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Department profile · Essex County

Fairfield Police Department

Reported as: Fairfield PDMunicipal police

Jurisdiction context

Not a civil service jurisdiction

This department is not among the NJCSC Appendix A jurisdictions, so major discipline here follows a different statutory track (generally N.J.S.A. 40A:14 for municipal police), with appeals that usually go to the Superior Court rather than the Civil Service Commission.

See the context on non-civil-service departments.

Reflects the NJCSC Appendix A roster as of 2026-07-04. Context only, not legal advice.

In brief

Fairfield Police Department, a municipal police agency in Essex County, reported 51 internal affairs investigations in 2025 involving 27 officers named in those cases. Its rate of 188.9 per 100 officers was well above the Essex County median of 158.6 and the statewide municipal median of 125.9. Read carefully: a rate that high can signal a heavier misconduct volume, or a department that opens and logs cases other agencies never write down. Of the 51 investigations detailed for 2025, 10 reported sustained complaints. Demeanor led the allegation categories, followed by Other Departmental Rule Violation and Vehicular Pursuit Policy Violation.

Two major discipline records appear across the 2020-2025 releases, from 2020 and 2025. Fairfield PD received a D on the report card, at the 66th percentile among 110 peers in the 30-59 officers group, a high-confidence grade.

Written by this site strictly from the figures on this page; every number is cited below.

Officers named in IA cases, 2025

27[1]

Distinct officers in that year's IA investigations, not total staffing

IA investigations, 2025

51[1]

Incidents, 2025

43[1]

Major discipline records

2

All years, 2020-2025

Staffing

As reported by the department to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) census, full-time personnel as of October 31 each year. This is a different measurement from the "officers named in IA cases" figure above; see the methodology.

Sworn officers, 2025

43[7]

64 years reported

43 sworn officers in 2025, up from 9 in 1962 (+378%).
Yearsworn officers
19629
19639
196410
196510
196614
196716
196816
196919
197020
197120
197220
197320
197422
197522
197625
197725
197826
197927
198027
198128
198228
198329
198430
198533
198633
198731
198828
198936
199036
199136
199234
199334
199435
199535
199635
199735
199831
199936
200036
200134
200240
200339
200440
200538
200639
200741
200842
200940
201039
201135
201233
201335
201436
201535
201637
201736
201836
201942
202039
202143
202243
202343
202443
202543

Civilian employees, 2025

3[8]

0.07 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

2[9]

4.7% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

5.19[10]

Municipal departments only

AnalysisComputed by this site from LEE reported totals; not an official statistic.

How Fairfield Police Department's sworn staffing compares with its real peer group (same agency type, similar size band), not an assumed bell curve.

Peer group: Municipal police, 30-59 officers (n=111)

Sworn officers: Municipal police, 30-59 officers
RangeAgencies
30–3538
35–4027
40–4515
45–5014
50–5510
55–607

Fairfield Police Department: 43 sworn officers: 65th percentile among Municipal police, 30-59 officers (n=111).

The match between this FBI record and this department is this site's inference, not a certified mapping. If it is wrong, we will remove it: corrections.

Officer pay and school-staff pay

County comparison

A separate dataset from the discipline records above: NJ Treasury pension salaries as of March 31, 2026, for the 42 active Fairfield Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$119,136[2]

42 active officers

Median school staff

$90,554

Essex County, all TPAF members

Against the county

1.32x

Median officer to Essex County school-staff median

AnalysisEvery ratio here is computed by this site from as-reported pensionable salaries. A pay comparison is not a statement about either budget. The full county comparison, including the distribution and the tenure-adjusted figure, is on the Essex County pay page.

Military surplus equipment (1033 program)

No 1033 transfers recorded. No surplus-equipment transfers appear for this agency under a high-confidence name match in the Defense Logistics Agency's file as of 2026-06-30. That can mean the agency received nothing through the program, or that a recipient name in the federal file did not confidently match this department. See the methodology for how the match is made, or the statewide 1033 overview for how the program spreads across New Jersey.

Internal affairs investigations by year

counts

Internal affairs investigations reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
202139
202229
202319
202424
202551

Incidents

43 in 2025

Internal affairs incidents reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
202139
202229
202319
202423
202543

Officers on IA rows

50 in 2025

Officers listed on the officer-level internal affairs rows for Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
2021not reported
2022not reported
2023not reported
202423
202550
Analysis

Computed by this site from the two figures the agency reports each year. Not a misconduct rate: it describes how an agency resolved what it investigated.

share of total · 5 reported years

Share of internal affairs investigations sustained by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202217.241
202331.579
20244.167
202519.608

Statewide, 19.5 percent of investigations reported a sustained complaint in 2025. How dispositions break down statewide.

