The New Jersey agencies that report no internal affairs investigations

Alongside its internal affairs data, the New Jersey Attorney General publishes a quieter document: a list, by year, of the law enforcement agencies that reported no internal affairs investigations at all.^[1] The counts are small and steady. Thirty-five agencies appeared on the 2021 list, 31 in 2022, 35 in 2023, and 27 in each of 2024 and 2025.^[1]

A zero is a data point, and it is worth reading with some care.

What a zero can mean

For a small department, a year with no internal affairs investigations is entirely plausible. A borough force with a handful of officers can go a year without a complaint that opens a formal review. Nothing about a single zero implies a problem.

The reason to publish the list at all is that a zero is also the shape a reporting gap takes. An agency that never files does not show up as missing. It shows up as a clean record. The list is the mechanism that keeps the absence visible, and this site carries that signal onto the page: any department the Attorney General lists for a given year is flagged on its own profile and in its county, with the year noted.

The pattern over time

Most agencies that appear do so once. Of the departments that could be matched to the internal affairs census, 81 were listed in a single year across the five years, and the number listed in two or more years drops off quickly.^[2] That is roughly what you would expect if most zeros are ordinary quiet years at small agencies.

A handful recur. One department, Midland Park in Bergen County, was listed in four of the five years.^[2] A repeated appearance is not evidence of misconduct, and it is not an accusation. It is a reason to look, which is the entire point of publishing the list.

How this site treats it

Non-reporting lowers confidence rather than lowering a grade. On a department's report card, years on the non-reporting list appear as a stated confidence note, not as a mark against the department, because a grade built partly on internal affairs volume means less when the agency reported none.

The bright line is the same one that governs the rest of the site. A zero is a fact, shown as reported. What it signals is a matter of reading, and the reading offered here is modest: a single zero is usually nothing, a repeated one is worth a second look, and neither is a finding on its own.

Every agency's page lists the years it appears, sourced to the Attorney General's own document. The methodology page explains how the flag is matched and applied.