As he paced the stage at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City, Shawn Pardazi — a Louisiana deputy sheriff with a troubled career — was telling 990 police officers from almost every state, including Kansas, how to extract information during traffic stops.
“There’s like a little bit of a finesse,” he instructed the assembled cops. “You gotta be a f---ing gigolo.”
The October 2021 conference was organized by a company then based in New Jersey called Street Cop Training. During the six-day event, Pardazi’s gigolo comment, recorded by Street Cop during the conference, was just one of “over 100 discriminatory or harassing comments” made by Street Cop instructors, according to a scathing 47-page report by the New Jersey Office of the State Comptroller.
In fact, the report says, investigators “found that a number of the tactics taught at the conference were both unjustifiably harassing and unconstitutional under both New Jersey and federal law.”
Tactics such as those, experts warn, could lead to massive lawsuits against police departments.
Since that Atlantic City conference, Street Cop has taught dozens of continuing education classes in Missouri and Kansas. The latest in the region was on Aug. 6 in Kingman, Kansas, about 20 miles west of Wichita. The class was called Interdiction Academy and promised to teach police “highly advanced roadside interviewing skills” to interdict drugs and guns being transported by “deceptive individuals,” according to the Street Cop website.
The Kingman County Sheriff’s Office hosted the Street Cop session, according to Kingman city police. Sheriff Brent Wood did not return calls asking for an interview or comment about the session, so it’s not clear how many officers attended the August training or whether Wood had any concerns. The City of Kingman itself did not send any officers, according to a police spokesman.
New Jersey state investigators were particularly harsh on Street Cop’s “interdiction” tactics in their report, released in December 2023.
A lawyer for Street Cop’s founder called the New Jersey report a “hit piece.”
In a nine-month investigation, KCUR and the Midwest Newsroom made open records requests to every law enforcement agency in Jackson County, Missouri, and Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas, plus the Kansas and Missouri highway patrols.
We asked for a list of all officers who took Street Cop training between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 1, 2023, and how much it cost. A handful of small departments did not fulfill the request. After the New Jersey state report landed in December 2023 — and since KCUR and the Midwest Newsroom began this investigation — law enforcement agencies in Kansas and Missouri have abandoned Street Cop classes.
Records show Leawood, Kansas, sent 27 officers to Street Cop training at a cost to taxpayers of $6,983. All the training took place in Kansas. A handful of sessions were online.
“There is no future in any of our officers attending Street Cop Training sessions in the future,” said Dale Finger, who retired as chief from the Leawood Police Department in May. Finger said that as soon as he read the New Jersey report, he banned any more Street Cop training.
“There were numerous, numerous concerns brought up by the investigation, particularly about disparaging comments about individuals,” he said.
Finger stressed that he had no complaints from, or about, Leawood officers who took Street Cop training.
The New Jersey investigation showed that Street Cop promotes a less enlightened kind of policing.
“(Policing is) in a stage of our profession where we promote and demand compassion and respect for others,” Finger said.
‘Okay, so you’re anti-cop’
Street Cop founder Dennis Benigno would not agree to an interview “with anti-police ‘reporters,’” he wrote in an email to KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom.
“Are you a law enforcement supporter interested in the truth or a thorn in society's side?” he asked. After being presented with a list of questions, Benigno responded, “Okay so you’re anti-cop. I get it. Take care bro, figure it out yourself.”
In a lengthy YouTube video posted after the New Jersey investigation was released, Benigno fired back at the Office of the State Comptroller, which conducted the probe.
“Guys, we tried to work cooperatively with the OSC in this report, but that was not part of the agency's agenda,” he said. “They wanted nothing to do with it.”
Four officers from Kansas attended the 2021 Atlantic City conference, according to data from the Kansas Commission on Peace Officers' Standards and Training obtained through the Kansas Open Records Act.
Two officers were from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and two more from the Emporia Police Department.
“I heard nothing that slandered anybody,” Emporia Capt. Ray Mattis, with 38 years in law enforcement, told KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom. “If I saw anything improper, I would have come back and told our chief.”
Douglas County Sheriff Jay Armbrister did not return calls seeking comment for this report.
New Jersey findings
Benigno has a troubled past as a cop, as do other Street Cop instructors.
In 2015, he and four other police officers from the Woodbridge Township Police Department in New Jersey were sued, accused of excessive force, racial bias and false arrest, according to WCBS in New York. That lawsuit was settled. Benigno retired from the department within weeks of the lawsuit being filed.
