- Two people died today and another eight are in the hospital.

Understand that this is not something our community has gone through together.

But I also know this community and I know that its best moments are when we come together to support one another.

- When a gunman opened fire at Brown University in December 2025, killing two students and Inuring nine others, Providence Mayor Brett Smiley was thrust into the spotlight.

Smiley became a public face of the response, sharing updates through a series of briefings.

Anxiety soared after the shooting since the assailant remained at large.

Five days later, the gunman, Claudio Neves Valente, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot at a storage facility in New Hampshire.

Many Rhode Islanders breathed a sigh of relief, but moving on is harder for those touched by the shooting and for the extended Brown community.

So how did Mayor Smiley keep his cool during a public crisis?

And what are the lessons learned from how the City of Providence responded to a tragedy in its midst?

I'm Ian Donnis, and that's just some of what we talked about in this in-depth conversation.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, welcome back to One-on-One.

- Happy to be here.

- You played a central role in responding to the Brown University shooting.

What went through your mind before facing the media on that first day?

- So we were overwhelmed pretty quickly with the initial media response.

Not just Rhode Island media, but national media arrived quickly and those early hours, we still knew very little, but I knew that we needed to share what we did know and try to put our community's fears at ease or at least try to answer questions that they had.

And so we did that first press conference about two and a half hours after the first 911 call came in, which was pretty fast.

And so my goal was to be transparent with the community, to share what we did know to do our best to preview what the hours and days to come would be like, and then to pledge ongoing transparency throughout the process.

Honestly, it's something that, you know, I've listened to a lot of other mayors who've been through this before, talk about how they've handled similar situations and in that way it's sort of something that we had prepared for and planned for, and practiced for.

- There was a lot of anxiety in the immediate aftermath as the assailant was still at large.

Did you have a moment where you thought to yourself that you need to really be calm and focused and people needed to see that in you?

- Absolutely.

I think it hit home pretty quickly that people were looking to folks like me to try to try to assess how they should feel and sort of key off of my energy and our energy of are we anxious and freaked out, or are we calm and prepared?

And so I tried to display that calm, but also display the emotion too, which is we did have a plan.

I had high degree of confidence in our police department and we were getting a lot of help, but that didn't mean it wasn't sad and tragic and emotional.

And so allowing myself to show those feelings as well was I think important for the whole community.

- As a public official, you hope to never have to respond to this kind of situation.

And you live close to where the shooting took place.

Footage showed that the shooter actually walked by where you live within a couple of days.

As you responded to this, did you feel fear?

Were you afraid?

- I wasn't personally fearful, but I understood the anxiety.

These things have happened all around the country, sadly.

And so intellectually, I think we knew that it could happen anywhere, but we still had this, I certainly still had this belief that it wouldn't happen here deep down inside.

I think as Rhode Islanders, we think, oh, it's, you know, we're sort of off the beaten path sometimes we're not, you know, viewed as a major metropolitan area and thought, well, something like this would never happen here.

And so it did shake sort of the bedrock of security and safety that we felt as Providence residents and as Rhode Islanders.

But after the initial shooting, we didn't have any reason to believe that there was an ongoing risk to the community.

And so I didn't have those feelings of fear and anxiety, although I understood and respect the community members who did.

And so we did our best to try to communicate with them, share what we knew, to try to give them the confidence to kind of find that strength within, to start to take steps forward.

- Police Chief Oscar Perez was out of town when the shooting happened.

What was your first telephone conversation like with him?

- So the first call I got was from the Deputy Chief, Tim O'Hara, and the two of them are never out of town at the same time.

And, and they make an excellent team and have worked together for decades.

And so I got the initial briefing from Tim.

Oscar was actually at the airport waiting to come home.

And so as soon as he landed, he hit the ground running and had been fully briefed and brought up to speed with what we did know at that time.

And joined us at one of the later press conferences that first night on Saturday night.

You know, he's a pro, he's a lifelong Providence police officer.

He's had nearly every job in the department, including a lot of inter-agency work, which ended up being really critical because this involved a lot of partners.

And so he was involved and integral, if not from the first hour, from the first day.

- You mentioned a little earlier how the city prepared for this kind of possibility.

Tell us about that, how did the prepare for this?

- Yeah, I mean, the Providence Police had been doing joint training exercises for a long time, well before I became mayor and had done the most recent joint training exercise with Brown Police as recently as six months prior over the summer.

I remember clearly my first year as mayor, I was at a US Mayor's conference and there was a panel on mass shootings and there were mayors on the panel who had all experienced mass shootings in their cities.

And the conclusion at the end of the panel was, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when and you need to be ready.

