Attorneys expect criminal cases could topple across New Jersey in the wake of a watchdog’s scorching report last week that accused instructors for New Jersey’s busiest police training firm of teaching unconstitutional and discriminatory policing tactics.
One already has.
Bergen County prosecutors last Thursday dropped charges in a drug case involving Brad Gilmore, a Street Cop trainer whose lectures acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh highlighted as problematic in his report. Gilmore, a detective in the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, was a Ridgefield Park police officer in 2017 when he stopped a car and found two kilograms of heroin in a hidden compartment. The New York Times was first to report the dropped charges.
Attorney Brian Neary represented the driver Gilmore arrested.
“When that report hit and we saw that he was actually quoted in the report … he was one of the poster boys. I walked into court and showed the report to the prosecutor. She just shook her head and said, ‘You don’t even have to say a word, I’m moving to dismiss the case,’” Neary said.
Neary said more and more cases likely will get dropped as prosecutors find out that police officers in their cases attended the October 2021 conference in Atlantic City central to Walsh’s investigation. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, too, expects defense attorneys statewide will ask if officers involved in defendants’ cases attended any Street Cop trainings since the company’s 2012 founding, not just those who went to the Atlantic City confab.
Those officers “learned how to violate the Constitution and New Jersey’s policing laws and directives,” said Jeanne LoCicero, the ACLU-NJ’s legal director. “This calls into question whether officers who attended those trainings have been respecting people’s rights or evading their constitutional obligations.”
Walsh and his investigators, who began probing Street Cop in May 2022, found that instructors glorified violence, encouraged insubordination, promoted unconstitutional policing tactics, and disparaged women, people of color, and other marginalized groups during the weeklong conference in 2021. About 1,000 officers, including 240 from New Jersey, attended.
In the report, Walsh recommended the Attorney General’s Office consider issuing a directive or guidance to law enforcement agencies addressing whether officers’ attendance or involvement in Street Cop’s conference should be disclosed to comply with criminal discovery obligations.
Attorney Jonathan F. Cohen, who represents Street Cop founder Dennis Benigno, said that he didn’t know why prosecutors dropped charges against the driver Gilmore arrested, “and we will not speculate.”
“We strongly disagree with the characterizations of the Comptroller’s lopsided report and look forward to telling our side of the story,” Cohen said.
After the report was released, the company issued a statement saying it has held hundreds of trainings for tens of thousands of officers nationally.
“The 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 statement says. “That is why so many training attendees encourage other law enforcement personnel to attend future sessions and thereby better hone their law enforcement skills.”
Thumbs down
But last Friday, representatives from several police departments whose officers attended the 2021 shared different sentiments.
“The teachings at the conference were shameful and indefensible,” Cherry Hill Police Chief Robert Kempf told the New Jersey Monitor. “The Cherry Hill Police Department holds its officers to the highest standards of conduct and is committed to providing the highest level of police services to our community in a manner that is moral and ethical and respects civil rights and human dignity.”
One Cherry Hill officer attended the conference and now “will receive remedial training,” Kempf added.
Brick Township sent five officers from its street crime unit to the 2021 conference at a cost of $2,495, which was paid from forfeiture funds, as approved by the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
“Our officers did not find the training worthwhile, and as a result, we have not sent any attendees to any further training offered by NJ Criminal Interdiction,” the township’s business administrator Joanne Bergin wrote in a Nov. 15 letter to Walsh. NJ Criminal Interdiction is the company that offers the Street Cop training.
And two New Jersey police departments whose officers presented at the 2021 conference — Robbinsville and Warren Township — told the New Jersey Monitor they have launched internal affairs investigations as a result of Walsh’s report.
Warren Township Lt. Rob Ferreiro taught strategies to detain motorists longer than constitutionally allowed, made lewd comments about women, and talked about giving officers and their families favorable treatment, according to the report.
Warren Township Police Chief William Keane said he was aware of Walsh’s findings and his department has launched an internal affairs probe but declined to comment further.
Robbinsville Sgt. Scott Kivet illustrated the car stop of a Black motorist with a picture of a monkey, made lewd and derogatory comments about women, and encouraged attendees to focus on finding drugs in cars rather than writing traffic tickets, according to Walsh’s report.
Robbinsville Police Chief Michael Polaski said his office is “very concerned” with the information in the comptroller’s report.
Polaski said Kivet “is no longer associated with Street Cop.” Street Cop’s website says he is, although a daylong training Kivet was scheduled to give Dec. 28 in Ramsey on “Drug Identification, Paraphernalia, and the Motor Vehicle Stop” is canceled, the website shows.
Gilmore, too, still works for Street Cop. He’ll be a presenter at Street Cop’s spring 2024 conference in Orlando, where a ticket costs $699, on “deceptive behavior and hidden compartments.”
LoCicero found officers’ continued involvement with Street Cop concerning.
“The fact that some police officers are still involved in Street Cop training points to the huge gap in oversight over police training, and it seems to me that New Jersey residents and the public at large should know what the contents of those trainings are,” she said.
But at least one 2021 Street Cop lecturer “has severed all ties” with the company.
Shane Morgan is a lieutenant in the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office who was asked to present at the 2021 conference as a last-minute substitute for a presenter who fell ill, office spokeswoman Donna Weaver said.
In that training on “Flipping Informants,” he used an image “demeaning to transgender and non-binary people” and called his jurisdiction “the hood and the woods,” according to Walsh’s report.
“He is deeply disturbed by the fact that his comments and actions have offended or demeaned anyone. This clearly was not his intention,” Weaver said. “Unfortunately, his limited actions have been mischaracterized and grouped together with the outrageous and offensive actions of Street Cop as a whole.”
Costly consequences
Walsh warned in his report that the tactics taught at the 2021 conference could lead to liability for constitutional violations.
For at least one instructor singled out in Walsh’s report, it did.
Shawn Pardazi lost his Louisiana police job and was arrested after he fired into the back of a car and live-streamed the incident on Facebook last year. At the 2021 conference, Pardazi described how he would pursue a subject: “Run from me, somewhere along the chase becomes pow-pow-pow-pow-pow-pow! Neither confirm or deny there are some videos out there with me doing just that.”
Post-academy police training is unregulated in New Jersey, prompting Walsh to recommend lawmakers and the state Attorney General’s Office act to set standards and mandate oversight.
LoCicero echoed that call, saying other professions have ongoing training requirements subject to oversight and police should too, so that officers don’t learn “from these kinds of deeply troubling programs that show such disrespect for communities and the law.”
“Police officers wield enormous power to detain people, search people, arrest people, and use force,” LoCicero said. “And with New Jersey’s long history of racialized policing, we know that these practices that were espoused during the trainings are going to have a big impact on communities of color, on women, and on LGBTQ communities that are going to bear the brunt of the abuses that these officers learned from Street Cop.”
Sen. Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), who sits on the Senate’s law and public safety committee, said he plans to “definitely take a look at it” but wasn’t sure whether legislation or action overseen by the Attorney General’s Office would be the best approach.
Attorney General Matt Platkin said last Wednesday he had directed the Police Training Commission, even before Walsh’s report was released, to consider statewide guidelines for acceptable police training provided by outside vendors.
“For a long time, we’ve kind of erred on the side of militaristic training for police when 95% of the time, they’re interacting with just any one of us who made a simple mistake. So we’ll take a look,” O’Scanlon said. “We’re going to bring our cops together with people concerned about policing and policing reform and figure out how to make sure that our intentions are followed.”
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