The teddy-hugging progressive cop whose ‘security 101’ blind spots let Brown University be exposed to a bloodbath

Scrutiny is intensifying around Brown University’s progressive campus security chief Rodney Chatman after a gunman walked into a packed hall, opened fire, killed two students – and vanished without leaving a usable image behind.

Following the discovery of the suspected killer, law-enforcement experts told the Daily Mail the Ivy League campus in Providence, Rhode Island, was plagued by a chilling ‘security vacuum’ that allowed the attack to unfold in plain sight.

Doors that should have been locked were not, critics said. Guards who should have been present were missing. Cameras that should have captured everything delivered nothing.

Paul Mauro, a 23-year NYPD veteran, said the failures were basic and devastating, and spotlight Chatman, a liberal police reformer who was branded ‘toxic’ by his fellow officers.

‘This is security 101,’ Mauro said.

The shooting unfolded inside the Barus and Holley engineering building, where students were preparing for exams on December 13.

Investigators said the gunman entered the building, accessed a crowded room, unleashed a hail of bullets, then exited — without being captured on a security camera.

Two undergraduates were killed. Nine others were wounded. The suspect escaped.

The victims were identified as Ella Cook, 19, from Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, from Virginia, both students at one of America’s top universities — a campus that markets itself as safe, secure, and tightly monitored.

Instead, police were left scrambling. Authorities released an enhanced image of the suspect Tuesday, urging the public to focus on body movement, posture, gait, and behavioral patterns.

A person of interest detained early in the investigation was later cleared, a misstep that security analysts say may have slowed the manhunt by as much as a day.

After a multi-state manhunt, authorities on Thursday night said they had identified the shooter. They found the body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, in a rented storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

He was also linked to the December 15 murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro in Brookline, Massachusetts.

During the manhunt, classes and exams at Brown were canceled. Security has been surged. The governor has ordered a sweeping review of school safety. But critics say the most serious questions are being aimed in the wrong direction.

Mauro argued that public frustration over the pace of the investigation was unfairly directed at city and federal police, while glaring failures at Brown itself have gone largely unexamined.

‘The police are cleaning up after something that never should have happened,’ said Mauro, a lawyer and Fox News contributor.

At the center of the controversy is Chatman — Brown University’s police chief and vice president for public safety and emergency management.

Chatman is a career campus officer known for embracing progressive policing philosophies and criticizing traditional law-enforcement imagery and tactics.

His leadership style, critics say, now stands in stark contrast to the hard realities exposed by the shooting.

‘The head of security is a career campus cop who bounces around some very surprising comments, including statements against policing,’ Mauro said.

‘I have not seen one question go to the head of security about security failures… that is deeply troubling.’

According to Mauro, Brown failed on multiple fronts:

• A door was allegedly propped open during finals week, bypassing keycard access. 
• No uniformed security guard was stationed during finals at Brown’s biggest class.
• And there appears to have been no effective interior or ingress-egress camera coverage.

‘These are ground-ball issues,’ Mauro said.

He said that even if classroom cameras were limited, entrances and exits should have produced clear facial images and movement patterns — the kind of evidence that is standard on modern campuses and critical during a manhunt.

Instead, investigators were left without the footage they expected. Mauro said he was particularly troubled by claims that Brown has hundreds of cameras and more cameras than police officers.

‘If that’s true, where is the video?’ he asked. ‘Very clearly, investigators did not get the kind of usable footage such a system should produce.’

He said the disconnect raises serious questions about whether Brown overstated its security posture — or failed to maintain and deploy its systems effectively.

His comments were echoed on Wednesday by President Donald Trump, who posted on social media that there was ‘no excuse’ for the lack of security images.  

The focus on Chatman comes at an especially difficult moment for the campus police chief, a married dad-of-three who earns some $250,000 a year.

Since August, two major police groups — a patrol person’s association and a police sergeants’ union — have issued scathing votes of no confidence against Chatman and his deputy.

The latest vote, in October, accused leadership of creating new administrative office jobs while cutting beat cops.

The result, the union said, was ‘an all-time low in morale’ that has strained the department’s ability to effectively serve the university.

Officers described a ‘climate of fear and possibility of retaliation’ within the ‘toxic’ department.

It cited ongoing technology failures in the field and said unresolved problems have led to high turnover and burnout among officers.

Critics now say those internal warnings foreshadowed the failures exposed by the shooting.

‘How do you have the biggest exam of the year, in the biggest class, with no uniformed security?’ Mauro asked about the prep session.

Chatman’s career has been marked by controversy before. He has faced criticism for allegedly failing to alert police promptly to a campus bomb threat in 2021 and a shooting threat involving a football coach in 2023 — claims Brown leadership rejected at the time. 

The Brown Daily Herald has also criticized his department’s response to sexual harassment allegations against a sergeant, calling it ‘inadequate.’

Before arriving in Providence, Chatman’s tenure at the University of Utah ended acrimoniously.

He had only been in the job for a few months in 2020 when he was placed on administrative leave amid misconduct allegations that he did not have the correct paperwork for the state.

He was later cleared of wrongdoing. His $2.5 million lawsuit accusing the university of ‘scapegoating’ him was thrown out.

On LinkedIn, Chatman has cultivated a distinctly progressive image.

He has urged fellow police chiefs to replace photos of armed officers with images showcasing ‘compassion and engagement with the community that alleviates the anxiety of our presence.’

His own posts show him hugging a teddy bear, buying a student coffee, and dancing with young people in a pool hall.

‘You can’t effectively police a community you’re not part of,’ he wrote alongside one video.

To critics, those images now clash sharply with the aftermath of the deadliest attack in Brown’s recent history.

Mauro says the lack of scrutiny directed at Chatman is striking. In his view, campus police leadership and university administrators created a security vacuum that city and federal law enforcement are now being forced to address after the fact.

He also suggests Brown’s political influence has insulated it from tough questioning.

‘In these Ivy League towns, the school is the town,’ Mauro said. ‘Politicians are running interference, while law enforcement takes the heat.’

He pointed to the university president’s inability, hours after the shooting, to explain what had occurred inside the classroom as a sign of poor preparedness and administrative failure.

‘Six hours later, and there was no clear account of what happened in that room,’ he said. ‘That tells you something.’

Brown University and Chatman did not respond to our requests for comment.

President Christina Paxson has defended the university’s commitment to safety and placed responsibility for the ‘horrific gun violence’ squarely on the shooter.

In response to criticism over the lack of usable camera footage from the Barus and Holley engineering building, officials noted it is an older structure with limited camera coverage, particularly in the section where the shooting occurred.

Since the attack, Brown has increased its security presence, restricted building access, and committed to major infrastructure upgrades.

Some experts caution against singling out campus police leaders.

Jason Pack, a retired FBI special agent and CEO of Media Rep Global Strategies, said open campuses in city centers are inherently difficult to secure.

‘Open campuses are designed to be accessible, not hardened perimeters, and most violent actors exploit familiarity rather than gaps created overnight,’ Pack told the Daily Mail.

‘The lack of a clean headshot is not unusual in fast-moving cases and does not reflect investigative failure so much as the realities of how campuses function day to day.’

But Mauro and others remain unconvinced. As Providence mourns two young lives cut short, the questions surrounding Brown’s security posture are only growing louder.

‘This shooting,’ Mauro said, ‘should never have been possible.’