Bad Training — Still Available

Missouri and Kansas police paid for aggressive, discredited officer training tactics

Midwest Newsroom and KCUR began investigating, police departments in both states have stopped using the private company to instruct officers.

[Ed. Note: As the old saying goes, “We need this like another hole in our head!” I confronted these paid training programs like ‘Street Cop,’ during my career. Touted as “in-service training.” I had to shut them down by not permitting my officers to claim tuition reimbursement. No doubt some officers continued to go on their own time. I checked out one of the training sessions myself and said “enough!” What these kind of trainings did was reinforce disrespectful, and often illegal, behavior, “warrior-cop” mentality — ‘us versus them’, and shore up all that is wrong with policing in America today. This is not a new problem. It’s been going on at least since the 1980s. In fact, v‘Street Cop’ claims to have trained over 30,000 police officers! Here’s a deep dive into how it works — excerpts from an investigative report by KCUR in Kansas City led by Sam Zeff(September 30, 2024). Or go straightaway to the full, but lengthy, article HERE.]

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“As he paced the stage at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City, Shawn Pardazi — a Louisiana deputy sheriff with a troubled career — was telling 990 police officers from almost every state, including Kansas, how to extract information during traffic stops.

“’There’s like a little bit of a finesse,’ he instructed the assembled cops. ‘You gotta be a f—ing gigolo.’

“The October 2021 conference was organized by a company then based in New Jersey called Street Cop Training. During the six-day event, Pardazi’s gigolo comment, recorded by Street Cop during the conference, was just one of “over 100 discriminatory or harassing comments” made by Street Cop instructors, according to a scathing 47-page report by the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller.

 “Shawn Pardazi, a Louisiana deputy sheriff, at the Street Cop Training session at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City. In May 2024, a grand jury indicted Pardazi for shooting at the back of a car after a traffic stop. He livestreamed the incident on social media.

“In fact, the report says, investigators “found that a number of the tactics taught at the conference were both unjustifiably harassing and unconstitutional under both New Jersey and federal law…

“Since that Atlantic City conference, Street Cop has taught dozens of continuing education classes in Missouri and Kansas. The latest in the region was on Aug. 6 in Kingman, Kansas, about 20 miles west of Wichita. The class was called Interdiction Academy and promised to teach police ‘highly advanced roadside interviewing skills’ to interdict drugs and guns being transported by ‘deceptive individuals,’ according to the Street Cop website…

“New Jersey state investigators were particularly harsh on Street Cop’s ‘interdiction’ tactics in their report, released in December 2023.

“In a nine-month investigation, KCUR and the Midwest Newsroom made open records requests to every law enforcement agency in Jackson County, Missouri, and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, plus the Kansas and Missouri highway patrols.

“We asked for a list of all officers who took Street Cop training between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 1, 2023, and how much it cost. A handful of small departments did not fulfill the request. After the New Jersey state report landed in December 2023 — and since KCUR and the Midwest Newsroom began this investigation — law enforcement agencies in Kansas and Missouri have abandoned Street Cop classes…

“’There is no future in any of our officers attending Street Cop Training sessions in the future,’ said Dale Finger, who retired as chief from the Leawood Police Department in May. Finger said that as soon as he read the New Jersey report, he banned any more Street Cop training.

“’There were numerous, numerous concerns brought up by the investigation, particularly about disparaging comments about individuals,’ he said.

“Finger stressed that he had no complaints from, or about, Leawood officers who took Street Cop training. The New Jersey investigation showed that Street Cop promotes a less enlightened kind of policing. ‘(Policing is) in a stage of our profession where we promote and demand compassion and respect for others,’ Finger said…

“Street Cop founder Dennis Benigno would not agree to an interview ‘with anti-police ‘reporters,’’ he wrote in an email to KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom… Benigno responded, ‘Okay so you’re anti-cop. I get it. Take care bro, figure it out yourself.’

“Benigno has a troubled past as a cop, as do other Street Cop instructors. In 2015, he and four other police officers from the Woodbridge Township Police Department in New Jersey were sued, accused of excessive force, racial bias and false arrest, according to WCBS in New York. That lawsuit was settled. Benigno retired from the department within weeks of the lawsuit being filed…”

“The New Jersey investigation uncovered a string of disturbing comments by instructors at the Atlantic City conference. Many were about police work. Some were about other things…

“’I don’t want a hero’s exit,’ Benigno said at the conference. ‘I want to f—ing die at like 91 with hookers and cocaine around me…’

“’Ask her or she, she, him, whatever the f— you want to call people now.’ — Tom Rizzo, Howell, New Jersey Police Dept. during Street Cop Training session…

“After details of the company’s training practices became public, it fell on hard times. It moved to Florida and registered as a business on Jan. 3, 2024, according to secretary of state’s office records. By the end of the month, it declared bankruptcy after police departments around the country — like Leawood’s — stopped using Street Cop…

“Benigno has submitted a reorganization plan to the bankruptcy judge in Florida. He also recently opened what he calls Street Cop University, which offers online training…”

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More on the effects of poor training. This time from a place that should model high quality training — The FBI Academy. The FBI recently paid $22.6 million to 34 women agents. The women “sued the F.B.I., accusing the bureau of unfairly dismissing them from its agent training program because of their gender, according to court documents. As part of the proposed settlement, the women can reapply to become agents and two outside experts will review the training program to make sure the evaluation process is fair” (NYT, September 30, 2024).

Here’s the full report. This should not be happening today.

And so it goes…