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. 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. Dennis Benigno, the founder of Street Cop Training, which led the seminar and describes itself as the fastest-growing U.S. private police training company, told 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 U.S. listened to Benigno and other instructors during the six-day, $499 seminar in October 2021, according to an investigation and video footage released Wednesday by Kevin Walsh, New Jersey’s acting comptroller. Tax dollars paid much of the bill, reports the New York Times.
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 private training companies. 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 governor, was politically motivated as it filed state and federal court challenges to try blocking release of financial documents and videos from the seminar in Atlantic City. Instructors made more than 100 discriminatory or harassing comments, according to videos Walsh obtained. Trainers 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, 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.
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