Brown Spends More Than $200,000 on Providence Police Details in 2 Months

Brown Spends More Than $200,000 on Providence Police Details in 2 Months

If you have traveled around the Brown University campus over the past three months, you will see heightened security.

Outside of Brown’s Faunce House on Waterman Street, there is a Providence Police cruiser parked.

Providence Police and Brown security are visible in and outside of other Brown buildings.

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In addition, Brown police vehicles can be seen, and the University has added a third-party security company.

The security has been added since the mass shooting at Brown on December 13, which saw two students killed and 9 others wounded.

The Brown administration was widely criticized for the lack of security and its response to the incident. The shooter — Claudio Manuel Neves Valente — had had unfettered access to the building in which the shooting took place, Barus & Holley Hall.

The building had no security cameras on the side of the building where the shooting took place. They have been added since the episode.

 

Cost of Police Details

GoLocal requested information about the details from Providence Public Safety. 

Spokesperson for the agency, Kristy DosReis, told GoLocal, “The Providence Police Department has had ‘Brown Directed Patrols’ in place since the last week of December to enhance public safety in the area surrounding Brown University.”

As of February 22, 2026, the Department has incurred $235,675 in overtime and callback expenses related to these patrols. To date, Brown University has been billed $19,557.87 for December 2025 and $103,092.17 for January 2026. 

 

Expanded Security

Just ten days after the shooting at Brown, the University announced major changes to its public safety department. Brown Vice President Rodney Chatman was placed on leave, and former Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements was appointed to serve as the interim Vice President for public safety.

A week later, Clements announced a major transformation of the University’s public safety strategy.

 

Those changes included:

 

•        Expansion of blue light phones with integrated cameras across campus
•       Installing additional security cameras in key areas, including at Barus & Holley, pending final determinations arising from the Campus Safety and Security Assessment announced Dec. 22
•       Expansion of panic buttons in critical locations to ensure rapid access to help when it is needed most

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Since then, dozens of security cameras have been installed across the campus.

Those cameras’ video and their integration into the Providence real-time crime center have raised privacy concerns.

In August of 2025, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley finally launched the center after years of delay. The initiative began under then-Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza.

The integration of the video from Brown to the  real-time crime center has come under criticism by some at Brown and the ACLU. Those videos are accessible to federal law enforcement agencies and can be used by the Trump administration for immigration enforcement.

In February, groups wrote to Brown President Christina Paxson, urging her not to allow Brown’s video security system to be integrated into the Providence system.

While supporting the goal of promoting safety initiatives on campus, the civil liberties organization’s letter to Paxson flagged serious privacy concerns over collaboration with the RTCC, arguing that sharing camera access “poses a substantial risk to your students, staff, faculty, and visitors in the absence of sufficient protections for privacy and accountability.” 

The letter explains two examples of how the data could be misused, including targeting free speech on campus and immigration actions.