Cop training fallout

The consequences of having a lead officer named in a State Comptroller Office’s investigation report are apparently continuing for the Warren Township Police Department.

The Warren Township Committee’s liaison to the police force confirmed on Tuesday, Dec. 26 that the department was placed under the oversight of the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office last week.

“I understand that the direction to oversee the department came from the Attorney General,” Township Committeeman Victor Sordillo said in an email. “They will stay until the investigation into the Atlantic City ‘Street Cop’ training is completed.” 

Sordillo said the prosecutor’s oversight was spurred by the Township Committee’s October selection of Lt. Robert Ferreiro as Warren’s next police chief. Ferreiro was an instructor at the six-day 2021 Atlantic City seminar held by the private firm Street Cop Training, that has come under scrutiny by the state comptroller.

“We will hold off with the appointment until the investigation is finished,” added Sordillo, who will serve as Warren’s mayor in 2024.

The Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office did not reply to an email on Dec. 26 asking about its oversight of the WTPD. 

Inside – Middlesex has filed an Open Public Records Act request in Warren Township seeking any electronic or written communications received by the municipality or its police department from the county prosecutor’s office since Dec. 1.

Oversight by the prosecutor’s office is the latest complication for the Warren Township Police Department in the wake of the report released by the comptroller’s office on Dec. 6. That report was the result of the investigation into Street Cop Training’s Atlantic City seminar.

Roughly 1,000 police officers attended from across the nation, including about 250 from the Garden State. Ferreiro was one of multiple seminar instructors whose activities were called into question in the comptroller’s findings.

The comptroller criticized the Street Cop seminar for allegedly teaching unconstitutional and discriminatory law enforcement tactics. It also alleged misogynistic content in some instruction.

The comptroller’s report alleges that Ferreiro used misogynistic language while instructing about motor vehicle stops and imparted an improper strategy to prolong roadside encounters with motorists.

The comptroller concluded that the tactics taught at the Street Cop seminar could force taxpayer-funded retraining of attendees and affect criminal cases in which they are involved. Some police departments have already released statements saying they intend to retrain officers. The day after the report’s Dec. 6 release, drug charges brought forward in Bergen County were dropped by prosecutors against one defendant. The officer involved had attended the controversial 2021 Street Cop seminar.

Ferreiro worked the seminar on his own time, Sordillo said earlier this month. The municipality did not pay for Ferreiro or any other officers to attend the seminar, Sordillo added, “to the best of my knowledge.”

In October, Ferreiro was selected from among four senior officer candidates to be Warren Township’s next police chief, succeeding William Keane who is retiring at year’s end. Ferreiro’s swearing in had been scheduled for New Year’s Eve. But the release of the comptroller’s report changed that timetable.

At the Warren Township Committee’s Dec. 14 meeting, members announced that Ferreiro’s swearing in was being postponed until February at his request, due to an internal affairs investigation involving the county prosecutor’s office. That meeting’s agenda had originally included a resolution calling for a five-year contract for Ferreiro, but it was not acted upon.

Supporters of the intended chief-to-be filled the committee’s meeting room. Committee members stressed that Ferreiro’s oath-taking was being deferred, not rescinded.

Committee members told the audience they had unsuccessfully attempted to convince Ferreiro to proceed with the swearing in as planned on Dec. 31.

“I fought him,” Sordillo told Ferreiro’s supporters at the Dec. 14 session. “I did not want him to delay. I wanted him Jan. 1.”

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