What major discipline in New Jersey actually looks like

New Jersey's major discipline data records only the serious end of police discipline: termination, demotion, or a suspension of more than five days. Across the 3,006 records from 2020 to 2025, the shape of what agencies actually did is clear enough to describe plainly.

Suspension is the common outcome

Of the 3,006 records, 2,326 involve a suspension, 471 a termination, and 58 a demotion.^[1] These flags can overlap on a single record, because an officer can be suspended pending a termination that later becomes final, so the numbers are not meant to add to the total. The pattern they show is that serious discipline in New Jersey usually means time off, not the end of a career.

How long suspensions run

Of the 2,326 records flagged as a suspension, 2,244 carry a day count above zero. Their median is 19 days.^[1] The mean is 49, pulled up by a long tail.^[1]

The distribution is front-loaded. 707 of those suspensions run six to ten days, just past the five-day line that makes discipline "major," and another 506 run eleven to twenty.^[1] So more than half of all reported suspensions are three weeks or shorter. From there the counts fall away: 322 records at 21 to 30 days, 257 at 31 to 60, 143 at 61 to 90, and 107 at 91 to 179.^[1]

Then the tail. 138 records carry a suspension of 180 days or more, and 36 of those run a full year or longer.^[1] Six months is the length at which a suspension stops looking like a penalty and starts looking like a career interruption, and a year without pay is, for most officers, closer to a termination in effect than to the ten-day suspension that shares its column. A reader comparing two departments' suspension counts should look at the days, because the word covers both.

A note on the filter: the median above counts only records flagged as suspensions with a reported day count. A handful of records carry a day count without the flag, or the flag without a count, and they are left out rather than guessed at.

Termination is rarer than the headlines suggest

471 terminations across six years, out of 3,006 finalized actions, is the firm end of the scale.^[1] Termination is what most people picture when they hear "police discipline," but in this record it is the exception. That is not a judgment about whether it should be more common. It is what the data says agencies did.

There is also a quieter exit. 282 records note that the officer resigned, retired, transferred, or separated while an internal affairs matter was still pending.^[1] A separation while a case is open is not the same as being cleared, and it is not the same as being fired. It is its own outcome, and the data flags it as one.

By agency type

The mix differs by the kind of agency. Corrections agencies, the state Department of Corrections and the county jails, reported 1,319 of the 3,006 records, slightly more than the 1,243 from municipal police departments.^[1] Sheriff's departments reported 196, state agencies 190, county prosecutors 39, and other agencies 19.^[1]

Source: sanction flags by the reporting agency's type, all 3,006 records.^[1]

Two things stand out. Corrections agencies terminate at about the same rate as municipal departments, 16 percent of records against 15 percent, so the jails' large share of the file is not a large share of firings. And demotion is almost entirely a police outcome: 38 of the 58 demotions are municipal, and corrections agencies, with more records than anyone, reported 7.^[1] A demotion needs a rank to fall from, and a patrol-heavy jail workforce has fewer of those than a police department with a sergeant on every shift.

By rank

Rank is reported as free text, and this site groups the reported titles into standard buckets. Read that way, 2,401 of the 3,006 records belong to officers reported at the patrol level, whether the agency wrote "Police Officer," "Patrolman," "Corrections Officer," or a similar title.^[1] Sergeants account for 349 records, lieutenants 77, detectives and investigators 86, captains and majors 26, and chiefs 16.^[1] Recruits and trainees, who are usually still on probation, carry 28.^[1]

That distribution tracks headcount more than anything else: most officers are patrol officers, so most discipline lands on them. The rank pages list the named officers in each bucket, and the article on chiefs looks at the smallest bucket, where the person disciplined is the one who normally does the disciplining.

The other-sanction column

Beyond the three flags, the file carries a free-text column for any other sanction imposed. It is filled on 1,260 records, but most of those entries read "not applicable."^[1] Where it names something, the something is usually financial: 115 records list a loss of time and 89 a fine or loss of pay.^[1] A smaller number list training or counseling, a written reprimand, or an oral warning, sanctions that would not be "major" on their own and appear here because they accompanied one that was.^[1] One record cites job forfeiture under the criminal code.^[1]

The column is worth reading on an officer's page because it is where the agency describes what a suspension came with. It is not worth counting across agencies, because its wording is not standardized and its blanks are mostly silence rather than "nothing."

What the shape does not tell you

These counts describe how discipline was applied, not how often misconduct occurred or how serious any single case was. A suspension for a paperwork failure and a suspension for excessive force can carry the same day count and sit in the same column. The severity of what happened is in each record's sustained charges and the agency's synopsis, which is why this site shows those on every officer page rather than stopping at the sanction.

The record is what it is: mostly suspensions, most of them short, a firm minority of terminations, a smaller set of quiet separations. Read together, it is a portrait of how New Jersey draws the line on serious discipline, drawn from the agencies' own reporting.