5 Brick Officers Attended Controversial Police Training: Town Official

BRICK, NJ — Five Brick Township police officers were among 240 New Jersey law enforcement officers who took part in a 2021 training conference blasted in a report released by the Office of the State Comptroller, the township has confirmed.

The Brick Township Police Department was among 54 agencies that sent police to the 2021 Street Cop Training conference in Atlantic City, which allegedly taught unconstitutional policing tactics, glorified violence and insulted women and people of color, according to the comptroller's report.

Police Chief David Forrester provided the township's response to acting state comptroller Kevin D. Walsh about the training program and how it was paid for in response to a Patch request for comment.

The conference fees, totaling $2,495 for the officers for five days, Oct. 4-8, 2021, were paid using funds from the police department's asset forfeiture fund, according to a letter from Brick Township Business Administrator Joanne Bergin to Walsh dated Nov. 15, 2023.

James Riccio, then chief of police in Brick, received permission from Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley D. Billhimer to use the funds for the conference in a Feb. 23, 2021, letter from Billhimer to Riccio that was included in Brick's response to Walsh.

Bergin said the use of the forfeiture funds also was approved by the Prosecutors' Bureau Forfeiture Program, which is part of the state Division of Law and Public Safety's Division of Criminal Justice Operations.

"Our officers did not find the training worthwhile and, as a result we have not sent our officers to further training offered by NJ Criminal Interdiction," she wrote to Walsh.

Forrester did not comment further on the matter.

Nearly 1,000 police officers from across the country attended the conference, and the majority of the officers had their attendance paid for by their public employers, spending at least $75,000.

Street Cop Training, a private company with a corporate headquarters in East Windsor, has issued an apology for any “inappropriate or offensive language” used at the workshops. The company says the comptroller’s office is wrong about several of its claims, including the assertion that the training may have been “unconstitutional.”

“While we were painted as the bad guys, we are in fact the good guys, creating better, more well-trained police officers for a country that expects the best from their men and women in blue — and everybody in this profession knows that,” Street Cop Training founder Dennis Benigno insisted.

The company annually conducts 40 to 45 courses in New Jersey, training more than 2,000 New Jersey state and local law enforcement officers every year.

Walsh says the videos that have emerged from the 2021 training show more regulation is needed when it comes to police training conducted by private companies.

“The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms — and New Jersey dollars paid for it — is outrageous,” Walsh said.

Read the full report here. See a list of the New Jersey police agencies named in the report here.

Read more: 240 Cops In NJ Completed Controversial Training With Tax Dollars: OSC

With reporting by Eric Kiefer, Patch Staff