Street Cop Training, a private police training company, encouraged the use of unconstitutional tactics, a report by New Jersey’s comptroller says.
At a police training seminar in Atlantic City, N.J., one instructor flashed a photo of a monkey while telling participants about his interaction with a 75-year-old Black man, video shows. Another appeared to mock the L.G.B.T.Q. community: “He or she, him, her, she, him” — whatever “you want to call people now.” Several instructors referred to the size of their genitals in lectures that glorified violence.
And Dennis Benigno, the founder of Street Cop Training, which describes itself as the fastest-growing private police training company in the United States, told the attendees that he looked forward to vacations in Colombia surrounded by cocaine, “hookers” and poor girls who “need to do things to make money.”
Nearly 1,000 police officers from across the country listened to Mr. Benigno and the other instructors during the six-day, $499 seminar run by Street Cop in October 2021, according to an investigation and video footage released Wednesday by Kevin D. Walsh, New Jersey’s acting comptroller.
Tax dollars paid much of the bill.
“We found so many examples of so many instructors promoting views and tactics that were wildly inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory, harassing, and, in some cases, likely illegal,” Mr. Walsh said in a statement.
In a 43-page report, the comptroller’s office recommended that all New Jersey officers who participated in the seminar be retrained, and it urged the State Legislature to create licensing rules for the state’s growing number of unregulated private training companies that offer supplemental instruction throughout officers’ careers.
Mr. Walsh fought to win access to records held by Street Cop for more than a year. The company argued that the comptroller, who was appointed by the state’s Democratic governor, was politically motivated as it filed state and federal court challenges to try to block the release of financial documents and videos from the seminar in Atlantic City. The gathering had been billed as the company’s first conference, featuring appearances by right-leaning celebrity commentators and authors.
Instructors made more than 100 discriminatory comments, according to videos Mr. Walsh obtained, in lectures that celebrated violence and disparaged women and minorities. Trainers also offered participants a checklist of “reasonable suspicion factors” to use in traffic stops — tips that the comptroller’s office concluded were largely unconstitutional and, if employed, could lead to the suppression of evidence.
Taken together, Mr. Walsh said, the training threatened to undermine nearly a decade’s worth of police initiatives focused on de-escalating tense encounters and building trust within vulnerable communities.
“The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms — and New Jersey dollars paid for it — is outrageous,” he said.
Private, unregulated police training outfits like Street Cop are thriving in the United States. In New Jersey alone, at least 50 private police training companies offer in-person instruction, and far more advertise virtual classes, the report found.
Street Cop claims to be one of the biggest of them all, and its reach extends beyond New Jersey.
The company estimates it trains 25,000 to 30,000 officers nationwide every year, court records show. In one month last year, it advertised courses in Texas, South Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Indiana and Colorado.
In all, public agencies in 46 states have provided “direct payment” to Street Cop Training since 2020, the comptroller’s office found.
Mr. Benigno, who could not immediately be reached for comment, is a former correction officer who worked for 10 years as a police officer in Woodbridge, N.J., until 2015. He founded Street Cop Training in 2012.
Mr. Benigno’s lawyer, Jonathan F. Cohen, was not immediately available to discuss the report.
In a podcast, Mr. Benigno said his company filled vital gaps in training that he said were missing from most publicly funded police academies in the United States.
“For the most part the academies were interesting, difficult, daunting — and almost completely useless,” Mr. Benigno told Mike Simpson, the host of the podcast, “Mind of the Warrior,” in July.
He said his company employed 50 instructors and was preparing to add 10 more.
“I think we have a real shot at fixing police work through appropriate training,” he added.
When talking to state investigators, Mr. Benigno emphasized that “overall” the conference was “very informative” and “useful,” and he said his company had “nothing to hide,” according to the report.
Investigators, however, concluded that aspects of the conference that provided “appropriate police training” were “completely overshadowed” by the scores of discriminatory and harassing comments.
Among the participants in Atlantic City were roughly 240 law enforcement officers from 77 municipal police departments in New Jersey, six county agencies, the State Police and three other state agencies. Participants’ ranks ranged from officer to police chief, yet no one in attendance reported the troubling contents of the training to their departments, the report said.
Between 2019 and 2022, policing agencies in New Jersey spent at least $320,000 on Street Cop training, including about $75,000 spent to send officers to the six-day conference, the comptroller’s investigation found.
Sexism and what the comptroller’s office called a “warrior” approach abounded.
One speaker encouraged married female officers in attendance to flirt with their spouses because “God knows there are some whores who will if you don’t.” Ralph Friedman, a former detective with the New York Police Department, described his involvement in 13 incidents of deadly force, in which he shot eight people, killing four, as “batting .500,” according to the report.
Speakers minimized the value of routine drunken-driving or speeding investigations and instead emphasized the seizure of large quantities of drugs and weapons, the report found.
But tips shared with participants offered problematic guidance about vehicle stops, the investigation found.
Drivers who looked away from a police car should be considered suspicious, instructors said; drivers who stared too long at officers were also cause for concern. Passengers wearing hats that partly hid their face were on the checklist of “reasonable suspicion factors.” So were motorists who removed their hats as the police approached.
“The checklist advises that it is suspicious if the car’s occupants are too nicely dressed if they are traveling a long distance, if they are driving a minivan without a child seat in it, if the car has a ‘lived-in look’ with food wrappers and water bottles, or if the car has a trash bag in it for garbage,” the report states.
The comptroller’s office, established in 2007 and expanded several years later, functions as an independent watchdog responsible for auditing and monitoring state agencies, state colleges and universities, and local governments. It has sent its findings to the New Jersey attorney general’s office, the state’s civil rights division and the internal affairs departments of several New Jersey police departments for additional investigation.
The report noted that in addition to the troubling bias some speakers displayed and the training’s potential to perpetuate harmful policing practices, the instruction could worsen an already costly problem for New Jersey taxpayers: lawsuits that allege police misconduct.
The report noted that between 2019 and this year, New Jersey police departments agreed to pay an estimated $87.8 million to resolve claims of misconduct by officers, including many that involved harassing and discriminatory behaviors.
“This kind of training comes at too high a price for New Jersey residents,” the report said. “The costs of attendance for training like this is small in comparison to the potential liability for lawsuits involving excessive force, unlawful searches and seizures, and harassment and discrimination.”
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