Brown University’s police chief Rodney Chatman — a progressive, “toxic,” teddy-bear hugging, chief running a “s—tshow” department — is being criticized for the lax security measures and lack of surveillance that allowed Claudio Neves Valente to gun down two students and get away.
Chatman, Brown’s vice president for public safety and emergency management, has come under scrutiny after the campus security breakdown which saw freshman students Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokob and Ella Cook slaughtered in a classroom of a physics building on Dec. 13, during a study session just before finals week.
The career campus cop has been the subject of two no confidence votes since arriving at Brown in 2021, with the measures expressing “deep concern” about Chatman’s ability to lead the Brown Police Department.
The statement cited a “climate of fear and possibility of retaliation” and “all-time low in morale” as key features of the Chatman-led department.
In Janunary 2025, he faced allegations from one departing officer who claimed the workplace was a “toxic,” “vindictive” “s—tshow,” the Brown Daily Herald reported.
That unidentified employee also claimed to be the subject of workplace sexual harassment.
Chatman, who once posed for a photo with a stuffed teddy bear, curates a progressive persona publicly to keep in step with the woke perspective of his Ivy League employer.
The chief strangely took to his barely-used LinkedIn to celebrate the International Women’s Day March — posting that he was happy to “proudly celebrate incredible women of Brown DPS.”
In another LinkedIn post, Chatman suggested that campus police departments not post photos of themselves with guns or performing tactical maneuvers because it makes student populations anxious, Fox News reported.
When he was hired, Chatman was billed as the panacea for Brown’s need for progressive security needs, with university president Christina Paxson crowing he has the right “ values, skills and experiences.”
Just before being hired at Brown, Chatman was the police chief at the University of Utah serving only one year, which was marred by controversy.
He was accused of wearing a badge and carrying a gun prior to officially being designated a police officer in the state, which is a crime.
Those allegations were not found to be true, though he spent more than half of his one year at the post on leave before being canned anyway, Fox News reported.
Chatman sued the university claiming they tried to push him out, claiming it was because he was drawing attention to alleged safety problems. That lawsuit was tossed out in 2023, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.
Security experts believe that cameras could have been a strong deterrent against someone who scoped out the campus for weeks — as did Neves Valente — but other standard measures could have also made a difference.
“I think the bigger security issue, in addition to cameras, was a lack of security personnel, and this is something that we have to look at,” Sgt. Betsy Smith, a spokesperson for the National Police Association, told The Post.
“If this shooter was lurking around, casing for days in advance, that’s why you have patrol officers, especially on a college campus.”
He is a career college campus cop who got his start at the University of Cincinnati in 2005 and also served as executive director of campus safety and police chief at University of Dayton in 2016, according to his LinkedIn.
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