Brown University police chief placed on leave

Dec. 23 (UPI) -- The police chief at Brown University has been placed on leave following the mass shooting that happened there last week, killing two and wounding nine.

The announcement on Tuesday came on the same day that the Department of Education announced it would investigate the school for Clery Act violations.

The Jeanne Clery Act, passed in 1990, requires colleges and universities to report campus crime data, support victims of violence, and publicly outline policies and procedures to improve campus safety.

Rodney Chatman, Brown's police chief and vice president for public safety, was put on leave effective immediately, the university's president announced in a statement.

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Former Providence police chief Hugh T. Clements will serve as interim chief.

President Christina Paxson said Brown will commission a review of campus safety and the response to the Dec. 13 attack. A former graduate student, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, is the alleged shooter. He died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"A review like this is standard," Paxson said. Chatman was hired in 2021 and has worked in campus safety at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Utah.

Paxson also said there will be more security cameras installed on campus, including at the Barus & Holley engineering building, which is where the shooting happened. Police struggled with finding the shooter after the attack because of a lack of usable surveillance video, CBS News reported.

"Students deserve to feel safe at school, and every university across this nation must protect their students and be equipped with adequate resources to aid law enforcement," U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. "The Trump Administration will fight to ensure that recipients of federal funding are vigorously protecting students' safety and following security procedures as required under federal law."

Paxson said the university "will initiate an external comprehensive Campus Safety and Security Assessment of the Brown campus, including College Hill and the Jewelry District, to review Brown's current safety and security policies, procedures, infrastructure and training. This work will be supported by an on-site physical security assessment of the perimeter of buildings, access points, cameras and technology, and other infrastructure conditions, and will build on the work underway to enhance security immediately."