County profile
Union County
25 law enforcement agencies reported internal affairs activity for 2025.
IA investigations, 2025
743[1]
Officers named in IA cases, 2025
510[1]
In brief
Union County's 25 agencies all filed internal affairs summaries for 2025, reporting 743 investigations and 510 officers named in them. The Elizabeth Police Department logged 149, the Union Township Police Department 113 and the Linden Police Department 101. Those counts track how much a department investigates, which is not the same as how much misconduct it has.
Across the 2020-2025 releases, 96 major discipline records name Union County agencies, including 9 terminations. Linden carries 18, Elizabeth 16 and the Plainfield Police Department 10. Major discipline is final and adjudicated.
Written by this site strictly from the figures on this page; every number is cited below.
Internal affairs investigations in Union County, by year
counts · 5 reported years
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 745 |
| 2022 | 877 |
| 2023 | 849 |
| 2024 | 880 |
| 2025 | 743 |
Where this county sits
| Measure | Value | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| IA per 1,000 residents2025 | 1.29 | 7th of 21 counties |
| Discipline per 1,000 residents2020-2025 | 0.17 | 11th of 21 counties |
| Officers named per 1,0002025 | 0.89 | 7th of 21 counties |
| Per officer named2025 | 1.46 | 10th of 21 counties |
| Not reporting2025 | 0% | 1st of 21 counties |
| IA investigations2025 | 743 | 5th of 21 counties |
| IA incidents2025 | 565 | 5th of 21 counties |
| Officers named2025 | 510 | 5th of 21 counties |
| Major discipline2020-2025 | 96 | 9th of 21 counties |
| Terminations2020-2025 | 9 | 13th of 21 counties |
Agencies in Union County
Scroll sideways for more columns →
Shading on Investigations and Major discipline compares each agency to the other 24 reporting agencies in Union County only. Not a grade or a judgment.
IA totals are for 2025; major discipline counts span 2020-2025. 11 of these agencies are in civil service jurisdictions governed by the Title 4A discipline framework (see the full local jurisdiction roster). 6 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 1,759 active police officers and 10,092 active TPAF-enrolled school staff whose employers the pension system places in Union County.
Median school staff
$89,365
Pensionable base salary
Ratio
1.37x
$33,253 a year
School staff below the median officer
93%
Share of the county's TPAF members
Military surplus equipment (1033 program)
Surplus military equipment transferred to UnionCounty agencies under the Defense Department's 1033 program, as recorded by the Defense Logistics Agency.
Transfer window for the county: 2002-2025, 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 Union 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 24 records below appear here because the county the project recorded is Union 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.
23 of 24 records plotted. 1 carry coordinates the source placed outside New Jersey and are not shown; they remain in the record list below.
| County | Records |
|---|---|
| Union | 24 |
Individual records, with names, dates, cities, and the agencies the source names, are in the record list on this page.
2018 (1 record)
2017 (3 records)
2016 (2 records)
2015 (2 records)
2014 (1 record)
2013 (1 record)
2011 (2 records)
2010 (2 records)
2009 (1 record)
2007 (1 record)
2005 (1 record)
2004 (1 record)
2002 (1 record)
2001 (1 record)
2000 (4 records)
All 24 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 Union County report in 2025?
Agencies in Union County reported 743 internal affairs investigations in 2025, across 25 reporting agencies, according to New Jersey Attorney General data.
How many police major discipline records are there in Union County?
Union County agencies have 96 major discipline records in the Attorney General's 2020-2025 releases, including 9 terminations. These are final, adjudicated actions.
Which Union County police departments encrypt their radio?
6 agencies in Union 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 Union County police received?
10 agencies in Union County matched recorded DoD 1033 program transfers worth $2,583,389 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 Union County?
The independent Fatal Encounters dataset contains 24 records whose recorded county is Union 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 Union 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 Union 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. ↩