Complaint mix, 2025

Most serious allegation per investigation, as categorized by the reporting agency. Officer-level rows list 50 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Fairfield Police Department, 2025
Demeanor14
Other Departmental Rule Violation13
Vehicular Pursuit Policy Violation4
Improper Arrest4
Insubordination/Disobeying An Order3
Preventable MV Accident2
not provided2
Improper Search2
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Demeanor · Other Departmental Rule Violation · Vehicular Pursuit Policy Violation · Improper Arrest · Insubordination/Disobeying An Order · Preventable MV Accident · Improper Search

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Fairfield Police Department, 2025
not provided25
Sustained10
Exonerated5
Not Sustained4
Unfounded4
Administratively Closed3

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2025

AnalysisRanked and folded by this site. The counts inside each panel are as reported.

Demeanor

52 of 162

Demeanor allegations reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20215
20229
20238
202416
202514

Other Departmental Rule Violation

50 of 162

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
202133
20222
20231
20241
202513

not provided

12 of 162

not provided allegations reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20223
20237
20240
20252

Insubordination/Disobeying An Order

6 of 162

Insubordination/Disobeying An Order allegations reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20220
20230
20243
20253

Other (14 categories)

42 of 162

Other (14 categories) allegations reported by Fairfield Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20211
202215
20233
20244
202519

Against peers, 2025

How this grade was built →
Internal affairs investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers, 2025 (investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers)
Fairfield Police Department188.9
County median, municipal police (22)158.6
NJ median, municipal police (445)125.9

Investigations per 100 officers named in that year's IA investigations (the Attorney General's own "Number of Officers" field, a distinct-officer count drawn from the IA case data itself, not a department headcount). A higher number is ambiguous on its own: it can reflect more misconduct, or a stronger internal reporting culture. Medians are computed within the same agency type only.

AnalysisA second, independent rate using FBI-reported staffing instead.

51 investigations reported for 2025[1] ÷ 43 sworn officers the department reported to the FBI for 2025[22] = 118.6 per 100 FBI-reported sworn officers. This is a genuinely different denominator from the rate above, not a correction of it; the two should not be added or averaged together. See the methodology for why these two officer counts diverge.

Report card

Grade D: Second-highest fifth

On reported IA volume and discipline severity; see methodology

Combined standing
66th percentile of 110 peers
Confidence
High confidence

Where this agency falls among its peers

The actual spread of discipline severity across Fairfield Police Department's real peer group, not an assumed bell curve. If the group is skewed, it is shown skewed.

Peer group: Municipal police, 30-59 officers (n=110)

Discipline severity: Municipal police, 30-59 officers
RangeAgencies
0–5073
50–10025
100–1504
150–2006
200–2501
250–3001

Fairfield Police Department: 20 severity-weighted discipline per 100 IA-investigated officers: 40th percentile among Municipal police, 30-59 officers (n=110).

How the grade is built

Three components, each a percentile within the peer group. The combined standing is their weighted mean, re-ranked among peers; the grade is the fifth of the peer group it lands in.

IA volumeweight 40%

95th percentileof 110 peers

159.4 investigations per 100 officers (multi-year mean)

Internal affairs investigations per 100 reported officers, averaged over the years where the agency reported both figures.

Discipline severityweight 40%

40th percentileof 110 peers

20.0 severity-weighted discipline per 100 officers, 2020-2025

Major discipline records weighted by sanction (termination 4, demotion 3, suspension 2, other 1) per 100 officers.

Allegation severityweight 20%

20th percentileof 110 peers

1.82 mean severity tier (1 low - 4 critical)

Mean severity tier of IA allegations across 2021-2025, using the published tier map; unknown values excluded.

What this grade can and can't tell you

  • The underlying data is self-reported by agencies, one yearly snapshot at a time.
  • Allegations are not findings; many complaints end unfounded, exonerated, or not sustained.
  • There is no arrest or call-volume denominator in this data, so nothing here is a per-capita misconduct rate. A genuinely independent staffing-based rate, sourced from the FBI rather than this grade's own data, appears above when available. It is a different measurement, not a more accurate version of the grade.
  • A higher internal affairs volume is ambiguous: it can indicate more misconduct, or a more robust oversight and reporting culture. The grade weighs it anyway, because volume is what the record offers; that choice is published, not hidden.
  • The grade is one lens. The records it reads are on this page above.

