How many cops from Rhode Island went to controversial New Jersey seminar? ACLU wants to know. – Rhode Island Current

The ACLU of Rhode Island Monday announced it filed open records requests with every police department across the state to find out if any of its officers attended a 2021 training seminar in New Jersey that encouraged insubordination and unconstitutional tactics.

Last December, the New Jersey Comptroller’s Office released a report indicating some Rhode Island police officers participated in the privately-run six-day seminar operated by Street Cop in Atlantic City. It notes that speakers disparaged marginalized groups of people and often made lewd gestures related to genitalia. 

Instructors reportedly used words such as “retard” and “bitch” in describing people, according to the report. One showed an offensive meme featuring a monkey in a shirt after describing a motor vehicle stop of a “75 year old Black man coming out of Trenton.”

Attendees were also provided with a “Reasonable Suspicion Factors Checklist,” which warned officers that a person smoking during a traffic stop suggests criminal activity. Stretching was also seen as something a criminal would do when stopped, according to the New Jersey report.

Public agencies in Rhode Island also provided direct payment to Street Cop between 2020 and 2023, but the report did not say which departments contributed or how much. New Jersey Monitor reported that agencies in its state paid at least $75,000 in taxpayer funds to cover conference costs.

In a statement sent to New Jersey Monitor last December, Street Cop founder Dennis Benigno said his firm planned to “impose stricter standards on colloquial and jocular language occasionally used by some instructors” before the state comptroller’s office issued its report. Video from the conference shows Benigno himself used obscenity-laced language.

Street Cop filed for bankruptcy in late January. 

“The New Jersey report is eye-opening and extraordinarily disturbing. Rhode Islanders deserve to know which police departments sent officers, however unwittingly, to learn how to engage in unconstitutional traffic stops and searches, and whether steps will be taken to retrain them,” ACLU of Rhode Island Executive Director Steven Brown said in a statement.

The ACLU on Feb. 22 asked the Rhode Island Police Officers Commission on Standards and Training (POST) to investigate and disclose which police departments sent officers to the seminar. 

Commission Chairman Michael Winquist, who is also chief of police for the city of Cranston, responded via letter the next day saying “the actions you are requesting are outside the POST’s scope of authority.”

“Undoubtedly, all POST members would never condone any training that promotes unconstitutional or discriminatory policing practices at the Rhode Island Police Municipal Training Academy, for probationary police officers, or otherwise,” Winquist wrote.

Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association Executive Director Sidney Wordell told Rhode Island Current the ACLU’s letter was forwarded to local departments.

“We will certainly as an association make sure everyone follows up,” he said. “But at the end of the day, department policy will dictate how they respond.”