TRENTON— Hundreds of law enforcement officers across New Jersey attended a private police training conference that taught unconstitutional policing tactics, glorified violence, denigrated women and minorities, and likely violated a myriad of state laws and policies, the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) found.

Billing itself as one of the country’s largest private police training companies, the New Jersey-based Street Cop held a six-day training conference in Atlantic City in October 2021. Nearly 1,000 police officers attended, some 240 from New Jersey, the majority paying with public funds, according to OSC’s investigation released today.

Private, post-academy police training has virtually no regulation. Neither the Attorney General, Police Training Commission, nor any other public entity determines what private vendors like Street Cop can teach. Reviewing hours of Street Cop video footage and internal documents, as well as conducting interviews with scores of witnesses, OSC’s Police Accountability Project found the lack of oversight allowed for alarming deficiencies in the training, including:

• More than 100 discriminatory and harassing comments were made, with speakers discussing the size of their genitals, displaying lewd images, and making demeaning quips about women and minorities.
• Instructors, some of them active New Jersey police officers, advocated stopping motorists for no reason or illegally prolonging stops. If employed, these tactics could violate people’s civil rights and be unconstitutional under both federal and New Jersey laws.
• Some instructors promoted a “warrior” approach to policing and dehumanized civilians, referring to them as “the pieces of shit of society” or using offensive memes.

“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. The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms—and New Jersey dollars paid for it—is outrageous,” said Kevin Walsh, Acting State Comptroller.

Street Cop, which described this event as “standard fare,” produced records showing that the 240 New Jersey officers who attended the training came from 77 municipal police departments, six county agencies, one interstate agency, and four state agencies, including the New Jersey State Police. OSC independently confirmed that three county agencies, 48 municipal police departments, one interstate agency, and two state agencies (including the New Jersey State Police), spent public funds on the conference.

More than $75,000 in public funds was spent, not including paid time off or paid training days, but the actual amount could not be determined. Street Cop records were incomplete and inaccurate. For instance, its records said it received roughly $320,000 from various New Jersey law enforcement agencies for other trainings held between 2019 and 2022, but OSC investigators found that the actual amount was at least double that.

The cost to New Jersey could be even higher, as Street Cop presenters promoted the kinds of tactics and behaviors that can prompt multi-million dollar lawsuits for excessive force, unlawful searches and seizures, and workplace harassment and discrimination.

For nearly a decade, Attorneys General in New Jersey adopted initiatives and reforms that focused on having officers approach policing as “guardians,” rather than “warriors,” to curb bias and excessive force in policing and restore community trust. At the Street Cop training, speakers mocked the idea of reimagining policing, belittled Internal Affairs, which investigates police misconduct, promoted a “warrior” approach to policing, and dehumanized civilians. One speaker spoke about “loving violence” and praised savagery –“drinking out of the skulls of our enemies.” Another used an offensive meme of a monkey after describing a motor vehicle stop of a “75-year-old Black man coming out of Trenton.”

Despite state discrimination laws and New Jersey’s zero-tolerance policy on discrimination and harassment, the Street Cop conference was saturated with derogatory remarks about women and racial and ethnic minorities. Street Cop Founder/CEO Dennis Benigno, a former New Jersey police officer, for instance, talked about wanting to die in Colombia, surrounded by cocaine and “girls” who are “not as wealthy and need to do things to make money.”

None of the New Jersey police who attended complained about the training to their agencies, OSC found. “What is painfully evident is that it often takes more than laws and policies to change behavior and attitudes,” said Walsh. “New Jersey needs quality police training, and to have that quality training, we need regulation over private companies operating in this sphere.”

Benigno said the company annually conducts 40 to 45 courses in New Jersey, training more than 2,000 NJ state and local law enforcement officers every year.

OSC’s investigation also found that at least 46 states have expended public funds on Street Cop training.

OSC made nine recommendations, including calling on the Legislature to consider legislation to close the gap on oversight. OSC also is sending referrals to the Attorney General, the Division on Civil Rights, and other agencies for further investigation.

Read the report.

Watch the videos of Street Cop trainings.

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