Where this agency ranks

AnalysisRankings compare agencies of the same type only, on figures as reported. A high rank is reported volume, not a verdict.[23] How each metric is defined.
This agency's rank on each metric, among agencies of the same type
MetricValueRank
IA per 100 investigated officers2025188.932nd of 445 municipal police
IA investigations20255140th of 445 municipal police
IA incidents20254332nd of 445 municipal police
Major discipline2020-20252127th of 282 municipal police
Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year5.1939th of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.32x246th of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present20193rd of 458 municipal police

Major discipline records

1 major discipline records in 2025, holding roughly steady.
Yearmajor discipline records
20201
20210
20220
20230
20240
20251

1 major discipline records in 2025, holding roughly steady.

Major discipline records reported by Fairfield Police Department, 2020-2025
YearOfficerRankSanction as reportedSrc
2025Steven D'ArgenioCorporalSuspended 60 days[24]
2020Christopher NiemiecSergeantSuspended 20 days[25]

Every name links to the officer's record page with the agency's full synopsis and citation.

Fatal encounters recorded involving this agency

From the independent Fatal Encounters dataset, 2000-2021

In brief (written by this site from the records below)

One record in the Fatal Encounters dataset names Fairfield Police Department, from 2020. The as-recorded level of force in that record is listed as Gunshot. Fatal Encounters was an independent, crowdsourced journalism project, not a government source, and it documented deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind, including pursuits, deaths by suicide in police presence, and medical emergencies. A record is not a finding of fault against the department or any officer. The project stopped collecting in December 2021, so the dataset is frozen at that date.

Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced dataset that documented deaths during police encounters nationwide from 2000 until its collection ended in December 2021.[3] 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. A record appears here because Fairfield Police Departmentis named in the record's as-reported agency field. A listing is not a misconduct finding, and it is not connected to the Attorney General discipline records above. See the methodology. Each record links to its own page with the full as-reported details.

Public records requests

Records requests about this department filed through OPRAmachine, an independent site that files Open Public Records Act requests in public and publishes the responses.[4] This is a third-party, user-generated source, separate in origin from the Attorney General records elsewhere on this page.

Current as of 12 July 2026. These figures are a point-in-time snapshot and do not update: requests filed to OPRAmachine after that date do not appear here. For live activity, see this body on OPRAmachine.

This department has no separate listing on OPRAmachine. Records requests for it are handled through Fairfield Township (Essex), the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 20 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 57 filed to Fairfield Township (Essex) are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

20[4]

Identified by subject line, of 77 filed to Fairfield Township (Essex)

Most recent request

September 2025[4]

First recorded May 2020

Awaiting a response

16[4]

Requests with no response recorded yet

What happened to those requests

Statuses as recorded on OPRAmachine. They are set by the person who filed the request when they classify what came back, not by the agency and not by any court. They describe the fate of a records request and nothing else.

Recorded outcomes of police-related records requests to Fairfield Township (Essex) (requests)
Awaiting agency response16
Requester reported success2
Requester reported partial success1
Agency said records not held1

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Fairfield Township (Essex), by date and recorded status. Each was written by a member of the public. A request is a question somebody asked. It is not a finding, not an allegation this site makes, and not evidence that anything happened.

  1. 2025-09-29Awaiting agency response
  2. 2025-08-16Awaiting agency response
  3. 2025-06-22Awaiting agency response
  4. 2025-05-30Awaiting agency response
  5. 2025-05-30Awaiting agency response
  6. 2025-04-23Awaiting agency response
  7. 2025-03-01Requester reported success
  8. 2024-08-27Requester reported success
  9. 2024-08-27Requester reported partial success
  10. 2024-07-31Agency said records not held
  11. 2024-05-11Awaiting agency response
  12. 2023-08-31Awaiting agency response
Show what each request asked for, as the requester wrote it

These titles are quoted from OPRAmachine exactly as the requester typed them. They are the requester's words, not this site's, and some describe what the requester believed or suspected. Nothing here has been established as fact.

File your own records request

Anyone can request records from this municipality under the Open Public Records Act. This link opens a request on OPRAmachine, pre-filled with a neutral starting point you can edit or replace before you send it. The request, and any response, will be published there.

File an OPRA request about this department

See every request filed to Fairfield Township (Essex) on OPRAmachine.

What this section can and can't tell you

  • A request is not a finding. Every entry records what a member of the public asked for. None of it establishes that an agency did anything, and none of it is an allegation this site is making.
  • Statuses come from the requester, not the agency. On OPRAmachine the person who filed the request classifies the response they got, so “successful” means they said they got what they asked for. It is not the agency's word and not an adjudication.
  • Request volume is not a measure of misconduct. A long list usually reflects public interest, local journalism, or one determined requester. A short list usually means few people have asked.
  • This covers OPRAmachine only. Most OPRA requests in New Jersey are filed directly with agencies and never appear here, so this is a floor, not a total.
  • It is frozen at 12 July 2026. The figures come from a snapshot of OPRAmachine taken on that date and nothing refreshes them, so anything filed since is missing. Treat every number here as a lower bound that is only getting further out of date.
  • The count is an undercount, by design. Requests to Fairfield Township (Essex) are sorted by subject line, because that custodian also handles permits, property, and code enforcement. A request that is genuinely about the police but carries a vague subject line, and many do read only “OPRA Request,” is not counted here. The sorting is this site's own reading of the request titles, not a fact from the source, and it is deliberately cautious: it would rather miss a police request than show you somebody's building permit.