Pardazi — the Louisiana deputy sheriff who told cops they had to be a gigolo when questioning a suspect — was arrested in September 2023 in West Baton Rouge Parish for firing his weapon into a fleeing car and livestreaming part of the traffic stop on his Facebook page, according to WBRZ in Baton Rouge. Pardazi’s prosecution is ongoing, and he’s resigned from Street Cop Training.
"Understanding pain, both physically and physiologically is important. When we understand what it does and what purpose it serves, it’s just another thing that we can harness and that we can leverage as a weapon." Tim Kennedy, US Army Special Forces, during the Street Cop Training session.Tim Kennedy, US Army Special Forces, during the Street Cop Training session.
The New Jersey investigation uncovered a string of disturbing comments by instructors at the Atlantic City conference. Many were about police work. Some were about other things.
"I would be remiss if I didn't remind you, or let you know, that I have a three-inch d---," Brad Gilmore of the Bergen County, New Jersey, prosecutor's office said onstage. Two days after the comptroller’s report was published, a court dismissed charges against an alleged drug dealer after prosecutors dropped the case. The case hinged on Gilmore’s testimony.
"I don't want a hero's exit," Benigno said at the conference. "I want to f---ing die at like 91 with hookers and cocaine around me."
In his YouTube response to the New Jersey report, Benigno apologized for remarks and conduct at the Atlantic City conference.
“I personally take responsibility and apologize for any inappropriate or offensive language that was used by a few of our instructors in the 2021 training session.”
Those instructors, of course, included Benigno. During the conference, he described how he reacts to people who record police interactions.
"Shut the f--- up, right?" Benigno said to participants.
"About to get pepper sprayed. (F---ing) Tased. Windows broken out, mother (f---er)."
Ticket dork or cop
Benigno also taught attendees what he called reasonable suspicion factors. The New Jersey OSC called the checklist unconstitutional.
The checklist is supposed to help officers decide whether to stop a car because criminals may be inside. New Jersey investigators said a few items are legitimate, but many “appear to be arbitrary and contradictory.”
For example, the reasonable suspicion factor checklist teaches officers to be suspicious of drivers who turn up the music in the car or sing along. They should also consider stopping a car where the occupants start to whisper to one another when they see the police.
“The checklist does not discuss how an officer would be able to detect whether whispering is occurring while the vehicle is in motion,” according to the investigation.
The checklist also suggests that looking away from the officer is suspicious, but so is staring at an officer. It also says that drivers wearing a hat low to cover their face suggests criminal activity. But so is removing the hat.
Benigno teaches that traffic stops aren’t about enforcing traffic laws.
“Get your head out of the motor vehicle law game,” Benigno said in a Street Cop podcast two years before the Atlantic City conference. “Are you going to be a ticket dork or are you going to be a cop?”
“If that's the message that's being put out by instructors of that particular company, that's when we cut ties,” former Leawood Chief Dale Finger said.
Again, Benigno vigorously disagreed in his YouTube response.
“No video slide or reference has been presented nor exists to illustrate the suggestion or instruction of any violation of a recognized constitutional amendment,” he said.
Street Cop origins
Benigno founded Street Cop Training in 2012. Until 2023, it appeared to be a thriving business. Benigno touted Street Cop as “one of the largest, if not the largest, police training providers in the United States.” The company claimed it trained up to 30,000 officers annually.
In the Kansas City area, at least 290 cops have taken Street Cop Training continuing education classes at a cost of $72,591 to taxpayers.
In Kansas, 57 law enforcement agencies — 15% of all agencies in the state — paid for Street Cop training from 2020 to 2023, according to CPOST. Similar data is not available in Missouri.
"Ask her or she, she, him, whatever the f--- you want to call people now." Tom Rizzo, Howell, New Jersey Police Dept. during Street Cop Training sessionTom Rizzo, Howell, New Jersey Police Dept. during Street Cop Training session
After details of the company’s training practices became public, it fell on hard times. It moved to Florida and registered as a business on Jan. 3, 2024, according to secretary of state’s office records. By the end of the month, it declared bankruptcy after police departments around the country — like Leawood’s — stopped using Street Cop.
Two creditors appearing in Street Cop bankruptcy documents are from the Douglas County, Kansas, Sheriff’s Office. Three are from the Pettis County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Office. They are owed refunds, according to the records.
Soon after the report on the Atlantic City conference became public, the Missouri Department of Public Safety revoked Street Cop Training's approval as a vendor in the state.
“The documented views expressed, and conduct endorsed by New Jersey-based Street Cop Training are repugnant, disregard constitutional rights, and have no place in Missouri,” DPS Director Sandy Karsten said in a statement to KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom.