And I came home from that conference, resolved that to double check all of our protocols to ask about the trainings that we had done.

And one of the things that we hadn't done in a little while was a full scale mock training exercise.

We ended up using actually the Carl Laurel School, which was closed at the time.

We had actors stand in as victims.

I mean, it was as full mock training as possible for all of the various pieces to show sort of what everyone's responsibility was in a K-12 setting.

And so that was really helpful to us.

The trainings that Providence Police does is very helpful.

The Providence Emergency Management Agency conducts regular trainings and has a whole host of plans on bookshelves that we hope we will never need to pull off the shelf.

But when you do need them, it's not the time to be figuring out what do we do.

And so we're really fortunate in Providence to have a full compliment of public safety professionals that think about this on a daily basis and not just what happened, but other things that could happen so that we are as prepared as possible.

And all of that prep work really came in handy.

- How would you describe the top lessons learned from the city's response?

- So we've gone through a process of the initial internal reviews in police, fire, emergency management, and earlier this week, I directed the emergency management agency to actually hire a third party independent entity to review our response, to look at what lessons can be learned and what trainings would be helpful in the future, what tools and technology would be helpful in the future.

And so I look forward to the full complete report, which will be shared with the community.

When that's done, that will take months.

I wanna set people's expectations that's gonna be in depth, but I'll tell you on first pass after these initial reviews, I'm very happy with and entirely satisfied with police and fire's initial response, those first within that first hour was excellent.

And you couldn't do better.

From the time that the 911 call came in, which was 4:05 PM to the time the first police officer arrived on scene, was less than five minutes, that's well above the national standard, much faster than the national standard.

You're not gonna do better than that.

From the time that the first police officer arrived on scene to the time that the last victim was transported to the emergency room was 18 minutes, also really good, not gonna do better than that.

And so the initial response was excellent.

And I don't expect to find a lot of feedback that we could or should have done much differently in that respect.

There's certainly been some feedback along the way that community members wished they had received better notifications.

And that's something that we're looking at other options.

We did a press conference and then ended up doing many more.

We were on social media throughout putting out notices and updates, and we sent out 311 notifications.

One of the dilemmas with the 311 notifications are however you need to sign up for them.

And so, you know, we started hearing from constituents that never received a 311 notification 'cause they had never enrolled in them and they wish they had.

And so we're exploring other tools or technologies that may allow us to do notifications without enrollment, that turned out to be a piece of the puzzle that we would like to do better in the future.

God forbid something like this ever happens again.

- When will that third party review be complete?

- We've looked at ones that have been done around the country in other incidents and they take anywhere from three to 12 months.

And so that's our expectation for this as well.

We want it to be substantive.

We want it to be useful for future actions and future investments.

We don't want it to be rushed or in any way, you know, broad brushed over what was the most significant incident from a public safety perspective to happen in our city in a generation.

And so it will be months, but when the work is done, it will be shared with the public and will be fully accessible.

- Before the Brown University shooting happened, Providence recorded only two homicides in 2025.

So I wonder how do you parse the difference between what you just described, a generational tragedy that no one could anticipate on one hand, and how on the other hand, gun violence is at a very low level in the city and how do you break that down?

- Yeah, the Brown incident is sort of something totally different from the crime that we experience in the city throughout the year.

A majority of the violent crime that happens in Providence is between people who know one another, is often gang or drug related.

And we've made excellent progress in that respect.

Even with the Brown incident, this will be one of the lowest levels of violent crime in this city since we started tracking this data in 1990.

So what's that, 35 years.

And so the progress that we've made on the sort of usual crime that happens in the city is remarkable and is a testament to both the good work of law enforcement.

But the other investments that we've made as well, it's not just about having more police, it's about things like violence interruption programs, investments at the non-violence institute, work that we do in the schools.

And so we are a safe community that continues to make progress in bringing down all instances of crime, property crime, violent crime.

Nearly every category was down in 2025 as it was in 2024.

And so the Brown incident is horrific and we care about that as well, but it hopefully is an anomaly that doesn't ever happen here again.

- A person of interest was detained and then released within about 24 hours after the shooting.

That sparked a lot of criticism of various officials, including yourself from Fox News, online critics.

There were a lot of conspiracy theories being floated.

I wonder as you were in the midst of that, what do you make of all that?

- Yeah, we were really disciplined with our language from the podium and any public statements.

We continued to refer to this person as a person of interest.

We never called this person a suspect or anything that might have suggested anything more than he was.

And if you look at the flip side of it, we had a credible tip and we ran it down and it turned out to not be the person.

Had we received a credible tip and not pursued it, we would've received as much or more criticism.

