Brown University, whose campus security plans have faced sharp criticism and a federal investigation since a shooting in December left two students dead, has hired a permanent police chief, sticking with the interim official who was installed days after the attack.
Brown, which is in Providence, R.I., said that Hugh T. Clements Jr., the city’s police chief until early 2023, would oversee campus safety and emergency management going forward.
“Chief Clements brings an extraordinary combination of Rhode Island law enforcement leadership, national policy experience and a deep commitment to community-centered policing that position him to effectively lead public safety efforts at Brown,” the university’s president, Christina H. Paxson, and Sarah Latham, another Brown administrator, said in a campus email on Wednesday.
Although Brown is among the country’s most elite institutions, it has long typically been open to visitors. The December assault, which left another nine people injured, remains the subject of multiple investigations, but the episode swiftly prompted questions about how Brown’s approach to security might have affected the attack and the subsequent law enforcement response.
The suspect in the attack was identified by the authorities as Claudio Neves Valente, who briefly studied at Brown in the early 2000s. The students who died were MukhammadAziz Umurzokov and Ella Cook.
The authorities have also said that Mr. Neves Valente killed Nuno F.G. Loureiro, an M.I.T. professor, in Brookline, Mass., two days after the Brown attack.
The police later found Mr. Neves Valente’s body in a storage unit in Salem, N.H., ending a multistate manhunt. Mr. Neves Valente died by suicide, according to the authorities.
The U.S. Department of Education said in December that media reports “appeared to show that Brown’s campus 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.”
The Education Department also cited “significant concerns” about the university’s emergency alert system.
Soon after the department announced its inquiry, Brown said that the campus police chief at the time of the shooting, Rodney Chatman, would go on administrative leave. In a statement this week, Brown said that Mr. Chatman’s university employment had ended on Tuesday, sealing a tenure that had been contentious even before the attack.
Brown has said that two reviews it commissioned after the shooting would unfold over this semester but that it had already pursued “significantly enhanced safety measures,” including new cameras and panic buttons on campus.
In their announcement this week about Chief Clements, Dr. Paxson and Dr. Latham said Brown was working “to determine what it means to be a campus that effectively balances robust security measures with sustaining a welcoming community.”
Chief Clements became a patrol officer in Providence in 1985 and became the department’s acting chief in 2011. He assumed the job on a permanent basis the following year, and, after leaving in 2023, was the director of the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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