Hundreds of New Jersey officers retrained after attending controversial Street Cop conference
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TRENTON, N.J. -- More than 200 New Jersey police officers went through three hours of retraining in Trenton on Thursday after they attended a controversial conference in Atlantic City.
Attorney General Matt Platkin said retraining was needed because the 2021 Street Cop Training conference taught inaccurate and offensive lessons.
The state comptroller said Street Cop taught unconstitutional policing, so Thursday's session focused on constitutional rights and discrimination laws.
A CBS New York investigation revealed for the first time the police disciplinary records of Street Cop's founder, Dennis Benigno.
Those records include a suspension for allegedly using a racial slur, along with two letters of reprimand from the Woodbridge Police Department.
Platkin told us he anticipates the state will, at some point, create new rules for police training companies. His office would not allow us into Thursday's training session.
In a statement to CBS New York, Platkin said:
Today at the Trenton War Memorial, I joined approximately 225 New Jersey police officers who had attended a 2021 conference in Atlantic City, to rebut the inappropriate, inaccurate, and offensive lessons taught at that conference. The guidance promoted during that event was anathema to the values and the conduct that we expect of our law enforcement officers.
Today my office held a mandatory re-training to correct those teachings. In addition to providing legal training on the Fourth Amendment and on the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination, the attendees heard from three members of the Jersey Four — Rayshawn Brown, Jermaine Grant, and Danny Reyes — who recalled how, in 1998, they were traveling on the New Jersey Turnpike on their way to a college in North Carolina, hoping to pursue their dreams of playing college basketball, when they were pulled over without cause by two New Jersey state troopers. During the stop, the vehicle rolled back slightly and the troopers opened fire, wounding three of the men. The incident revealed how pervasive racial profiling was in New Jersey and across the country, and it changed policing. Within two years New Jersey entered into a consent agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to adopt safeguards to end racial profiling. This office also issued an Attorney General Directive prohibiting racially influenced policing; and we have and will continue to train every police officer in the state on constitutional, race-neutral policing. I am deeply grateful to these men for their willingness to share their experience, and am in awe of their capacity to forgive.
We need our police officers to treat the public with dignity, empathy, and respect. We need to remember who we are and the oath we took to protect those we serve.
We are members of the greater New Jersey community, made up of more than 9 million incredibly diverse people who rely on law enforcement to protect them.
We will not stand idly by and let a completely misguided training tarnish the reputation of law enforcement in New Jersey, and that is why it was so important to provide the re-training we did today. Our residents have the right to expect that New Jersey law enforcement officers will do their jobs impartially and professionally and keep them safe.
CBS New York also learned Street Cop has filed for bankruptcy.
"We aren't going anywhere and will continue to deliver what our community expects from us," the company said on social media.
Street Cop has not responded to our interview requests.