Providence, Rhode Island — The constant effort to find the man who walked in on him Brown University Campus during busy exam season and Nearly a dozen students were shot In a crowded lecture hall he raised questions about the school’s security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.
A day after Saturday’s mass shooting, officials said the person of interest who had been taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little practical knowledge from the limited security video they recovered and scrambling to find. Develop new leads.
Law enforcement officials are still doing their best Basic investigative work Two days after shooting it Two students were killed and nine woundedchecking local residences and businesses for surveillance footage and searching for physical evidence. This left students and some Providence residents frustrated by the lapses in the university’s security and camera systems that helped lead to the shooter’s disappearance.
“The fact that we are in such a state of being monitored but never used properly is very frustrating,” said Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on the Brown University team.
Deng is among hundreds of students who have signed a petition to increase security in school buildings, saying officials need to do a better job of keeping campuses safe against threats like active shooters.
“I honestly think the students do a more effective job of taking care of each other than the police,” Ding said.
At no time did that happen, said Christy Dosris, chief public information officer for the Providence Police Department Investigation Stepping down even after officials appeared to have made a breakthrough in the case, detaining a Wisconsin man they now believe was not involved.
“The investigation continued while the scenes were still active. Nothing was clarified,” Dosris said.
Police and the FBI on Monday New video released And pictures of a man they believe carried out the attack. The man was wearing a mask in the footage taken before and after the attack.
A reward of $50,000 has been offered for information that would lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of the shooter, said Ted Dukes, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Boston.
Dukes described the investigation, including documenting the path of bullets at the scene of the shooting, as “painstaking work.”
“We ask the public to be patient as we continue to search for every piece of evidence so that we can give the victims, survivors, their families and all of you the answers you deserve,” Dukes told reporters.
While Brown University was filled with cameras, there were only a few of them at the Barrows and Holley Building, home of the engineering school that was targeted.
“The fact is it’s an old building attached to a new building,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neroha told reporters about the lack of cameras nearby.
The lack of footage on campus led police to ask the public for tips.
Katherine Baima said US guards came to her door on Monday looking for footage from a security camera pointing down the street.
“This is the first time any of us in my building, as far as I know, have heard from anyone,” Baima said.
Students said the school’s emergency alert system keeps them relatively well informed about the presence of an active shooter. But they weren’t sure what to do for a while Campus closure for extended periods.
Xiang Hengxin, a 32-year-old engineering doctoral student, hid under desks and turned off the lights after receiving an alert about the shooting at 4:22pm on Saturday at a campus lab.
He said in a text message: “While I was hiding in the lab, I heard the police screaming outside, but my friends and I were debating whether we should open the door, because at that moment the shooter was thought to be ‘nearby’.”
Law enforcement experts say colleges are often at a disadvantage when responding to threats like active shooters. Their security officers are typically less trained and paid less than other law enforcement departments. They also don’t always partner closely with better-resourced agencies.
Funding for campus police departments is often not a top priority, even for schools with ample resources, said Terrance Gainer, a former Illinois law enforcement official who later served as sergeant-at-arms in the U.S. Senate.
“They’re not as good at law enforcement as you might think,” said Gainer, who now works as a consultant. “They don’t like having a lot of uniforms, and they don’t like having a lot of guns around.” “Whether it’s Brown or someone else, the main question is, what kind of relationship do they have with the local police department?”
And at Utah Valley University, where conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a shooter on the school’s roof last summer, the small campus police department never asked neighboring agencies to help with security at Kirk’s outdoor event that attracted thousands. Associated Press review found.
Providence has an emergency alert system, but switched from a mobile app to a web-based system in March. The new system requires someone to register online to receive alerts, something not all residents know about.
Emily Vale, 35, lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Brown with her two young children. She said she received “absolutely nothing” in alerts. She relied instead on text messages from friends and news.
Valley had expected to be notified through the city’s 311 app, but didn’t realize Mayor Brett Smiley had phased out the app in March. Smiley said his department sent out multiple alerts on the day of the shooting using the new 311 system and continues to send them.
Hailey Souza, 23, finished her shift at an off-campus juice shop minutes before the shooting. Everything seemed normal and calm, Souza said.
But as she was returning home, she saw a boy bleeding on the sidewalk. “Then everyone started running and screaming,” she said. Souza said she saw a passerby tear off his shirt to help.
The store Souza runs, In The Pink, is located a block away from the engineering building. One of the shooting victims, Ella Cook, was a regular visitor to the store, Souza said. Cook came out a few days ago and said her last final was Saturday.
Souza later learned that police had come to the store to tell her co-workers about the active shooter. But Souza received no emergency warning. “Nothing,” she said.
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Weavering, Tao and Slodescu reported from Washington. McDermott reported from Providence. Associated Press writers Kimberly Crosi and Matt O’Brien in Providence and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.