The match between this OPRAmachine body and this department is this site's inference, not a certified mapping. If it is wrong, we will remove it: corrections.

Questions and answers

What is a summary of Fairfield Police Department's internal affairs and discipline record?

Fairfield Police Department, a municipal police agency in Essex County, reported 51 internal affairs investigations in 2025 involving 27 officers named in those cases. Its rate of 188.9 per 100 officers was well above the Essex County median of 158.6 and the statewide municipal median of 125.9. Read carefully: a rate that high can signal a heavier misconduct volume, or a department that opens and logs cases other agencies never write down. Of the 51 investigations detailed for 2025, 10 reported sustained complaints. Demeanor led the allegation categories, followed by Other Departmental Rule Violation and Vehicular Pursuit Policy Violation. Two major discipline records appear across the 2020-2025 releases, from 2020 and 2025. Fairfield PD received a D on the report card, at the 66th percentile among 110 peers in the 30-59 officers group, a high-confidence grade.

How many internal affairs investigations did Fairfield Police Department report in 2025?

Fairfield Police Department reported 51 internal affairs investigations in 2025, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 27 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

How many major discipline records does Fairfield Police Department have?

Fairfield Police Department has 2 major discipline records in the Attorney General's 2020-2025 releases, of which 0 were terminations. These are final, adjudicated actions, not allegations.

How many officers does Fairfield Police Department have?

Fairfield Police Department reported 43 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 4.7% of them female. That is 5.19 sworn officers per 1,000 residents. This is a different measurement from the "officers named in IA cases" figure elsewhere on this page, which counts distinct officers in that year's internal affairs investigations, not total staffing.

How many deaths during police encounters are recorded for Fairfield Police Department?

The independent Fatal Encounters dataset contains 1 record naming Fairfield Police Department, from 2020 through 2020. Fatal Encounters is a crowdsourced journalism project, not a government source, and it documented deaths that occurred during police encounters of any kind. Each record links to a page showing it exactly as the project recorded it.

What does Fairfield Police Department pay its officers compared with local school staff?

The median pensionable salary for the 42 active Fairfield Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $119,136. Against the Essex County school-staff median the ratio is 1.32x. These are pensionable base salaries: they exclude overtime, stipends, longevity and leave payouts for both groups, and a school contract year and a police work year are different lengths. TPAF covers certificated school staff, not only classroom teachers.

Sources

  1. [1]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 2218. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  2. [2]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. ↩
  3. [3]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/ ↩
  4. [4]Records-request activity for Fairfield Township (Essex). OPRAmachine (opramachine.com), an independent public-records platform. Publicly visible requests only. Point-in-time snapshot taken 2026-07-12 from a database export dated 2026-07-11. Not updated after that date; see opramachine.com for current activity. ↩
  5. [5]New Jersey Internal Affairs Officers, 2024-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Officer counts summed across every Fairfield PD row. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  6. [6]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.
  7. [7]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8289. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  8. [8]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8289. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  9. [9]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8289. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  10. [10]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8289. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  11. [11]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 187. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  12. [12]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1202. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  13. [13]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1710. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  14. [14]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 694. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  15. [15]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 2218. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  16. [16]New Jersey Internal Affairs Investigations, 2024-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Aggregated from every Fairfield PD row for 2025; row 1 is the header. ↩
  17. [17]New Jersey Internal Affairs Data Download, 2021-2023. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Aggregated from every Fairfield PD row for 2021. ↩
  18. [18]New Jersey Internal Affairs Data Download, 2021-2023. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Aggregated from every Fairfield PD row for 2022. ↩
  19. [19]New Jersey Internal Affairs Data Download, 2021-2023. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Aggregated from every Fairfield PD row for 2023. ↩
  20. [20]New Jersey Internal Affairs Investigations, 2024-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Aggregated from every Fairfield PD row for 2024. ↩
  21. [21]New Jersey Internal Affairs Investigations, 2024-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. Aggregated from every Fairfield PD row for 2025. ↩
  22. [22]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8289. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  23. [23]Ranks computed by this site over the Attorney General internal affairs agency totals and major discipline releases, within agency type. Each ranking page lists every agency and its source rows. ↩
  24. [24]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 308. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩
  25. [25]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 2834. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