But everybody wants to see solutions quickly.

I think we've a generation of people who are used to watching television shows that go from crime to conviction in one hour.

And it was clear, I think all of us, and I certainly put myself in this camp, I hoped it was the person, I hoped that it was resolved within 24 hours.

It turned out to not be the case.

Over the course of the week, it was five days in total, five days and a couple hours.

And there were four or five credible tips.

One of them turned out to be right, three or four of them did not.

And that's how these investigations go.

And a credit to the folks in law enforcement, the attorney general, the FBI, they were not distracted by the online critics.

They were not distracted by the cable news chatter.

They kept the blinders on and kept focused on work.

And so I know there was plenty of criticism in the midst of it, but it didn't deter us from doing the job that needed to be done.

And ultimately, we were able to get to a resolution in about five days.

- State Police Colonel Darnell Weaver called out what he called quote, the endless barrage of misinformation, disinformation, rumors, leaks, and clickbait that follow the shooting.

That kind of stuff makes it harder for investigators, but it is the world we live in now.

And it's probably gonna get worse with the proliferation of so-called deep fakes, videos that can be made that are artificial.

And we see this even with a vandalism case at a church in the East Providence this week where people have manipulated photos released by police to suggest things that didn't happen.

What can be done about this?

- It's a new world and I think we're all trying to adapt as quickly as possible.

This was a real problem.

And I thought Colonel Weaver's comments at that last press conference really, really hit home.

They were very well said.

The ability for any individual on the internet to, to posit a theory, even if it's publicly discredited that lives in the world and there's no way to make it go away, people start to jump to conclusions.

And then you add in the complexity of AI.

You might have remembered in the middle of this, we were releasing video to ask for the community's help to advance the investigation.

At one point we put up a shared folder online, and we had watermarked the images with the Providence Police logo in the background in an attempt to try to reset folks to understand that if it didn't have the Providence Police watermark on it, it wasn't an authentic image.

As we were seeing these things get distorted.

I think you're gonna see law enforcement, public officials in the months and years to come continue to look for new strategies to try to impact and establish what is true, verified credible information as opposed to speculative, altered or distorted information that's happening online.

But it is, it feels like shoveling against the ocean and it is really hard to combat all of that misinformation, intentional or not, it's misinformation, which is why I mentioned earlier some of it I think we're just never gonna be able to control.

And so the discipline that it takes for public officials and especially law enforcement to just stay focused on their job and to not get distracted really requires a lot of effort.

But that's what separates, I think, excellent investigators and law enforcement from less excellent ones.

- The case was broken open, thanks to a tip from a homeless person known only as John.

He provided information that was able to identify the car used by the shooter, and that led to the person, you wrote a letter calling for this person, John, to get the award that was offered by the FBI.

And very little is known about this individual.

What can you tell us about him and how his life has been affected by his central role in solving this case?

- Yeah, so the reason that very little is known about John is because he has asked for his privacy and his anonymity.

And I think our community owes him a huge debt of gratitude.

And if that's the one thing he's asked for, that's the least we can do for him.

And so we have been very disciplined in sharing any details because of his wishes.

What I can say is yes, I've advocated for him to get the award.

The FBI has told me that by policy, they don't disclose who gets their awards.

And so I'm not expecting to ever get a definitive answer from them that he received that, but that doesn't mean that he's not going to, and I know there's other people advocating for him as well.

Secondly, I can also say that John's needs are being met.

And so again, his request has been for privacy and anonymity, but I can hopefully provide some reassurance to the community that his needs are being met and that he is in contact with folks who are making sure that his needs are being met.

- What does he tell us about our age that he initially posted the information he had on Reddit rather than going directly to police?

- Well, I think in this case it was rooted in the same desire for anonymity and privacy.

And so that's why the initial tip was via Reddit until such time as his photo had been released by us asking for assistance.

In these investigations, and we saw this in our instance, we do, we scour online message boards, we scour the internet.

The volume of information, however, is hard, for one real good tip, there could be thousands of bogus tips.

And so it just adds to the complexity and sometimes the time it takes to see an investigation progress.

- I know police pay a lot of attention to social media too, because that's where a lot of beefs play out among young people who might have a propensity to use guns.

- Yeah, we monitor social media for a variety of investigations.

You know, it's a world in which everyone feels compelled to put all of their business online.

And so it has helped us solve other crimes as well, for sure.

- Mayor Smiley, you talked a bit earlier about the issue of how the city sought to inform residents in the aftermath of the shooting, and the city did face some criticism for not using wireless alerts to advise on the shooting and your shelter in place order.

With the benefit of hindsight, was that the right call?

