To protect and serve

Prior to his firm’s October 2021 conference in Atlantic City, Street Cop Training founder Dennis Benigno plugged the event in a YouTube video.

Benigno and a guest briefly discussed the need for police officers to do both, protect and serve. With a bit of law enforcement machismo, the guest gently dissed those who might only be willing to serve.

“I’m going to go walk around the corner school today, which is great. That’s a part of police work,” the guest said of a hypothetical colleague. “I understand that. It’s important. But if that’s all they’re capable of?”

“The protectors, that’s us,” the guest continued. “Those are the guys who go out there, when there’s a car chase. Like I tell people, ‘Yeah we’re chasing.’ Yeah, they get all pissed off at me.”

“Yeah, you come through my town – you mess around – yep we’re going, we’re going,” the guest concluded.

That guest was current Warren Township Police Department Lt. Robert Ferreiro. As his comments concluded in the video, a graphic hit the screen with the dates of the coming Street Cop conference and how to register.

Ferreiro has drawn questions for his role as one of Street Cop’s instructors at what proved to be a controversial 2021 conference. A State Comptroller Office’s report, released last month, was critical of the tactics imparted at the event, alleging some were unconstitutional, discriminatory and misogynistic; and could spur the need for taxpayer-funded retraining of attending police.

It’s not hard to find Ferreiro on the internet linked to Street Cop Training in videos and other promotional material. For years, his role in the apparent side gig went unquestioned – at least not publicly.

Even when the comptroller and Street Cop Training clashed about the report roughly a year before its release, there was no hint of local heat for Ferreiro. Street Cop Training has offered private law enforcement training since Benigno founded it in 2012.

Based on his internet presence, it appears Ferreiro was affiliated with Street Cop for several years. It is unclear exactly when he began. He is not currently pictured in the instructor section on the firm’s website. Ferreiro is, however, mentioned as a presenter in the promo graphic for a 2024 Street Cop Training conference that convenes this spring in Florida.

Selected as Warren Township’s next police chief in October, Ferreiro’s swearing-in has been deferred. Meanwhile, an internal affairs investigation is underway and the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office has assumed oversight of the WTPD.

Bills uncovered recently through an anonymous Warren Township OPRA request and posted on the opramachine.com website, show that Street Cop apparently used county police facilities for at least three of its seminars.

Those bills – which outline the attendance of eight WTPD officers at various Street Cop seminars – suggest that training courses were held in May 2018 at the Morris County Police Academy and in November 2018 at the Somerset County Police Academy.

A Warren officer also enrolled in a March 2020 Street Cop course noted as being at the Morris County academy. But the invoice indicated that course was instead given as a webinar, possibly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another internet posting indicates that Ferreiro once instructed a class at a municipal police training facility in Middlesex County. It is unclear when Street Cop Training crossed the line from being able to use taxpayer-funded facilities to being called out in a state report.

Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Assistant Chief Frank Roman did not respond to an email from Inside – Middlesex on Friday, Jan. 12 asking who authorized Street Cop’s use of Somerset’s police academy.

It’s not hard to find Ferreiro on the internet, in outdated promo videos, pitching the value of Street Cop Training, including a course he instructed titled “Identifying Criminal Vehicles and Occupants.”

In November 2019, Ferreiro led his “Identifying Vehicles” course at the East Brunswick Police Training Facility and again at Don Bosco High School in Ramsey in December 2022, according to internet listings.

He appeared on the Street Cop Training podcast in November 2021, discussing the topic “Hitting Large Loads.” The material dealt with methods for recognizing sizable vehicle transports of illegal drugs.

Ferreiro was shown in a Facebook video in April 2023 reviewing “Top 10 Signs of Illegal Activity on the Roadways.” He told class participants, “We’re learning how to read vehicles based on probability versus possibility.”

During presentations, Ferreiro comes off as a type-of law enforcement motivational speaker. He discusses mindset, as much as tactics. In one 2021 video, he spoke of the need for police officers to have confidence in their ability to do their job.

“Believing in yourself is the greatest trait you can have as a police officer,” Ferreiro said.

Reminder

Subscribe to Inside – Middlesex. Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. It is absolutely free.