PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) 鈥� The ongoing effort to find a man who walked onto 鈥檚 campus during a busy exam season and in a crowded lecture hall has raised questions about the school’s security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.
A day after Saturday’s mass shooting, officials said a person of interest taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little actionable insight from the limited security video they had recovered and scrambling to .
Law enforcement officials were still doing days after the shooting that , canvassing local residences and businesses for security camera footage and looking for physical evidence. That’s left students and some Providence residents frustrated at perceived gaps in the university鈥檚 security and camera systems that helped allow the shooter to disappear.
鈥淭he fact that we鈥檙e in such a surveillance state but that wasn鈥檛 used correctly at all is just so deeply frustrating,鈥� said Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on a Brown University team.
A petition for increased security
Ding is among hundreds of students who have signed a petition to increase security at school buildings, saying that officials need to do a better job keeping the campus secure against threats like active shooters.
鈥淚 think honestly, the students are doing a more effective job at taking care of each other than the police,鈥� Ding said.
Kristy dosReis, chief public information officer for the Providence Police Department, said that at no point did stand down even after officials appeared to have a breakthrough in the case, detaining a Wisconsin man who they now believe was not involved.
The FBI put out a video timeline Tuesday that includes new footage of the second man of interest from before the attack. It shows him along quiet residential streets near campus. Authorities believe he was casing the area, Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said. Police and the FBI had previously and photographs of the man, who wore a mask in the footage.
Few security cameras in building where attack occurred
While Brown University is dotted with cameras, there were few in the Barus and Holley building, home of the engineering school that was targeted.
鈥淩eality is, it鈥檚 an old building attached to a new one,鈥� Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters about the lack of cameras nearby.
Brown President Christina Paxson defended the university’s response, saying it was deeply committed to the safety, security and well-being of its students. She also said the campus is equipped with 1,200 cameras.
鈥淚 have been deeply saddened by people questioning that,鈥� she said Tuesday. 鈥淎s time goes on, there is a natural instinct to assign responsibility for tragic events like this. Anxiety here is very natural, but the shooter is responsible. Horrific gun violence took the lives of students and hospitalized others, and it鈥檚 deeply sad and tragic that schools across the country are targets of violence. Brown is no exception.鈥�
Paxson says alerts reached 20,000 individuals
Paxson said the university has two security systems. One system is activated at a time of emergency and sent out text messages, phone calls and emails that, in this shooting, reached 20,000 individuals. The other system features three sirens across the campus, but Paxson said that would not be activated in an active shooter situation.
鈥淭hose get activated when there is a broad scale emergency, and we want people to rush into buildings,鈥� she said. 鈥淚n the case of an active shooter, activating that system could have caused people to rush into Barus and Holley. So that is not a system we would ever use in the case of an active shooter.鈥�
When pressed by a reporter who noted the university website says the sirens can be used when there is an active shooter, Paxson reaffirmed she didn鈥檛 think it would be used in that situation.
鈥淚t depends on the circumstances and where the active shooter would be but you don鈥檛 want to ever get people rushing into buildings that might be the site of an active shooter,鈥� she said.
Students say alerts kept them informed
But some said they were uncertain what to do during a .
Chiang-Heng Chien, a 32-year-old doctoral student in engineering, hid under desks and turned off the lights after receiving an alert about the shooting in a campus lab.
鈥淲hile I was hiding in the lab, I heard the police yelling outside but my friends and I were debating whether we should open the door, since at that moment the shooter was believed to be (nearby),鈥� he said in a text.
Experts say colleges can be at disadvantage when it comes to security
Law enforcement experts say colleges are often at a disadvantage when responding to threats like an active shooter. Their security officers are typically less trained and paid less than in other law enforcement departments. They also don鈥檛 always have close partnerships with better-resourced agencies.
Often, funding for campus police departments is not a top priority, even for schools with ample resources, said Terrance Gainer, a former Illinois law enforcement official who later served as the U.S. Senate鈥檚 sergeant-at-arms.
鈥淭hey just aren鈥檛 as flush in law enforcement as you would think. They don鈥檛 like a lot of uniformed presence, they don鈥檛 like a lot of guns around,鈥� said Gainer, who is now a consultant. 鈥淲hether it鈥檚 Brown or someone else, a key question is, what type of relationship do they have with the local police department?鈥�
At Utah Valley University, where conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a shooter on a school building roof last summer, the undersized campus police department never asked neighboring agencies to assist with security at the outdoor Kirk event that attracted thousands, .
Changes in Providence’s alert system
Providence has an emergency alert system, but it switched from a mobile app to a web-based system in March. The new system requires someone to register online to receive alerts 鈥� something not all residents knew.
Emely Vallee, 35, lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Brown with her two young children. She said she received 鈥渁bsolutely nothing鈥� in alerts. She relied instead on texts from friends and the news.
Vallee had expected to be notified through the city鈥檚 311 app, but hadn鈥檛 realized that Mayor Brett Smiley phased out the app in March. Smiley said his administration sent out multiple alerts the day of the shooting using the new 311 system and has continued to send them.
Hailey Souza, 23, finished her shift at a smoothie shop just off-campus minutes before the shooting. Everything seemed normal and quiet, Souza said.
The shop Souza manages, In The Pink, is a block from the engineering building. One of the shooting victims, Ella Cook, was a regular at the store, Souza said. Cook had come in a few days earlier and said her last final was Saturday.
Souza later learned that police came by the store to tell her co-workers about an active shooter. But Souza never received an emergency alert. 鈥淣othing,鈥� she said.
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Wieffering, Tau and Slodysko reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi and Matt O鈥橞rien in Providence and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.
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