Street Cop founder Dennis Benigno has defended his company’s police trainings and said the comptroller focused on “isolated excerpts taken out of context.” (Screengrab of training courtesy of New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller)
New Jersey law enforcement agencies paid a controversial private police-training firm more than $1 million for training that promoted discriminatory and unconstitutional tactics, a state watchdog found in a new report.
Even after the state attorney general banned officers from State Cop’s courses and conferences, at least 20 officers ignored that 2023 order and signed up for the company’s 2024 annual conference in Florida, acting State Comptroller Kevin D. Walsh said in a report released Thursday.
Company instructors even offered to help officers hide their Street Cop involvement, and one — an active state trooper — asked to continue selling his courses through Street Cop without it being publicly advertised so that he could “avoid any scrutiny from NJ,” investigators found.
Altogether, more than 2,700 public entities from every state but Hawaii — including at least 377 New Jersey agencies — spent public funds between January 2019 and March 2023 on Street Cop training where instructors made lewd and harassing remarks, glorified violence, encouraged insubordination, and otherwise taught improper or dangerous policing strategies, the report says.
The report comes a year after Walsh first sounded the alarm on problematic content at Street Cop’s 2021 annual conference in Atlantic City, which drew nearly 1,000 attendees.
The new findings show an urgent need for state policymakers to act to more tightly regulate post-academy police training, Walsh said.
“Our original report exposed the dangerous gap in regulation and oversight of private, post-academy police training in New Jersey. This supplemental report shows the problem is bigger than we previously reported, and it has not gone away,” Walsh said in a statement. “When there are hundreds of law enforcement agencies spending public funds on clearly subpar training, and some are even repeat customers, the risks to public safety are high.”
After Walsh’s first report, Attorney General Matt Platkin ordered all New Jersey officers who attended Street Cop’s 2021 conference to be retrained and prohibited the state Department of Law and Public Safety from covering the cost of Street Cop training.
Walsh said on Thursday that he shared the names of officers found to be involved with Street Cop beyond that 2021 conference to Platkin’s office for further investigation or action.
Platkin said his office’s civil rights division will consider the latest findings, and officers face additional retraining.
“It is critical that the training our law enforcement officers receive corresponds to the directives, policies and best practices that have been implemented,” Platkin said in a statement.
Street Cop was founded in 2012 by a former Woodbridge police officer, Dennis Benigno, who last year laid partial blame on Walsh’s investigation when his company declared bankruptcy.
Benigno’s attorney, Jonathan Cohen, told the New Jersey Monitor Thursday that the 20-plus officers who signed up for Street Cop’s 2024 conference did not go. He criticized Walsh for being “fixated” on Street Cop and “more concerned about obtaining headlines than affecting positive change.”
He also said “there’s no indication” Walsh and his investigators have scrutinized about 100 other police-training firms that do business in New Jersey. A Walsh spokeswoman said the office doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations.
“The state comptroller is issuing a report about a company that hasn’t done business effectively in New Jersey for the entire past year. I think Street Cop Training has real concerns, as should all taxpayers in the state of New Jersey, why the agency is rehashing information about this company and spending money going to 49 states that don’t include New Jersey to find out about whether they’re using Street Cop training,” Cohen said.
Walsh said his Street Cop probe proves broad deficiencies with the state’s oversight of private police training in New Jersey. The state now relies on officers to report when such training is improper, a strategy that’s “ineffective,” given the latest findings, he said.
“This further underscores that there is a need for a dedicated entity to oversee post-academy training, including establishing uniform standards and reviewing and approving training courses provided by private companies, instructors, and vendors who receive public funds in New Jersey,” the report notes.
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