Skip to content
POLICE TRANSPARENCY NJ
Menu

Independent · From public records

Police discipline in New Jersey, on the record.

Internal affairs and discipline records for every police department in New Jersey. Each fact cites its source row.

An independent project, not a government site. It reads the state's own releases so that a resident, a reporter, or an officer can see what was reported, with the source attached. What the project is · Editorial standards

One record, as the agency filed it [1]

As reportedMajor discipline · 2022
Officer Joseph Frino

Bergen County Sheriff's Department

Suspended 20 days

In plain language, written by this site

Officer Joseph Frino, while on duty, failed to properly conduct security checks and was found to be in possession of his cellphone inside the secured area of the Bergen County Jail, the Bergen County Sheriffs Office reported for 2022. Frino was suspended for 20 days.

Read the agency's original wording

Sustained charges, as written by the agency

(a)(1) , or Failure to Perform Duties (a)(2) (a)(6) an Public Employee (a)(7) (a)(12) Obedience to Laws and Rules and Regulations Performance of Duty Unbecoming Conduct Prohibited Activity on Duty Leaving Assigned Duty Post/Relief Inattentiveness to Duty

Underlined phrases are causes for discipline under N.J.A.C. 4A:2-2.3. Tap one to see what it means.

Source row 2039, Attorney General major discipline releaseThe full record →

Major discipline records
3,005, see every case[1]
Final actions, 2020-2025
Officers named
2,297, see all officers[1]
Across all records
IA investigations, 2025
17,996, see statewide totals[2]
519 agencies

Reported totals have risen each year. That reflects more reporting and cleared appeal backlogs as much as more misconduct. How we read the trend.

All 21 counties

Map all 21 counties

Internal affairs investigations, 2025. Shading groups the counties by rank.[2] Map every county measure.

Investigation counts are not a misconduct ranking. Population and reporting practices affect these totals. Read the population comparison.

Recent cases

All 3,005 cases

Final, adjudicated discipline as reported by the employing agency. Summaries are written by this site from each cited record. Badge color reflects the most serious reported sanction; see methodology.

Reporting from the record

All 25 articles

Statewide patterns

Volume mostly tracks population

Residents against IA investigations · 2025

New Jersey counties: internal affairs investigations against population, 2025
ItemResidents (2020 Census)IA investigations
Essex863,7282,953
Camden523,4852,404
Hudson724,8541,203
Bergen955,732777
Union575,345743
Passaic524,118667
Monmouth643,615664
Middlesex863,162622
Atlantic274,534517
Burlington461,860497
Morris509,285445
Mercer387,340361
Ocean637,229350
Somerset345,361306
Cumberland154,152296
Gloucester302,294271
Cape May95,263171
Sussex144,221155
Hunterdon128,947110
Warren109,63298
Salem64,83766
AnalysisCounties with more people report more internal affairs investigations, which is why a raw county total says more about where New Jersey lives than about how it is policed. The three counties with the most investigations are labeled. The dashed line is the statewide rate: 1.47 investigations for every 1,000 residents, across all 21 counties.[2][8] A county above that line reports more per resident than the state as a whole, which can mean more misconduct, a more active complaint process, or simply more policing.

What internal affairs handles

Most serious allegation · 2025

Most serious internal affairs allegations statewide, 2025
Other Departmental Rule Violation5,113
Demeanor2,233
Use Of Force Policy Violation1,918
Excessive Force911
Differential Treatment783
Sexual Assault/Criminal Sexual Violation720
Neglect of Duty668
Other Criminal Violation628
Bars are colored by the site's allegation-severity tiers. Allegations are not findings: most complaints end unfounded, exonerated, or not sustained.
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Most major discipline, by agency type

Record counts · 2020-2025

Municipal police

Agencies with the most major discipline records, Municipal police (count)
Jersey City Police Department92 13 term.
Newark Police Department87 5 term.
Camden Police Department49 6 term.
Trenton Police Department43 7 term.
Atlantic City Police Department36 1 term.
Hoboken Police Department19

Corrections

Agencies with the most major discipline records, Corrections (count)
Department Of Corrections577 136 term.
Camden County Corrections333 6 term.
Atlantic County Corrections127 3 term.
Essex County Corrections62 25 term.
Burlington County Corrections52 4 term.
Monmouth County Corrections47 1 term.
Agency types are never compared against each other: a corrections agency and a municipal department do not do the same job or report on the same terms.[1]
AnalysisReport-card grades are peer-group quintiles, not absolute verdicts. An A means an agency sits in the lowest fifth of its peer group (agencies of the same type and size) and an F in the highest fifth. 540 agencies are graded; 8 are not, for too few peers or too little reported data. How the grades are built.

