NJ comptroller says hundreds of cops attended training that 'undermined' key reforms

An investigation by the Office of the State Comptroller found that hundreds of law enforcement officers from 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.

A six-day training conference in October 2021 hosted by New Jersey-based Street Cop Training, an independent police training consultancy, drew more than 240 police officers from New Jersey, and a majority of those officers were paid with public funds while attending the sessions, says a report released Tuesday by the comptroller's office.

Private sessions like those provided by Street Cop Training are not under the authority of the state attorney general’s Police Training Commission or any other public entity and are not regulated.

After reviewing hours of video footage and internal documents as well as conducting witness interviews, the comptroller's office found that a lack of oversight allowed for deficiencies in the training.

Who attended the training? How much was spent?

Records from Street Cop Training show that the 240 New Jersey officers who attended came from 77 municipal police departments, six county agencies, one interstate agency and four state agencies, including the New Jersey State Police, officials said. The comptroller's office 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.

It is unclear exactly how much taxpayer money was spent in relation to the training program. The report says it is more than $75,000, not including paid time off or paid training days, but that Street Cop records were incomplete and inaccurate. The company’s records said it received roughly $320,000 from various New Jersey law enforcement agencies for other training sessions held between 2019 and 2022, but comptroller's investigators found that the actual amount was at least double that.

The report alleges that 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.

'Training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms'

The report also alleges that instructors, including some active New Jersey police officers, advocated stopping motorists for no reason or illegally prolonging stops, which could violate people’s civil rights and be unconstitutional under both federal and New Jersey laws. It says some instructors promoted a “warrior” approach to policing and dehumanized civilians, referring to them as “the pieces of [expletive] 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,” said Kevin Walsh, acting state comptroller. “The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms — and New Jersey dollars paid for it — is outrageous.”

The state has worked for the better part of a decade to embrace initiatives and reforms focused on curbing bias and excessive force in policing and restoring community trust. The training program allegedly featured speakers mocking the idea of reimagining policing and belittled internal affairs, which investigates police misconduct.

The report says 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.”

It also alleges that Street Cop Training's founder and CEO, Dennis Benigno, a former New Jersey police officer, 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.”

“What is painfully evident is that it often takes more than laws and policies to change behavior and attitudes,” Walsh said. “New Jersey needs quality police training, and to have that quality training, we need regulation over private companies operating in this sphere.”

Benigno said in a statement that Street Cop has been "subjected to a lengthy investigation" regarding the 2021 conference and that "officers who attend Street Cop’s programs routinely praise it as one of the best trainings they have ever received, providing them with skills and insights that are simply not taught in the academic setting prior to graduation."

"The NJ Office of the State Comptroller, through its Police Accountability Project, published a report criticizing Street Cop for allowing profanity and other inappropriate or embarrassing language at its 2021 Atlantic City Conference during entertainment and training sessions," the statement said. "Long before the OSC issued its report, Street Cop determined to impose stricter standards on colloquial and jocular language occasionally used by some instructors. However, there is not one single instance in the OSC Report where we have advocated any practice that is inconsistent with quality policing.  Isolated excerpts taken out of context from a week-long training are not reflections of the overall quality of the education that Street Cop provides."

What does Street Cop Training do?

The company allegedly holds 40 to 45 courses in New Jersey each year, training more than 2,000 state and local law enforcement officers. The comptroller's office investigation found that at least 46 states have spent public funds on Street Cop Training.

The comptroller's office had nine recommendations based on the investigation, including calling for cops who attended the conference to self-report so that they can be retrained and for the Legislature to establish a licensing regime for private police training in New Jersey.

It also recommended that the Police Training Commission oversee post-academy training and establish uniform standards and that law enforcement agencies should scrutinize programs that are being attended using taxpayer money as well as any presentations being made by their active-duty officers.

Walsh said at a virtual press conference that one thing troubling him was that, according to the investigation, no officers in attendance complained to their agencies. He added that watching the footage leads to questions about how taxpayer funds are used for training that “offends so many policies, encourages unconstitutional conduct and overall misses the mark of what we expect out of professional police officers.”

He also said the investigation is ongoing, that there have been lawsuits filed, and that they have “resulted in decisions that in every instance that were in favor of the jurisdiction of the Office of the State Comptroller.”

The acting comptroller also said the office focused on the law enforcement training part of the conference, though the report does acknowledge that there were presenters on hand to discuss politics, which he felt was a “troubling” use of taxpayer funds.

Walsh also said that while some police departments knew to stay away, others “didn’t get the memo, because there was no way for them to get the memo.”

“The reforms that we suggested here involving the Police Training Commission and really a statewide approach to ensuring that this sort of bad training doesn’t happen again would involve a place for a police chief who was concerned … there’d be an office who’s in charge of that,” Walsh said.

Katie Sobko covers the New Jersey Statehouse.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ comptroller: Training for hundreds of cops 'undermined' key reforms