Officials from the global consulting firm Teneo outlined their goals for the campus-wide safety and security assessment at a Brown University Community Council meeting on Tuesday. The council, which serves as a forum for Brown community members to discuss campus-related issues, discussed Brown’s potential involvement with the Providence Police Department’s Real Time Crime Center, a centralized hub that monitors live camera access to inform rapid incident response.
The firm’s four objectives for the comprehensive safety review include conducting a risk exposure assessment, leading a security program review, gathering community feedback and developing a roadmap to improve safety and security on campus, according Courtney Adante, Teneo’s global head of security risk and David Cagno, Teneo’s head of public safety solution, both of whom are overseeing the review.
Teneo will begin to host focus and listening groups on campus from April 6 to 10 for community members to share their input on campus security measures.
Beginning next week, Cagno’s team will complete walkthroughs of campus buildings in order to assess their risk profile. The team will examine building security and technology to “get a sense of what is already there and some potential target state changes,” Adante said in an interview with The Herald.
“When I think about security in general, it’s not just about capability,” Cagno said at the meeting. “It’s about confidence. It’s about trust in the system.”
Concerns surrounding Bill Bratton, executive chairman of risk advisory at Teneo and former New York City police commissioner, were brought up during the meeting due to his relation to broken windows policing. The strategy, a predecessor to “stop and frisk,” has been critiqued for targeting communities of color and contributing to mass incarceration.
The University previously announced that the safety and security review would be co-led by Adante and Bratton.
When asked about the University’s decision to work with Bratton, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 told The Herald that the University “looked at the totality of the experience of Teneo Risk, and the work that they’ve done for a variety of institutions.”
Bratton will not be leading the day-to-day operations of the review, Adante said in the meeting.
She said that while she has worked closely with Bratton for 10 years, the safety and security review “is a very discrete project that has really nothing to do with Commissioner Bratton’s philosophy.”
“Consider (Bratton) in the background — a sponsor as a public safety expert and the leader of our division,” Adante said in an interview with The Herald after the meeting. “I’m the overall lead and working with (Cagno),” she said.
In response to attendee concerns that increased policing could lead to race-based disparities in enforcement, Interim Vice President for Public Safety and Police Chief Hugh Clements acknowledged a history of problematic policing, but said, “that was a different moment in time, in policing in American cities and on campuses across the country.”
“It’s about the culture, it’s about leadership, and it’s about our messaging and it’s about discipline in changing the culture internally in an organization to impress upon them what is the right way to keep your community safe.”
According to Clements, the University is also considering connecting its cameras to the PPD’s RTCC. He said that conversations about connecting to the RTCC “have been had behind the scenes, but no decision has been made.”
At the meeting, Clements — who spoke in favor of Brown joining the RTCC — said the hub is “critically important because it gives 100% situational awareness in real time, and accurate information to responding officers,” Clements said, citing the Dec. 13 shooting as an example.
“If you were connected to the RTCC and you had that real-time information on the first glimpse of who the suspect was, it gives those responding officers the absolute direct action as to where to go,” Clements added. He added that this would provide more situational accuracy than large volumes of 911 calls.
Clements noted that no camera footage or data would be taken without the University’s approval. “There will be complete transparency and auditing and oversight as to when that capability is used,” he said.
In response, attendees shared concerns about the potential for increased campus surveillance and footage distribution to federal immigration enforcement.
According to Clements, even if the federal government wanted crime information from Brown from a specific event where Brown had triggered their sharing mechanism with the RTCC, the government’s request “would have to be an official one through the courts, through a judicial subpoena for the information.”
Following Clement’s explanation for how cooperation with the RTCC and potential outside agencies would operate, Alicia Joo ’26, who said she was detained during a protest on campus in 2023, had concerns. “Personally, that’s not very reassuring to me,” she said to Clements during the meeting. “In the eyes of the University, I was a criminal and arrested for student protests.”
In an interview with The Herald, Joo said she was worried that there aren’t clear enough statements about the privacy of the footage data. “A lot of that’s very just like, ‘just trust us,’ and it’s hard to do that,” she said.
Joo also mentioned a Jan. 28 letter by the ACLU of Rhode Island written to Paxson, which urged her not to join the RTCC.
“When the Providence Police announced the creation of the RTCC, we pointed out that the system lacked adequate privacy safeguards to prevent its misuse, a major concern considering how broadly the RTCC has expanded the Department’s surveillance capabilities,” the letter reads. “Sharing access to your campus cameras poses a substantial risk to your students, staff, faculty and visitors in the absence of sufficient protections for privacy and accountability.”
The University will not use the RTCC for “student conduct that leads to a low-level criminal arrest,” Clements said. “I think the more you learn about this RTCC you will realize it’s essential in this evil world that we live in,” he added.
The council will hear more about Teneo’s review at the next BUCC meeting, which is scheduled for April 14, The Herald previously reported.
Jeremiah Farr is a senior staff writer covering university hall and higher education.
