Last night’s Ingraham Angle cut through the usual Washington theater and exposed what should be obvious: this was a preventable tragedy made worse by institutional incompetence. Retired FBI agent James Gagliano and former Secret Service agent Tim Miller laid out on-air how critical video evidence was missing from the very building where students were slaughtered, slowing the investigation and costing innocent lives.
We were told Brown has 1,200 cameras across campus like that should be comforting, but the reality is cruelly different — there were essentially two cameras covering the outside of the building in question and none that captured the shooter inside. That gap in basic physical security turned a university with a multibillion-dollar endowment into a soft target, and it took a homeless man’s tip and neighborhood footage to finally push the case forward.
What followed the breakthrough was the predictable political kabuki: press conferences full of self-congratulation and platitudes while anyone who asked tough questions was dismissed. Gagliano was blunt — politicians and some officials were more interested in deflecting blame than owning failures, staging photo-ops instead of fixing security gaps. Americans deserve public servants who protect, not perform.
Brown’s leadership also deserves unsparing scrutiny. When university presidents are pocketing seven-figure salaries while students die because basic safety measures weren’t in place, priorities are grotesquely out of balance. This isn’t just mismanagement, it’s moral recklessness: lavish administrative paychecks and DEI theater cannot replace locks, smart cameras, and common-sense security protocols.
The person accused of these appalling murders, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, entered the United States decades ago on a student visa and later returned through the diversity visa program, a pathway that has now come under renewed scrutiny. Conservatives have long warned that open-ended visa programs without rigorous screening invite risk, and this case underscores the need for common-sense immigration reforms that put public safety first.
Practical fixes are not complicated: equip campus buildings with modern, networked cameras that alert authorities in real time; streamline coordination between campus police and local law enforcement; and make accountability mandatory so that when systems fail people lose their jobs — not just deliver hollow apologies. The technology exists; what’s missing is the will to prioritize safety over virtue-signaling.
We should and do salute the Providence officers and the FBI agents who worked around the clock to bring this to a conclusion, but gratitude must not become an excuse for complacency. Heroic work after the fact does not absolve those who ignored clear vulnerabilities beforehand, and the public should demand investigations, firings where appropriate, and real reforms to prevent another catastrophe.
Hardworking Americans and parents sending their kids to college deserve campuses that are safe, accountable, and run by leaders who put lives above image. It’s time to stop letting administrative elites and political spin defend avoidable failures — demand answers, cut the bureaucratic red tape that prevents action, and restore common-sense security to our institutions.
