West Orange Will Retrain Cops After Training Fiasco In South Jersey

WEST ORANGE, NJ — The West Orange Police Department will be retraining all of its officers as a precautionary measure in the wake of reports about a controversial police training seminar that took place in South Jersey, authorities said Tuesday.

Last week, the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller released a scathing report that took a deep dive into a six-day training conference offered in Atlantic City in October 2021.

During the private training conference, New Jersey-based Street Cop allegedly taught unconstitutional policing tactics, glorified violence, denigrated women and minorities and “likely violated a myriad of state laws and policies,” the report claims.

Watch videos from the conference here (WARNING: Videos contain explicit and offensive language).

Nearly 1,000 police officers attended the conference, including 240 from New Jersey. Most of them used taxpayer funds to pay for their attendance fees, and none of the attending officers complained about the training, the comptroller’s investigation found.

There is virtually no regulation involved when it comes to private, post-academy police training, the comptroller’s office said. As a result, state officials are calling for more authority over companies that make money by training police officers.

“New Jersey needs quality police training, and to have that quality training, we need regulation over private companies operating in this sphere,” Acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh said.

WEST ORANGE POLICE TRAINING

In a statement on Tuesday, West Orange Police Chief James Abbott said the report did not identify West Orange as one of the participants in the Atlantic City training conference.

However, the department will be taking a big precautionary step in response, he added: “Ensuring all personnel at all ranks are properly retrained in 2024.”

Abbott said West Orange’s training will include workshops on sensitivity, hostile work environments, sexual harassment, de-escalation, autism awareness, LGBTQ+ and defensive tactics, among other relevant topics.

“We will continue our decades long tradition of vetting all training courses prior to assigning staff, this is of paramount importance given the utilization of public funds and the optics of how we train our people,” the chief continued.

“All staff need to thoroughly understand that the township will not indemnify employees for utilizing any methods learned while attending any type of training not specifically approved in writing by the township,” Abbott emphasized.

Abbott pointed out that the West Orange Police Department is the only law enforcement entity in Essex County that has earned accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies.

West Orange has been seeing record lows in crime in the past few years, federal statistics show. Officials have credited part of that drop to “community policing” efforts that emphasize “de-escalation” of potentially dangerous situations.

Another of the key efforts that has been making a difference in West Orange is the department’s new program, where trained mental health clinicians are called upon to respond alongside officers on certain crisis calls, which may not be criminal in nature.

The effort caught the attention of the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, which awarded the West Orange Police Department its “Excellence in Policing: Community Partnership Award” in 2021.

• See Related: West Orange Crime Rate Hits 41-Year Low, Police Say
• See Related: Crime In West Orange: FBI Data Gives Peek At Long-Term Trends
• See Related: Here's How West Orange Police Handle ‘Use Of Force,’ Chief Says

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