PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — The Trump administration has opened an investigation into security protocols at Brown University after the school shooting that killed two people and injured nine.
The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it would investigate if Brown violated the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act, a section of the Higher Education Act, which “requires institutions of higher education to meet certain safety and security-related requirements as a condition of receiving federal student aid.”
“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,” Education Secretary 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,” she added.
McMahon pointed to a Fox News story that showed the school’s surveillance and security system may not have been up to appropriate standards, “allowing the suspect to flee while the university seemed unable to provide helpful information about the profile of the alleged assassin.”
A Brown spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the school issued a press release on Monday night showing that it will conduct a so-called “after-action review” of the incident, that a rapid response team will work to ensure the campus is safe in advance of the Spring 2026 semester, and that an external comprehensive “Campus Safety and Security Assessment” of the campus and surrounding area will be initiated.
“Both of the external reviews will be governed by a committee of the Corporation of Brown University, our community’s highest governing body, which will approve the selection of the external organizations conducting the assessments,” Paxon said in a letter to the community on Monday. “These reviews must be both thorough and comprehensive, and the University is committed to sharing key outcomes of both reviews with our community and the public.”
The Trump administration also highlighted that Brown students and staff “reported that the university’s emergency notifications about the active shooter were delayed, raising significant concerns about their safety alert system.”
“If true, these shortcomings constitute serious breaches of Brown’s responsibilities under federal law,” according to the announcement.
The investigation is being led by the Office of Federal Student Aid, or FSA, which has requested Brown to submit several documents by Jan. 30.
The requested documents include copies of the school’s annual security reports, an “audit trail” of crimes and arrests, public safety dispatch and call logs, emergency notifications issued and dispatch, response to calls, arrests and citations and protocols for active shooters scenarios, according to the announcement.
Brown currently lists on its website information that it says is required under the Clery Act. The information includes police statistics and its annual security and fire safety reports. The website also lists crime logs and fire logs, which school officials said are updated within two business days of an incident.
Brown President Christina Paxson said last Tuesday that the campus has 1,200 cameras, but law enforcement said there was no clear video of the shooter inside the engineering building where he opened fire.
Paxson pushed back at criticism of school security last week, saying “Brown is deeply committed to the safety and security and wellbeing of our community, and I’ve been deeply saddened to see people questioning that.”
“Horrific gun violence took the lives of these students and hospitalized others, and it’s deeply sad and tragic that schools across the country are targets of violence,” she said at a news conference. “Brown is no exception.”
Paxson said the school has two security alerting systems that went out to 20,000 people “within minutes” of the shooting.
“We understand that as time goes on, there is maybe a natural instinct to assign responsibility for a tragic event like this,” she said. “Anxiety and fear is very natural, but the shooter is responsible.”
Brown custodian Derek Lisi told Target 12 on Monday he tried to alert a third-party security company about the gunman “lurking” around campus weeks before the shooting. But he said his warnings were ignored.
Brown confirmed Monday that it had hired former Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Zachary Cunha.
“Brown works routinely with outside counsel whose expertise complements that of the University’s Office of the General Counsel,” Brown spokesperson Brian Clark said in a statement. “In this case, we retained Zachary Cunha, the former United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, to assist the University in coordinating with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.”
Target 12 first reported that Brown has also hired former Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements to run the school’s public safety operations. Clements retired from Providence police in 2024 after 40 years in uniform. He’s been hired at Brown as the interim vice president of public safety, after Paxson announced Monday that Rodney Chatman would be on administrative leave, effective immediately.
In April, The Brown Daily Herald reported that Brown public safety officers raised concerns about their safety and the safety of the school community, “alleging that employees in the DPS responded inappropriately to bomb and shooting threats by altering written reports and not adequately disclosing information to the Brown community regarding these threats.”
“Several employees said they felt DPS leadership brushed their concerns aside when issues were raised to upper management,” according to the report.
Police identified the shooter as 48-year-old Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, who was found dead Thursday inside a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. Police said Neves Valente drove there after killing MIT professor Nuno Loureiro. Police said he’s also responsible for killing brown students Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov.
A medical examiner determined Neves Valente shot and killed himself on Dec. 16.
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