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Are Police Academies Failing Cops? | Dennis Benigno | Ep. 450

Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC

Cleared Hot

Society & Culture

4.911.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 May 2026

⏱️ 148 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dennis Benigno started in 2001 as a New Jersey corrections officer at nineteen. He moved to the U.S. Park Police in D.C., then to patrol in one of Jersey's largest municipalities. Over fourteen years he made more than 1,500 arrests and ran over 10,000 car stops. He had to self-train to survive the road. When he realized the academies weren't teaching cops what they needed, he started teaching it himself. That became Street Cop Training, one of the biggest police training companies in the country, with hundreds of thousands of officers behind it.

He argues that 80% of line-of-duty deaths are training failures. Not bad luck. Failures you can trace back to the academy. We get into why the system box-checks instead of fixing the problem, and who benefits from keeping it that way.

He breaks down the passenger-side approach, the traffic stop that ended with a cop executed on camera, and the constitutional gaps most officers never get taught. We also get into the political machine that came after him, what it cost, and who actually showed up when it did. 

Street Cop Training: 

https://streetcoptraining.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorcJeLaNQvrs9WJ1mgjCfFiYR0JPzLxm8nm6On3DGf8qO0mnWof

Drownproof book and Conversation Starters:

https://www.shop.clearedhotpodcast.com 

 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to a Wednesday episode. Before we get into today's episode,

0:06.0

there was a technical issue on my side, 100% my fault. The video file corrupted. So,

0:13.2

for those of you who may be an audio video, you know, they want to do both. They want to watch as well

0:19.6

as listen. This one, I'm sorry,

0:27.9

is to be listened to only. So I'm going to put up a screen grab from Dennis's website so you can get more information from him if you would like. But unfortunately today, like I said,

0:32.4

100% my fault, we're going to be audio only. That is it. Let's get into the show.

1:28.1

Okay, got the red smoke. Gun runs, north and south. West of the smoke. West of the smoke. Okay, copy. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. I'm all winning, baby. Give it to me. I need it. You're cleared hot. Can't be cleared hot. Arguably, I just had to revamp that other book. I rewrote the whole thing after they took it down like fucking I was able to do the whole thing. Took me four days, probably about 40 hours. And when it was done, I would argue it's like a 9.5 out of 10. And my canine case law book, Street Tax case law book, hands down is the best book that's ever been written for these guys for canine. And I don't see, like, dude, I'm telling you, I'm not like, this is just business talk. So I'm telling people this. I'm not like, I'm the best there ever was. Like, dude, I fuck up nonstop. And then I was like, oh Lord, I fuck this up. Let me fix this shit really quick. But I was able to do that with the AI and dude, it's flawless. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Like the table of contents Claude makes for you. We just had we just had Claude because people are like, where's the audio book? So we ran it through Claude. We actually spent Monday, we started trying to prompt Claude correctly, and then it spit back the audiobook and the typecast that you would take and put it into 11 labs. I recorded two hours of me talking on 11 labs. I sat there and just read a book for two hours. and so now it has we we got it to do what we wanted to do almost flawlessly. And it gets all my inflections and it reads the whole fucking book. But not the way the book's written. We had it rewritten through Claude to be read through 11 labs as an audiobook. Nice. I just had a kind of podcast recently. I forgot the fuck was. Somebody famous. And he's like, yeah, and I'm doing the book now.

2:18.3

I'm recording in the studio.

2:21.7

I'm like, dude, just use 11 laps. Yeah. It's better than you can do it. Yeah, it depends on the publisher, though. If you're with the publisher, they may not let you do that. Oh, shit. Yeah. because they're going to have a requirement for what they'll probably call it the talent or the artist which whatever pick your redact.

2:34.9

Do you like your publisher?

2:36.4

Very much so.

2:37.0

That's good.

2:37.6

Yeah.

2:38.0

Yeah.

2:38.1

They were. Because they're going to have a requirement for what they'll probably call it the talent or the artist, which whatever, pick your redact.

2:34.9

Do you like your publisher?

2:36.4

Very much so. That's good. Yeah. Yeah, they're really cool. They don't do anything. I mean, they make the book. Right. They'll fill you with promises of they're going to, you know, they're going to get you onto different platforms and stuff like that. between my publisher and the agent,

2:50.1

what I determined is it's completely on you

2:52.0

and not those people.

2:52.8

They'll make a lot of promises.

2:53.8

But every... different platforms and stuff like that. Between my publisher and the agent, what I determined is

2:50.9

it's completely on you and not those people. They'll make a lot of promises. But every

...

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