Brown University Police Chief Put on Leave

Brown University's top campus safety official has been sidelined as scrutiny intensifies over the school's handling of the deadly Dec. 13 campus shooting. President Christina Paxson announced Monday that Vice President for Public Safety and Emergency Management Rodney Chatman has been placed on leave while Brown commissions an outside review of campus security and its response to the attack. She said such a review was "standard" and that Chatman—who oversaw campus safety at the University of Cincinnati and the University of Utah before taking the Brown post in 2021—would be on leave while it took place. Former Providence police chief Hugh T. Clements has been tapped to lead Brown's public safety and police operations on an interim basis, per CBS News.

The university is moving quickly on several changes, including adding more surveillance cameras across campus, with particular focus on the engineering building where the shooting took place. The five-day manhunt for the suspect was complicated by a shortage of usable video footage in that area, a law enforcement source told CBS. Police say former Brown graduate student Claudio Manuel Neves Valente opened fire at the Barus & Holley engineering building on Saturday, killing two students and wounding nine others. He's believed to have then traveled to Boston, where he allegedly killed MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro on Monday, per NBC Boston. He reportedly killed himself Tuesday in New Hampshire.

Separately, the US Department of Education said it will conduct a "program review" to determine whether Brown complied with federal campus safety requirements tied to student aid funding. The department said the university appeared unable to offer "helpful information about the profile of the alleged assassin" in the days following the shooting. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that universities receiving federal funds must be prepared to protect students and support law enforcement efforts as required under federal law. Neves Valente was reportedly enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.