Allegations
What New Jersey police are accused of
Agencies report every internal affairs complaint they receive, sorted into categories. Between 2021 and 2025 they recorded 79,923 allegations across 31 categories.
An allegation is something a person said happened. It is not a finding, and most complaints are never sustained. A category with a large count tells you what people complain about and what agencies write down, not what officers did.
Every category
| Category | Allegations |
|---|---|
| Other Departmental Rule Violation | 27,280 |
| Demeanor | 11,552 |
| Excessive Force | 5,059 |
| Differential Treatment | 3,832 |
| Other Criminal Violation | 3,603 |
| Sexual Assault/Criminal Sexual Violation | 3,143 |
| Neglect of Duty | 2,908 |
| Improper Arrest | 2,723 |
| Use Of Force Policy Violation | 2,404 |
| Preventable MV accident | 2,310 |
| Conduct Unbecoming/Discredit To The Agency | 1,669 |
| Attendance issues | 1,588 |
| Improper Search | 1,395 |
| Insubordination/Disobeying An Order | 1,320 |
| Harassment/Stalking | 1,281 |
| BWC/MVR Violation | 1,171 |
| Vehicular Pursuit Policy Violation | 1,062 |
| Theft | 811 |
| Domestic violence (Non-Criminal) | 798 |
| Loss Of Or Failure To Safeguard Agency Propert | 699 |
| Improper Entry | 683 |
| False Documentation/Falsifying A Report (Non-Criminal) | 585 |
| Assault | 538 |
| Improper Supervision/Failure To Supervise | 383 |
| Drug Test Failure | 270 |
| Domestic violence (Criminal) | 239 |
| DUI/DWI Off Duty | 216 |
| EEO | 161 |
| False Documentation/Falsifying A Report (Criminal) | 131 |
| Property Damage/Criminal Mischief | 79 |
| DUI/DWI On duty | 30 |
Reading these numbers
The largest category by a wide margin is a residual one. Other Departmental Rule Violation absorbs anything an agency did not classify further, so it says more about how complaints are recorded than about what happened. A further 2,584 allegations arrived with no category at all, and are left out of the table above rather than assigned to one.
Categories are not comparable in weight. A demeanour complaint and an excessive-force complaint both count as one allegation here, which is why the report cards weight them differently and why a raw total should not be read as a measure of harm.
Agencies also label inconsistently. Where the same category arrived under different capitalisation it has been merged, and each category page lists the exact source labels it combines.