- Yeah, so I think folks are probably familiar with the Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency, RIMA, has a notification process where they can, without consent, send out text messages, things like an amber alert or maybe a hurricane warning.

And I think we've all been, we've all heard or felt our phone vibrate when those happen.

But we've all heard when that happens, 'cause sometimes it makes an audible alert.

It's actually not a best practice in the sense, in the occasion of an active shooter to send out those alerts because the audible notification that occurs can disclose the location of someone who might be hiding from a shooter.

And so it's established and accepted as best practice to not use that alert system in the event of an active shooter, which is why, so I don't regret that decision and I understand the rationale for why you don't do that.

We are exploring what other tools might be available to us in between where we are today, which is we have an opt-in, you must sign up for 311 notifications, the RIMA system, which is by geography.

You draw a circle on a map and that's where you can push a notification, but it's an audible alert that could endanger somebody.

Is there something in between that might better notify the community, but that doesn't endanger anybody?

And so that's what we're exploring right now and looking to see what other options may be available to us.

- Brown University has released some details about its plans to enhance security in the aftermath of what happened.

How do you think this will affect the city and residents who are used to perhaps passing through the Brown campus on their comings and goings in life?

- Yeah, I mean, I hope, first of all, I think they made a great choice in hiring former Providence Police Chief Hugh Clements, a huge degree of confidence and a great deal of respect for Chief Clements.

And I'm sure they'll make a series of security enhancements.

And I know the other colleges and universities are looking at the same, the governor's convened all of the Rhode Island institutions of higher education to talk about safety and security.

But one of the outcomes that I hope doesn't occur is I hope the campus doesn't get walled off.

I hope it doesn't become a fortress.

You know, Providence is a college town with four private colleges and campuses for two public colleges.

And we like that vitality.

We like having them in the community.

We like being able to walk our dog through campus and go for a run.

And so I hope we strike the right balance and keep our campuses open to the community.

I think it's important for campus community relationships that those gates remain open, proverbial and literal gates remain open.

We will stay in close contact with both Brown and all of the other colleges to make sure that we maintain that right balance.

Because there is, there's a broader question here about making sure that the institutions and the community can stay good neighbors.

- What level of communication is happening now on that issue with RISD, Providence College and Rhode Island College?

- So I talk to all the college presidents very regularly, and we have standing calls, but then we have informal touchpoints regularly as well.

And so the discussions are being made.

I'm not hugely concerned at the moment, but it's just something that is a question that I'm anticipating and maybe a call from some corners that I could see occurring.

And I'd like to be able to continue to have honest conversations about what, what do we want our neighborhoods to look like, where there are institutions present and I think walled fortresses are not the answer.

- To shift gears a little bit, there's been a lot of backlash in Minnesota after a woman was killed in an incident with an ICE agent.

Do you see any likelihood that ICE would step up its activities dramatically in Providence in the way that it has in Minnesota?

- I mean, we're 12 months into a presidency where the number of times where I think people have said that could never happen and then it ended up happening, probably should instruct all of us to say that anything's possible with this president and this administration.

We've not seen the sort of mass deployment that's occurring in Minneapolis.

And that has also occurred in places like Chicago and LA and other places.

In Providence and certainly would hope that it does not occur here, but we need to assume with this president anything's possible.

And so, you know, we are preparing for that as well.

And we've taken actions, I signed an executive order earlier in the fall, the city council updated a city ordinance with respect to immigration cooperation, which I was proud to sign.

And so I think we've got the right regulations and rules in place, but we're looking to regularly update and constantly reevaluate what our options are when you have a federal agency that is endangering communities as opposed to protecting communities.

- It's probably just a matter of time before the City Council brings forward its plan for rent stabilization.

If the council has a super majority of support for that, is there anything you can do to stop that proposal from moving forward?

- Well, listen, I've still not seen what's being proposed.

These things are not identical.

Every place that they've been proposed, I've been pretty clear that I'm deeply skeptical and don't believe rent control has worked in the way in which it was intended.

And in Providence's case, you know, our problem, the reason that prices are rising is because we have a supply shortage.

And rent control policies have only constricted future growth, not expanded it.

And so I think it is not the solution to our problem, but I'll take a look at what gets proposed.

And then there's a process that the legislature will go through, just like at the State House.

The city council is a legislative body.

They have a committee hearing process.

There are often amendments and modifications, and so we'll see what they come up with and we'll see how the process goes.

But I am very worried that this is actually only gonna make our affordability problem worse and not better, but it's up to the city council to propose something and then we work through the process.

- Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for watching One-on-one with me, Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the YouTube channel for Ocean State Media.

We'll see you next week.

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