We did speak to a rep for the Collin County Sheriff's Department for the article, who told us the training was scheduled and explained how it would be paid for. On Thursday afternoon (May 2), however, the day after the story was published, we received a message from that same rep informing us the department had cancelled the Street Cop training class it had scheduled for June "because we looked into ongoing issues and decided it would be in our best interest to cancel."
In a video posted to YouTube, Dennis Benigno stalks around a stage in a dark room with the assured confidence of a man who owns the space he’s in. Sporting a close-cropped haircut and snug polo shirt, he speaks quickly and authoritatively through one of those presenter’s microphones that hook around the ear and stretch to the mouth.
Behind him is a backdrop with a large emblem depicting an eagle holding an American flag with the “blue lives stripe” in the middle. The unseen audience laughs as he speaks. Whatever he’s selling, it’s safe to think this particular crowd is buying it.
“I’m not the guy recording you like, ‘I am not a citizen of the United States’,” the video shows him saying in a rapid-fire manner that makes it tough to decipher every word. “Shut the fuck up, right, before you get pepper sprayed and tased and your windows broken out, motherfucker.”
Benigno is the founder and CEO of Street Cop Training, a company that claims on its website to be the “fastest growing law enforcement training company in the country.” In the video referenced above, he was conducting a session reportedly attended by as many as 1,000 officers in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in October 2021. Popular Fox News host Tomi Lahren was one of the event’s featured presenters.
But in March this year, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced that all the New Jersey officers present for that conference had to be retrained because of how the subject matter was presented at the 2021 conference.
The conference video clips, posted by the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller, go on to show that Benigno’s crass speech was part of a profane pattern at the training event. Other instructors shown in the video made derogatory references to women and ethnic minorities and told more than a few dick jokes.
Street Cop Training offers classes in topics such as legal use of force, search and seizure and more. The company has a pretty crowded calendar, conducting plenty of sessions throughout the United States, including some in North Texas.
In June, Benigno is scheduled to conduct a session titled “The Street Smart Cop/Pro-Active Patrol Tactics” for the Collin County Sheriff's Office in McKinney. In July, Benigno was set to conduct a “Texas Case Law That All Cops Need to Know” class for the Lewisville Police Department, but that doesn't seem to be happening any longer. More on that in a bit.
During the same 2021 conference mentioned above, a different instructor, a former reserve deputy in Louisiana named Shawn Pardazi, appeared to brag about an instance in which he shot into a fleeing vehicle just a few months before the conference. That incident resulted in Pardazi’s firing as well as charges of illegally discharging a firearm and obstruction of justice. The case is scheduled to go before a grand jury, according to WBRZ 2 in Baton Rouge. In the meantime, he’s training other police officers across the country.
Who's Training Police?
Police officers in Texas are required to take 40 hours of training every two years to keep their peace officer license active. But that mandated training isn’t where the learning ends for many officers. Some police departments host training sessions that aren’t required by law but still seek to provide valuable insights. That’s where Street Cop Training and many other third-party police training companies come in.Johnny Nhan, a criminology and criminal justice professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, acknowledges that the language used by police training instructors can be jarring for the general public to hear. He suggested that trainers sometimes feel the need to project a certain toughness to win over the room. He’s not making excuses for the derogatory words toward women or minorities but is reinforcing that an abrasive, edgy approach isn’t uncommon in these scenarios.
“There’s a weird culture among police trainers that their résumé is how they win respect from their trainees,” Nhan said. “How many drugs have you caught? There’s a level of bravado they need to win respect. An egghead like me, if I were trying to teach patrol officers, I wouldn't win their respect probably. I haven't done what they do. I haven't been in a shootout myself. From my experience, I’ve seen retired police officers come in with their gun on their hip to teach a class on traffic safety or something like that. That gives that instructor a level of legitimacy.”
Salty language and dirty jokes in front of a bunch of cops on a work trip isn’t the main problem when it comes to Street Cop Training and the local law enforcement agencies that send their officers to be trained by the company. According to New Jersey officials, some of the curriculum at the conference was simply illegal.
“Some instructors at the conference promoted the use of unconstitutional policing tactics for motor vehicle stops,” read the intro to another video posted by the New Jersey Comptroller’s Office.
In the video, a Street Cop instructor named Tommy Brooks teaches, in no uncertain terms, that pulling people over for no reason is a good way to gain information that might be useful later.
“Have a day where you go out and go, ‘I’m just gonna pull over 20 people in a row for the sole purpose of asking a series of questions,’” Brooks says in the video.
“Police officers must act in an objectively reasonable way. It is clearly established law that officers cannot pull someone over because of a hunch, or a ‘gut feeling,’’’ reads a message on the comptroller’s video after the Brooks clip is shown. “They also can’t stop motorists when the sole reason is to ask questions. When an officer pulls over a motorist without reasonable suspicion of a crime or even a motor vehicle infraction, that is unconstitutional.”
Further examples in the comptroller’s video show other Street Cop instructors giving advice on how to toy with other aspects of a traffic stop’s constitutionality. The comptroller’s video ends with a message noting that $75,000 in public funds was used to enroll officers in the conference detailed in that video.
Street Cop Training did not reply to our requests for an interview or questions regarding the New Jersey investigation. But last December, a few days after the New Jersey Comptroller's Office released its findings, Benigno posted his own video to YouTube to address the matter. He acknowledges the inappropriateness of many of the comments made during the 2021 conference, but Benigno is careful to not fully apologize while also disparaging the comptroller’s investigation.
