Brown Lawyers Up After Bungled Response to Mass Shooting, Retaining Former US Attorney
Brown University has retained former federal prosecutor Zachary Cunha as it bolsters its legal team in the aftermath of last week’s mass shooting that killed two students and wounded nine others.
“Brown works routinely with outside counsel whose expertise complements that of the University’s Office of the General Counsel. In this case, we retained Zachary Cunha, the former United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island, to assist the University in coordinating with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies,” Brown said in a statement.
Cunha, who stepped down earlier this year as U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island, joined the law firm Nixon Peabody in March.
The decision to lawyer up comes after Brown faces increased scrutiny over its security policies in the wake of the shooting. Emergency sirens never sounded after the attack, and campus services took 20 minutes to send an alert out to students. Students then received a flurry of alerts that repeatedly conveyed incomplete or inaccurate information.
In recent months campus security received many complaints, including frustrations from law enforcement that security was not disclosing information surrounding bomb and shooting threats across campus. In October the school’s Security Patrolperson’s Association issued a vote of confidence in the university’s director of public safety and emergency management.
The public safety department also decided to decrease the number of field officers to make room for more administrative positions. The Patrolperson’s Association said this decision “directly contributed to an all-time low in morale and has strained the department’s ability to effectively serve the Brown University community.”
Brown could face legal issues over these lapses. At least two law firms have begun soliciting potential plaintiffs for civil lawsuits tied to the shooting, Providence Journal reported.
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