Articles
Reporting from the record
Every piece here is built from the same public data the rest of the site runs on, with each factual claim cited to a specific source file. No anonymous sourcing, no outside reporting: the records do the arguing.
The corpus is the Attorney General's major discipline releases for 2020 to 2025 and the internal affairs releases for 2021 to 2025, joined where it helps to staffing, pay, surplus-equipment and records-request data. The statewide totals are the figures these pieces start from; the methodology says what each source covers and where it stops.
How discipline works
What a record is, what it is not, and how a complaint becomes one.
September 28, 2026 · 3 min read
Major discipline in review: 2025
816 final discipline records became public for 2025, the most of any year in the data. More than half came from corrections agencies, and nine in ten were suspensions rather than firings.
September 28, 2026 · 5 min read
Sustained, not sustained, exonerated, unfounded: what the five dispositions mean
Every internal affairs allegation in New Jersey ends in one of a handful of words. They are easy to confuse and they carry very different meanings. Here is what each one says, and how often each is used.
September 28, 2026 · 5 min read
What a department's internal affairs record page shows, and what it does not
This site keeps a page for every law enforcement agency in New Jersey. It is a record compiled from state data, not the department's own site. Here is how to read it, section by section.
July 26, 2026 · 3 min read
Two departments, the same complaint, very different odds
Among New Jersey's busiest internal affairs units, the share of complaints sustained ranges from under 1% to over 40%.
July 26, 2026 · 4 min read
The biggest category in New Jersey's complaint data is the one that says nothing
More than a third of every internal affairs allegation reported in New Jersey lands in a bucket called Other Departmental Rule Violation.
July 26, 2026 · 3 min read
What a suspension actually means in New Jersey police discipline
The median published suspension is fifteen days. A handful run past a year. The distribution says more than the average does.
July 26, 2026 · 5 min read
What happens to a complaint against a New Jersey police officer
New Jersey agencies recorded 82,507 internal affairs outcomes across five years. The largest single category is no outcome at all.
July 4, 2026 · 4 min read
Major discipline reports are rising. Read the trend carefully.
Finalized major discipline in New Jersey climbed from 226 records in 2020 to 816 in 2025. Three things could drive that, and only one of them is more misconduct.
July 4, 2026 · 3 min read
What counts as major discipline in New Jersey
The state's most detailed public record of police discipline covers only the serious end of the scale. Here is how to read it.
July 4, 2026 · 5 min read
What major discipline in New Jersey actually looks like
Suspension, not termination, is the common outcome. The median reported suspension is 19 days. 471 officers were fired. Here is the shape of the record.
Reading the numbers
What the counts, rates, grades and gaps can and cannot tell you.
July 4, 2026 · 4 min read
The New Jersey agencies that report no internal affairs investigations
Each year the Attorney General publishes a list of law enforcement agencies that reported zero internal affairs investigations. Most are small. A few appear year after year.
July 4, 2026 · 4 min read
The officers disciplined more than once
Most officers in New Jersey's major discipline data appear a single time. But 385 appear more than once, and one appears fifteen times.
July 4, 2026 · 5 min read
How to read a department report card
A grade on this site is not a verdict. It is a department's position among agencies like it, on the two things the records can measure.
Agencies and counties
Where the records concentrate, and why some agencies sit apart.
September 28, 2026 · 4 min read
County jails, one by one: major discipline at New Jersey's fourteen county corrections departments
The county jails report their discipline to the same state file as the police, but no two of them look alike. A walk through all fourteen, with the numbers each one reported.
September 28, 2026 · 4 min read
Essex County: the most investigations in the state, and Newark is a third of them
Essex County's agencies reported 2,953 internal affairs investigations for 2025, more than any other county. One department accounts for a third of that, and two more for a quarter. What the county's record looks like once it is taken apart.
July 12, 2026 · 6 min read
When the chief is the one under investigation
Fourteen New Jersey police chiefs appear in the state's major discipline data from 2021 to 2025. Two were fired. Five left before the discipline landed.
July 4, 2026 · 4 min read
Corrections agencies account for a large share of New Jersey's major police discipline
Two state and county corrections departments together produced more than 900 major discipline records from 2020 to 2025. Here is why they sit apart from municipal policing in this data.
July 4, 2026 · 4 min read
Where internal affairs activity concentrates in New Jersey
Two counties reported more internal affairs investigations in the most recent year than the twelve smallest counties combined. Population and department size explain much of it, but not all.
Staffing and pay
Who polices New Jersey, and what the public pays them.
July 27, 2026 · 4 min read
The New Jersey towns where police pay looks lower than school pay
Statewide, the median police officer out-earns the median school staff member by 32 percent. Drop to individual departments and 36 of 350 run the other way. Most of them are measuring a clock, not a pay scale.
July 26, 2026 · 3 min read
New Jersey's sheriffs and county jails have no staffing figure
Every municipal police department in the state reports its headcount to the FBI. Not one of the 21 sheriff's offices does.
July 26, 2026 · 3 min read
Women are 11% of New Jersey's sworn officers
In 1990 they were under 3%. The FBI has been counting since 1960, and the New Jersey line has been climbing slowly for thirty-five years.
Transparency signals
What else the public can and cannot see: radios, surplus equipment, records requests.
September 28, 2026 · 5 min read
How to look up a New Jersey police officer's discipline record
New Jersey publishes the name of every officer who received major discipline since 2020. Here is what that record covers, what it leaves out, and how to find a name on this site or through a records request.
July 26, 2026 · 3 min read
What happens when you ask New Jersey police for records
Of 12,883 public records requests filed to New Jersey police through one platform, over half were still marked as waiting for a response.
July 26, 2026 · 3 min read
What the Pentagon sent New Jersey police
Nineteen armoured vehicles, 4,628 weapons and 915 pieces of night vision equipment, spread across 179 agencies since 1993.
July 4, 2026 · 4 min read
Radio encryption and what the public can still see
At least 97 New Jersey departments in this site's data encrypt their radio communications. That choice closes one window on policing. The records here are another.