for September 10, the untrimmed rooftop-view files with chain-of-custody logs, the internal decision record for the 19-minute and 88-minute campus alerts, the authorization chain for the September 14 courtyard paving, and the order to stop testing the recovered backpack, jacket, and gloves are things that the Charlie Kirk Investigation Laws may result in powerful truths coming out that aren't out yet.