More from the record

Report cards
540 departments graded against peers of the same type and size. See the grades
Radio encryption
97 departments encrypt their radio communications, which closes a channel the public and the press used to be able to hear. Which departments
Federal civil-rights lawsuits
At least 3,683 civil-rights cases filed in federal court in New Jersey name a New Jersey law enforcement agency or jail as a party, 271 agencies in all. A lawsuit is an allegation, and the dockets do not say how a case ended. [9] Agency by agency
Deaths during police encounters
The Fatal Encounters project is an independent dataset of all deaths during police encounters of any kind (pursuits, suicides, and medical events included), 2000 through 2021. A record is not a misconduct finding. Collection ended December 2021. All 549 records
Military surplus equipment
179 New Jersey agencies have acquired surplus military equipment through the federal 1033 program: $41.8 million in original DoD cost, $38.0 million of it tactical items. Figures describe equipment received over time (as of 2026-06-30), not what an agency currently holds, and acquiring equipment is not misconduct. How this data is read. The statewide overview
FBI staffing census
507 departments carry an FBI-reported staffing profile (sworn and civilian headcounts) on their pages.[3] How staffing is matched
Pension and salary
831 officers named in discipline records have a NJ Treasury pension or salary record matched at high confidence on their pages, as of 2026-03-31.[4] How matches are made
Police pay and school pay
On the same pension snapshot (2026-03-31), the median police officer reports 1.32 times the pensionable salary of the median school staff member statewide. County by county that runs from 1.05 in Cumberland County to 1.65 in Bergen County. Base salary only for both, and a pay comparison is not a budget claim. [5] County by county
Civil service jurisdictions
214 agencies sit in civil service jurisdictions on the NJCSC roster as of 2026-07-04, where the Title 4A discipline framework governs.[6] What that means
Changes to the record
When the Attorney General replaces a file it already published, what it removed or rewrote, with both versions kept. See the changes
How this works
Sources, definitions, and the limits of the data. Methodology

Sources

  1. [1]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-10-13. Counts derived from all 3,005 data rows; row 1 is the header. ↩
  2. [2]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Statewide totals summed over all 2025 agency rows; row 1 is the header. ↩
  3. [3]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. Retrieved 2026-07-04. ↩
  4. [4]YourMoney Active Pension Members (PFRS/SPRS subset) and YourMoney Retired Pension Members (PFRS/SPRS subset). New Jersey Department of the Treasury. Snapshots as of March 31, 2026. Derived from the public YourMoney Active Pension Members and YourMoney Retired Pension Members datasets, https://www.yourmoney.nj.gov/. ↩
  5. [5]YourMoney Active Pension Members (PFRS/SPRS subset) and YourMoney Active Pension Members (TPAF subset, names removed). New Jersey Department of the Treasury. Both snapshots as of March 31, 2026. Derived from the public YourMoney Active Pension Members dataset, https://www.yourmoney.nj.gov/. Figures are computed by this site from as-reported pensionable salaries; the row-by-row account of what entered each figure is published at /data/pay-comparison.json. ↩
  6. [6]New Jersey Civil Service Commission, Appendix A local jurisdiction roster, as of 2026-07-04. Matched to the agency registry by municipality and county. ↩
  7. [7]New Jersey county boundaries. New Jersey Office of Information Technology, Office of GIS (NJOGIS). NJ_Counties_3857 (FeatureServer layer 0), https://services2.arcgis.com/XVOqAjTOJ5P6ngMu/arcgis/rest/services/NJ_Counties_3857/FeatureServer/0. 2020 boundary delineation. Retrieved 2026-07-27. Boundaries are generalized for display. This data set is not a survey document and must not be used as such. The polygons do not represent legal boundaries.
  8. [8]County population: 2020 Decennial Census, as republished by NJOGIS, carried on NJ_Counties_3857 (FeatureServer layer 0). New Jersey Office of Information Technology, Office of GIS (NJOGIS), https://services2.arcgis.com/XVOqAjTOJ5P6ngMu/arcgis/rest/services/NJ_Counties_3857/FeatureServer/0. Retrieved 2026-07-27. ↩
  9. [9]Free Law Project (CourtListener), RECAP Archive of federal court dockets (copied from PACER), District of New Jersey, civil-rights natures of suit, dockets whose party list or caption names the agency; bulk docket file of 2026-09-30 plus search results, retrieved 2026-10-14. An agency named only behind "et al." is missed, so counts are a floor. A docket records that a case was filed, not how it ended. https://www.courtlistener.com/ ↩