Joining Missouri in cutting ties with Street Cop were New Jersey, Maryland, California, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and Oregon, according to bankruptcy court documents.
Benigno has submitted a reorganization plan to the bankruptcy judge in Florida. He also recently opened what he calls Street Cop University, which offers online training.
“We also included videos that teach you how to search vehicles properly and in-depth to ensure that you've cleared the entire car when searching it, looking for contraband,” Benigno said in a video.
The Kansas two-step
Street Cop also teaches officers how to prolong a traffic stop to elicit information that may create reasonable suspicion to ask for a consent search or a canine sniff.
But a prolonged traffic stop could be unconstitutional, and New Jersey investigators cited a Kansas case.
In 2023, a federal court ruled that the so-called Kansas two-step, practiced by the Highway Patrol, was unconstitutional.
The Kansas two-step is when a trooper conducts a routine traffic stop, takes a few steps toward the police vehicle and then turns around to initiate a second interaction – considered a new stop – and ask the driver more questions. The federal judge wrote that the patrol “waged war” on out-of-state drivers using this technique.
The consequences of unconstitutional policing can be huge.
“Officers are given badges and guns and a tremendous amount of discretion to use those tools and powers,” said Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA Law School professor and a leading expert on police misconduct.
More than $1.5 billion in lawsuit settlements has been paid by taxpayers around the country, the Washington Post reported in 2022.
But, even huge legal settlements can have little to no effect on a department’s conduct.
“The money is not taken from their budget and has no consequences on their budgets,” Schwartz said. That is also true for officers, who almost never bear any individual financial responsibility for misconduct.
The Kansas City Police Department said it paid out $8.1 million in legal settlements in 2022 and 2023. Only $2.8 million for such payments was budgeted. This year, the department’s budget sets aside $5.5 million to settle lawsuits.
When the legal settlements exceed the budgeted amount, money is moved from other parts of the budget to cover the cost, according to KCPD spokesman Sgt. Phil DiMartino.
Street Cop frequent flyers
The KCUR and Midwest Newsroom investigation found that 16 agencies on the Missouri side of the Kansas City region paid for Street Cop training from 2020 through 2023. That total includes the Missouri Highway Patrol. In all, 68 officers were trained at a cost of $19,104.
Independence sent 11 officers, the most on the Missouri side. Kansas City, Missouri, police, the largest department in the area, did not send anyone to Street Cop training.
Participation on the Kansas side was much more robust. In Johnson and Wyandotte counties, 18 agencies (including the Kansas Highway Patrol) sent officers to Street Cop training. However, the number of officers ballooned to 224 at a cost to taxpayers of $54,035, our investigation discovered.
The Kansas City, Kansas, police, the Wyandotte County Sheriff's Office and the Kansas Highway Patrol said they might consider working with Street Cop in the future.
Every department in Johnson County that responded with comment said it has discontinued Street Cop training.
This response from Mission, Kansas, police was typical.
“The Mission Police Department has stopped sending officers to Street Cop courses after becoming aware of the New Jersey State Comptroller's report,” Police Chief Dan Madden said in a statement.
Fairway Chief J.P. Thurlo said:
“We’re not supporting Street Cop at this time,” he said. “But I’m always open to listen if they make changes.”
Then there is the response from Jeffery Short, who was interim chief in Edwardsville, Kansas, when he was asked about it in May.
“If courses offered by Street Cop meet our officers’ needs, we would consider sending them,” he said. The Edwardsville Police Dept. has 18 officers.
In June, Edwardsville named Rance Quinn as permanent police chief, replacing Short, who is now a major in the department. If the training complies with department policies, Quinn said he would consider allowing officers to attend future Street Cop courses.
“We do have policies and rules of conduct that are required of our officers and if they step outside of that, they will be held accountable,” he said in a statement.
In 2023, seven Edwardsville officers attended 14 training sessions at a cost of $10,082 to taxpayers. That total includes a five-day Street Cop conference in Nashville — similar to the one in Atlantic City — for three officers, who racked up $5,793 in travel expenses, according to information obtained through an open records request.
In addition to the Edwardsville officers, three officers from the Hutchinson, Kansas, Police Department and two deputies from Reno County were at the Nashville conference.
In a flashy video promoting the conference at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, Street Cop touted speeches by Fox News host Tomi Lahren and Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden. It included Brevard County, Florida, Sheriff Wayne Ivey, a member of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center said has shown “abject disrespect for the rule of law.”
Other Kansas Street Cop frequent flyers included Gardner, which sent 28 officers; Lenexa, which sent 23, and Olathe.
