County profile
Passaic County
19 law enforcement agencies reported internal affairs activity for 2025.
IA investigations, 2025
667[1]
Officers named in IA cases, 2025
457[1]
In brief
All 19 law enforcement agencies in Passaic County reported internal affairs data for 2025, together logging 667 investigations that named 457 officers. The Paterson Police Department accounted for the largest share with 292 investigations, ahead of the Clifton Police Department at 88 and the Passaic Police Department at 77. A county total is dominated by its largest reporters, and a high count can reflect either more misconduct or fuller recordkeeping.
Across the 2020-2025 major discipline releases, Passaic County agencies account for 77 records, including 16 terminations. The Passaic County Sheriff's Department carries the most with 24, followed by the Paterson Police Department with 17 and the Passaic Police Department with nine. Major discipline records reflect final, adjudicated outcomes.
Written by this site strictly from the figures on this page; every number is cited below.
Internal affairs investigations in Passaic County, by year
counts · 5 reported years
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 574 |
| 2022 | 624 |
| 2023 | 800 |
| 2024 | 714 |
| 2025 | 667 |
Where this county sits
| Measure | Value | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| IA per 1,000 residents2025 | 1.27 | 8th of 21 counties |
| Discipline per 1,000 residents2020-2025 | 0.15 | 13th of 21 counties |
| Officers named per 1,0002025 | 0.87 | 8th of 21 counties |
| Per officer named2025 | 1.46 | 9th of 21 counties |
| Not reporting2025 | 0% | 1st of 21 counties |
| IA investigations2025 | 667 | 6th of 21 counties |
| IA incidents2025 | 537 | 7th of 21 counties |
| Officers named2025 | 457 | 8th of 21 counties |
| Major discipline2020-2025 | 77 | 10th of 21 counties |
| Terminations2020-2025 | 16 | 8th of 21 counties |
Agencies in Passaic County
Scroll sideways for more columns →
Shading on Investigations and Major discipline compares each agency to the other 18 reporting agencies in Passaic County only. Not a grade or a judgment.
IA totals are for 2025; major discipline counts span 2020-2025. 9 of these agencies are in civil service jurisdictions governed by the Title 4A discipline framework (see the full local jurisdiction roster). 5 of these agencies encrypt their radio communications (source: PoliceRadioEncryption.com).
Police pay and school-staff pay
Full comparisonA separate dataset from the discipline records above: NJ Treasury pension salaries as of March 31, 2026, for 1,549 active police officers and 8,405 active TPAF-enrolled school staff whose employers the pension system places in Passaic County.
Median school staff
$89,773
Pensionable base salary
Ratio
1.34x
$30,299 a year
School staff below the median officer
89%
Share of the county's TPAF members
Military surplus equipment (1033 program)
Surplus military equipment transferred to PassaicCounty agencies under the Defense Department's 1033 program, as recorded by the Defense Logistics Agency.
Transfer window for the county: 1994-2024, earliest to latest recorded ship date. Statewide totals, per-county comparisons, and top equipment categories are on the 1033 program overview.
Fatal encounters recorded in Passaic County
From the independent Fatal Encounters dataset, 2000-2021
Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced journalism project that documented deaths during police encounters nationwide from 2000 until its collection ended in December 2021, so the dataset is frozen: no records after 2021 means the dataset ended, not that these deaths ended.[5] It records all deaths that occurred during a police encounter of any kind: vehicle pursuits, suicides in police presence, and medical emergencies are included alongside uses of force. The 36 records below appear here because the county the project recorded is Passaic County. A listing is not a misconduct finding, and it is not connected to the Attorney General discipline records on this page. See the methodology. Each record links to its own page with the full as-reported details.
35 of 36 records plotted. 1 carry coordinates the source placed outside New Jersey and are not shown; they remain in the record list below.
| County | Records |
|---|---|
| Passaic | 36 |
Individual records, with names, dates, cities, and the agencies the source names, are in the record list on this page.
2021 (2 records)
2020 (7 records)
2019 (3 records)
2018 (1 record)
2017 (2 records)
2016 (1 record)
2014 (3 records)
2012 (2 records)
2011 (1 record)
2010 (2 records)
2007 (1 record)
2006 (1 record)
2005 (2 records)
2004 (2 records)
2002 (3 records)
2001 (2 records)
2000 (1 record)
All 36 of these records, and every New Jersey record in the dataset, are on the fatal encounters index.
Questions and answers
How many internal affairs investigations did Passaic County report in 2025?
Agencies in Passaic County reported 667 internal affairs investigations in 2025, across 19 reporting agencies, according to New Jersey Attorney General data.
How many police major discipline records are there in Passaic County?
Passaic County agencies have 77 major discipline records in the Attorney General's 2020-2025 releases, including 16 terminations. These are final, adjudicated actions.
Which Passaic County police departments encrypt their radio?
5 agencies in Passaic County are listed as encrypting their radio communications by PoliceRadioEncryption.com. The full list is on the encrypted departments page.
How much military surplus equipment have Passaic County police received?
8 agencies in Passaic County matched recorded DoD 1033 program transfers worth $854,182 at original acquisition cost, per the Defense Logistics Agency's public file. These are transfers received over time, not a current inventory, and receiving surplus equipment is not misconduct.
How many deaths during police encounters are recorded in Passaic County?
The independent Fatal Encounters dataset contains 36 records whose recorded county is Passaic County, covering 2000 through 2021. Fatal Encounters is a crowdsourced journalism project, not a government source, and it documented deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind. It stopped collecting in December 2021, so the absence of later records means the dataset ended.
Sources
- [1]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. County totals summed over Passaic County agency rows for 2025; row 1 is the header. ↩
- [2]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. Record counts from Passaic County rows, all years; row 1 is the header. ↩
- [3]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.
- [4]DoD 1033 Program transfers (LESO Public Information), New Jersey sheet. Defense Logistics Agency (U.S. Department of Defense). LESO Public Information: DISP_AllStatesAndTerritories, quarterly file as of 2026-06-30; recorded ship dates 1993-2026. Retrieved 2026-07-10. https://www.dla.mil/Disposition-Services/Offers/Law-Enforcement/Public-Information/ ↩
- [5]Fatal Encounters, New Jersey subset. Fatal Encounters (fatalencounters.org). Fatal Encounters national dataset (2000-2021); collection ended December 2021. Retrieved 2026-07-10. https://fatalencounters.org/ ↩
- [6]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. ↩