Brown College’s police chief Rodney Chatman — a progressive, “poisonous,” teddy-bear hugging, chief working a “s—tshow” division — is being criticized for the lax safety measures and lack of surveillance that allowed Claudio Neves Valente to gun down two college students and get away.
Chatman, Brown’s vp for public security and emergency administration, has come beneath scrutiny after the campus safety breakdown which noticed freshman college students Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokob and Ella Prepare dinner slaughtered in a classroom of a physics constructing on Dec. 13, throughout a examine session simply earlier than finals week.
prestigious Ivy League school. Brown College
The profession campus cop has been the topic of two no confidence votes since arriving at Brown in 2021, with the measures expressing “deep concern” about Chatman’s skill to guide the Brown Police Division.
The assertion cited a “local weather of worry and chance of retaliation” and “all-time low in morale” as key options of the Chatman-led division.
In Janunary 2025, he confronted allegations from one departing officer who claimed the office was a “poisonous,” “vindictive” “s—tshow,” the Brown Day by day Herald reported.
That unidentified worker additionally claimed to be the topic of office sexual harassment.
Chatman, who as soon as posed for a photograph with a stuffed teddy bear, curates a progressive persona publicly to maintain in keeping with the woke perspective of his Ivy League employer.
The chief unusually took to his barely-used LinkedIn to have fun the Worldwide Ladies’s Day March — posting that he was comfortable to “proudly have fun unimaginable girls of Brown DPS.”
In one other LinkedIn publish, Chatman advised that campus police departments not publish images of themselves with weapons or performing tactical maneuvers as a result of it makes scholar populations anxious, Fox Information reported.
When he was employed, Chatman was billed because the panacea for Brown’s want for progressive safety wants, with college president Christina Paxson crowing he has the fitting “ values, expertise and experiences.”
Simply earlier than being employed at Brown, Chatman was the police chief on the College of Utah serving just one yr, which was marred by controversy.
He was accused of sporting a badge and carrying a gun previous to formally being designated a police officer within the state, which is a criminal offense.
These allegations weren’t discovered to be true, although he spent greater than half of his one yr on the publish on go away earlier than being canned anyway, Fox Information reported.
Chatman sued the college claiming they tried to push him out, claiming it was as a result of he was drawing consideration to alleged security issues. That lawsuit was tossed out in 2023, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Safety specialists imagine that cameras might have been a robust deterrent towards somebody who scoped out the campus for weeks — as did Neves Valente — however different normal measures might have additionally made a distinction.
“I feel the larger safety situation, along with cameras, was a scarcity of safety personnel, and that is one thing that we now have to have a look at,” Sgt. Betsy Smith, a spokesperson for the Nationwide Police Affiliation, instructed The Submit.
“If this shooter was lurking round, casing for days upfront, that’s why you could have patrol officers, particularly on a university campus.”
He’s a profession school campus cop who bought his begin on the College of Cincinnati in 2005 and likewise served as government director of campus security and police chief at College of Dayton in 2016, in line with his LinkedIn.