“We do not condone the adversarial relationship portrayed at that conference. Therefore, the Olathe Police Department will not be attending any further Street Cop Training courses,” Olathe Police spokesman Sgt. John Moncayo said.
Before that strong statement essentially condemning the training in Atlantic City, Olathe was a big Street Cop customer. The department sent 32 officers to various trainings in Kansas at a cost of $7,580. The classes included Unmasking Facial Expressions, Deceptive Behaviors and Hidden Compartments and Interdiction Mastermind.
Of the 34 agencies in Kansas and Missouri that sent officers to Street Cop training, Olathe was one of nine that refused to provide the officers’ names. All cited privacy. The Clay County Sheriff’s Office said it redacted the names of officers who work undercover.
Outsourced police training
Policing in America is different from almost anywhere else in the world. There are 18,000 police agencies, 80% of which have fewer than 25 members, according to Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum.
“So, there's no national standards, there's no national training, there's no guidelines,” Wexler said.
Adversarial interactions with the public and costly lawsuits could be prevented, he said, with vigorous oversight by the state agencies that license police officers.
“In many states, there is very little in the way of oversight regarding the nature of those trainings and the quality of those trainings,” said Joanna Schwartz, a law professor at UCLA.
That is exactly the case in Kansas and Missouri.
Kansas requires police officers to complete 40 hours of in-service training a year. It is up to individual agencies to decide if that training meets its needs and standards. Any course must be “approved in advance by the agency head or the agency head’s designee,” according to CPOST guidelines.
That means the heads of the 390 law enforcement agencies in Kansas can decide what training the state’s 6,640 officers require.
In Missouri, the Department of Public Safety approves all training for the state’s 14,554 officers at 567 agencies. Missouri officers need only 24 hours of in-service training, according to the department.
There are dozens of options in Missouri and Kansas for officers to fulfill their in-service training requirements.
Most big departments have in-house training. “Because we have so many options, we have decided not to move forward with sending anybody to any type of Street Cop training,” said Capt. Tyson Kilbey, who oversees training for the Johnson County Sheriff's Office. The office also says it was bothered by the controversial training.
Departments can also send officers to community colleges that offer law enforcement certification. This month at Johnson County Community College, officers can take a class called Legal Issues in Car Stops taught by a special assistant U.S. attorney and former Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent. The cost: $45.
Metropolitan Community College next month has a three-day block training that fulfills all 24 hours of continuing education required in Missouri. The cost: $250.
Way too much police training and policymaking is outsourced, said Schwartz, the law professor at UCLA. “It would seem that these are duties that should be satisfied by government entities, certainly overseen carefully by government entities.”
And where the government leaves a gap, it will be filled by private industry.
Nobody knows exactly how many for-profit companies offer in-service training for police. Estimates range between 50 and 100.
Outsourced training for police officers is not one-size-fits-all.
“Then they go back to their department and use that training in a way that might not fit with the values and the guidelines of their own agencies,” Wexler said.
Indeed, an investigation by the New Jersey Monitor discovered that 72% of the 240 New Jersey officers who attended Street Cop’s Atlantic City conference have used force at least once since October 2020, when the state started publicly reporting such incidents.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin even ordered all those 240 cops to undergo retraining.
“While we were painted as the bad guys, we are in fact the good guys creating better, more well-trained police officers for our country that expects the best from their men and women in blue, and everybody in this profession knows that,” Benigno said in December 2023.
It is not just officer training that is being outsourced.
“The privatization of police training is accompanied by the privatization of police policymaking,” Schwartz said.
Police policies — some departments call them general orders — can run into hundreds of pages. They cover everything from pursuits to how to wear the uniform. Perhaps the most important policy governs the use of force. In the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department, that document runs almost 14,000 words.
In a paper for the Indiana Law Review, Schultz wrote that a company called Lexipol has written policy manuals for some “3500 law enforcement agencies in 35 states.”
Lexipol’s website says it has partnered with the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police, the Kansas Association of Fire Chiefs and the Missouri Association of Fire Chiefs. It is unclear whether Lexipol has written policy for departments in Kansas or Missouri.
Schultz said that Lexipol claims to write neutral policies but that the company has been trying to undermine use-of-force reform.
“Lexipol has taken a retrograde position in its use-of-force policies,” the paper said.
In what it called a detailed response to the Indiana Law Journal paper, Lexipol said it supports recent police reform efforts and “has long addressed in policy many common reform positions.”
This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.
Roxie Hammill and Kaylie McLaughlin from the Johnson County Post contributed to the reporting.
Do you have a tip or question for us? Email midwestnewsroom@kcur.org.
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