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Stiffed: How Trump's campaign visits cost local police departments

Alexandria Jacobson
December 29, 2023

When former President Donald Trump makes a campaign appearance — whether its at fairgrounds in South Carolina or an Iowa fraternity house — along comes a rowdy crowd of thousands of supporters in bedazzled MAGA hats and Trump mugshot T-shirts shouting “U-S-A” chants.

And without fail, there’s local men and women in uniform — often from local police and fire departments — enlisted to provide security and keep the peace at the rallies for the former president who is facing 91 felony counts across four indictments and a New York civil trial that threatens to upend his business empire.

A year-long series of investigations by Raw Story found that eight of Trump’s campaign visits cost local taxpayers at least $100,000 in total — expenses that the Trump campaign refuses to pay and which local municipalities end up covering.

“They have no choice but to put personnel there and protect these events or police these events,” said Justin Insalaco, who worked for the West Windsor Police Department in New Jersey for 11 years. “It shouldn't fall on the taxpayer of those towns.”

Sheryl Walsh, director of communications for the City of Novi, Mich., told Raw Story that a presidential rally — as with other events such as a governor visit or the state fair — is a “drain on your resources.”

“Whoever asks for the help, especially when the Secret Service asks you, you don't say no,” Walsh said. “We've got a lot of smaller communities around us. If something awful happens in the next door community, your law enforcement agencies band together. They run toward it. You don't go, ‘hey, this stops at our city.' … You help, and when the federal authorities or state authorities, et cetera, ask for the help, you help.”

The toll that Trump-headlined events take on local police departments has made some cities — such as the City of Greensboro, where the North Carolina Republican Party Convention required 1,150 police officer work hours, totaling about $45,000 — question whether its worth hosting them at all.

“In a time where we are so short handed, and OT budgets are limited, we need to figure out if the [Convention and Visitors Bureau] should still be recruiting these events to Greensboro, or if they cost us too much,” said Tammi Thurm, a councilwoman for the City of Greensboro, N.C., in an email Raw Story obtained through a public records request.

Hosting Trump also requires extensive planning and coordination between local law enforcement, emergency services, fire departments, Secret Service and sometimes state entities as seen in places like Columbia, S.C., which created detailed operational plans and maps to protect Trump and visitors for the South Carolina Republican Party's Silver Elephant Gala.

Abby Zilch, communications director for the South Carolina Republican Party, called the preparation for the event “a whole to-do.”

While Trump is not legally required to pay for the security costs incurred for his visits, his past and present campaign competitors — former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders among them — have voluntarily paid for such services in response to invoices or to show their support for the law enforcement who protect campaign events.

Presidential campaign visits often occur in small towns on short notice, which can adversely affect municipal budgets.

When candidates proclaim to be pro-police, not paying for the security costs associated with their visits feels like a slap in the face, Insalaco said. And when campaigns raise millions of dollars, only to push the security costs on to taxpayers, doesn’t feel fair, he said.

“By them stiffing the government entity on the cost of what those police services costs the city, the taxpayer, it throws it in the face of what you're standing for, essentially, because these cops are already overworked,” Insalaco said. “In some of these cities, they need extra resources from towns that surround them, so now they are bringing in other towns on overtime and all these intricacies, so it's a lot of work.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to Raw Story's request for comment.

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