By Stephen Appezzato
The Monmouth Beach, Ocean Township and Howell police departments were a few of the many law enforcement organizations across the state that sent officers to a controversial police training program, according to officials.
Now, some want officers who participated in the program to be retrained two years after the fact.
The Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) recently concluded its investigation into a private police training event held in Atlantic City in 2021, reporting alarming findings. Nearly 250 officers from more than 77 municipal police departments and even the New Jersey State Police attended Street Cop Training from Oct. 3 to 8, 2021. The investigation concluded that the private training “taught unconstitutional policing tactics, glorified violence, denigrated women and minorities, and likely violated a myriad of state laws and policies.”
Video footage released depicts Street Cop Training instructors making demeaning remarks about women, using sexually charged language and showing lewd gestures and images.
In one instance, an instructor and police officer from Howell mocked the LGBTQ population during a presentation. In another, an instructor from Oklahoma used “dehumanizing language” and referred to injured criminals as “live tissue labs.” One instructor even displayed an image of a monkey in his PowerPoint while describing a motor vehicle stop of an elderly black man conducted near Trenton. Multiple presenters made out-of-context references to their penis size in front of the audience of law enforcement officers.
The OSC found that instructional content glorified the use of violence and promoted the use of unconstitutional policing tactics, such as unnecessary and unlawful motor vehicle stops.
Speakers embraced an “us vs. them” approach to policing and “espoused views and tactics that would undermine almost a decade of police reform efforts in New Jersey, including those aimed at de-escalating civilian-police encounters, building trust with vulnerable populations, and increasing officers’ ability to understand, appreciate, and interact with New Jersey’s diverse population,” according to OSC findings.
More than 100 discriminatory and harassing remarks were shared by instructors over the six-day period.
The majority of officers who participated in the program had their attendance paid for by their departments or with tax dollars. The report calculated at least $75,000 of public funds were spent to send New Jersey police officers to the conference, excluding paid time off and paid training days allotted to officers.
The OSC also found that none of the attendees, ranging from officers to police chiefs, complained about the seminar.
In a statement from the Monmouth Beach Police Department, Chief Daniel McManus wrote that the department is constantly look- ing for training opportunities for its officers, and that “The company Street Cop Training was recommended to our agency as a fast growing police training company.”
“We sent two officers to the Conference in Atlantic City to evaluate the classes that this company offered. After attending the conference, it was decided that our agency would not be using Street Cop Training,” McManus wrote.
Currently, private police training academies are not regulated by the attorney general, police training commission or other entity. In the report, the OSC provided strong evidence that this should not be the case. Acting state comptroller Kevin Walsh urged state representatives to introduce legislation which would establish a comprehensive vetting and licensing process for post-academy private police training seminars.
“This kind of training comes at too high a price for New Jersey residents. 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,” the report stated. From 2012 to 2018, more than 100 excessive force lawsuits were filed against New Jersey police officers. Just one of these cases cost a county $10 million. By another estimate, in the past four years, state police departments paid out more than $87 million for claims of officer misconduct, harassment and discrimination.
The OSC also recommended law enforcement agencies to have more scrutiny when committing taxpayer funds to sending officer to post-academy training programs, such as Street Cop Training, and retrain officers that attended the conference.
Street Cop Training was founded in 2012 by Dennis Benigno, a former police officer from Middlesex County, and is claimed to be one of the largest private policing training providers in the country.
Responding to the OSC’s report and articles highlighting the alarming the incident, Benigno posted a video statement on the Steet Cop Training YouTube channel which alleged the OSC had an agenda against the company, and stood behind his program. Benigno took responsibility and apologized for “any inappropriate or offensive language that was used by a few of our instructors.”
“We do important work, and there is no place for demeaning, harassing or hateful words or jokes in our training,” he said. “Since that time, we have worked as a company to implement quality control measures to foster a cooperative environment among our instructors and professional staff here at this office. We don’t want that type of incident ever happening again,” Benigno added.
Benigno also said that Street Cop Training staff conducts diversity, equity and inclusion and sensitivity training and that they are “confident that our remedial measures have been successful,” as there have been no complaints about any of Street Cop Training’s program since the 2021 incident.
The OSC is an independent state agency that works to make New Jersey’s government more efficient, transparent and accountable. Policing is one of the many government functions which falls under its scrutiny.
As of press time, no legislation has been introduced in accord with the OSC’s recommendations on vetting and licensing private police training providers.
The article originally appeared in the December 21 – December 27, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
