SANDY — Police departments across Utah have spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on a company that was recently cited for coaching officers to glorify violence and ignore the Constitution.
Chris Hubbard, who lives in South Jordan, noticed the New Jersey report and brought it to our attention.“They knew this was being recorded. It wasn’t a couple of guys at a bar just bragging,” Hubbard said. “In private industry, if I stood up on a stage at a conference and said stuff like that? I would be fired on the spot. They would drag me off the stage, and that would be the end of my career.
“It destroys the Constitution!” Sykes said. “You have to have reasonable suspicion . You can’t just be guessing. The way I read this report and look at the videos, they’re trying to find a way around all that... It’s just going to get them in trouble. It’s going to get them sued.” “It's disgusting. It's unacceptable. It’s personally offensive to our profession,” Rees said. “I wouldn’t want my son or daughter anywhere near that, and that goes for every officer in the state.”
The Emery County Sheriff’s Office stated it would “love to attend” more training with Street Cop Training in the future, “especially if the course was being taught by .”Currently, chiefs and sheriffs have the discretion to work with policing training companies of their choosing. “I don’t think we need to retrain them,” Gwynn said. “We’re doing that training all the time, so even if they got bad information? Or if we see something? We can take immediate corrective action.”
DENNIS BENIGNO: “You’re about to get pepper sprayed and ****ing tazed and windows broken out, mother****er.”“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,” Benigno said. “In fact, we advise all the attendees the material they are being taught is an extension of what they’re learning at their police academies.“No way. No way,” Rees said.
Layton PD said it would “take a hard look” at whether to continue sending officers to Street Cop Training in the future. “We did not have any issues with the trainings we used,” said AnneElise Harrison, a spokesperson for the department. “As we use a variety of trainings from multiple vendors, our officers will continue to do their yearly trainings from other approved vendors.”South Jordan PD said it does not plan to use Street Cop Training in the future and that it is not requiring officers to be retrained.