Kevin D. Walsh is the acting state comptroller of New Jersey. His office issued a scathing report about training provided by Street Cop.
NJ.gov
Benigno did not rebut any of the comptroller’s individual claims of unconstitutional instruction directly. Instead, he generically said that “it is simply not true” that his instructors teach unconstitutional policing tactics.
“No video, slide or reference has been presented, nor exists, to illustrate the suggestion or the instruction of any violation of a recognized constitutional amendment. That’s why they said it's ‘likely’” he added, using air quotes.
Nhan said officers who are unable to pull over a vehicle for even the slightest infraction when they’re suspicious of something more serious probably aren’t trying very hard, given that an officer can pull a motorist over for minor offenses including a license plate light not being bright enough, or a driver not flipping their turn signal on far enough in advance of a right turn. But he noted that doesn’t excuse the teaching of blatantly pulling someone over for no reason at all, and that’s something many police departments will not abide by.
“Police departments today, especially in larger cities, are very sensitive to civil rights violations,” Nhan said. “The culture has changed, especially with management, and the liability has really increased in the past decade. Stuff like this [teaching unconstitutional tactics] would scare most large departments. In Fort Worth, for example, everything is on camera these days. If you’re using rude language with someone you’ve pulled over, that could be a violation of the department’s general orders and that could lead to that officer getting investigated and being disciplined in some way.”
A quick look at Street Cop’s in-person training class calendar indicates that it is mainly suburban and small-town departments booking their sessions. The Dallas Police Department says it has never hosted a Street Cop Training session for its officers. Texas City, near Houston, is the only Lone Star State location for a Street Cop session this year aside from the two North Texas classes. In December, three Houston-area departments — the Brazoria County Sheriff’s Office and the Katy and Jersey Village police departments — canceled their 2024 Street Cop sessions because of the findings of the New Jersey report.
Those Who Can't, Teach
Whether or not Street Cop taught unconstitutional policing methods, the question of whether Benigno of all people should be instructing other officers has drawn more attention. In addition to Pardazi’s questionable past, Benigno, Street Cop’s founder, himself has a checkered history in the area he now serves as an authority.According to a recent CBS New York investigation, Benigno was disciplined three times in a five-year span as a member of the Woodbridge Township Police Department in New Jersey. He retired after 10 years on the force in 2015 shortly after a lawsuit was filed accusing “Benigno and other officers of excessive force, racial bias and false arrests during an incident at a local mall.” The suit was settled by the department for $50,000, although Benigno did not admit to any wrongdoing.
A spokesperson for the Collin County Sheriff's Department told the Observer that the class scheduled for June in McKinney will be the first time it has hosted a Street Cop class and that the department was made aware of the problems the company is facing only after we reached out to them.
“Our training section is currently carefully reviewing these concerns to ensure that our training sessions uphold the professionalism and standards expected of our office,” the Collin County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson said. As of April 30, Street Cop’s website still lists the Collin County session on its calendar of classes.
“There’s a weird culture among police trainers that their résumé is how they win respect from their trainees.” – Johnny Nhan, TCU criminology professor
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A recent post on the Lewisville subreddit page called attention to Lewisville’s police hosting a Street Cop class. The poster wrote, “Please tell me my tax dollars aren't being used for this!”
The Lewisville Police Department did not reply to multiple phone calls and emails regarding its upcoming Street Cop Training class in July before this article was originally published, but did reach out to the Observer with information hours after the story appeared online and in print.
Matt Martucci, Lewisville's public information coordinator, told the Observer that although the listing for the event is still live on Street Cop's website, the city cancelled the training class months ago, after the reports from New Jersey came out. The spokesman also said that the city had not spent any money to bring Street Cop to town, nor would it have, although the company's website lists a registration fee for participation.
In Collin County, even though department funds weren’t required to bring the Street Cop class to its department, there is a chance public money could be used toward the effort.
“Since we are hosting the training, they provide a certain number of compensated seats for a certain number of paid seats,” the spokesperson said. “However, if there are several members of our office who wish to attend the course, but we are below the minimum number of participants required for a compensated spot, we would have to pay the same fee per deputy as everyone else.”
While Street Cop continues to have at least some presence in Texas, you won’t likely see the same in a growing number of other states. Citing the New Jersey comptroller’s investigation and report as a cause for dwindling business, Street Cop has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And the news only gets worse for the company from there, according to a Feb. 23 NJ.com report.
“Now, several states have prohibited officers from attending Street Cop trainings, including Minnesota, Missouri, Maryland, Illinois, California, Oregon, Nevada, Michigan and New Jersey, according to court filings,” the report stated.
Nhan said these optional training sessions present a sort of “self-selection effect” when it comes to which courses certain types of police officers choose to attend, which is why it's important to have an instructor and training company that’s teaching things the right way to come to your station.
“I've been trained by the type of cops who are like, ‘Hey, you haven't done what I’ve done, you haven't seen what I’ve seen,’” Nhan said. “And for these types of optional training sessions, you’re going to attract that certain type of officer who connects with that type of teaching. Me? I’m not interested in a Street Cop type of class, but I’d go to a class on community policing or de-escalation. But that’s not what the cops who go to the Street Cop training sessions are looking for most likely.”
