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Department profile · Somerset County

Hillsborough Township Police Department

Reported as: Hillsborough Twp 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

Hillsborough Township Police Department, a municipal police agency in Somerset County, logged 31 internal affairs investigations in 2025 and named 24 officers in those cases. Its rate of 129.2 per 100 officers sits below the Somerset County median of 141.7 and above the 125.9 municipal median. Neither reading is conclusive on its own, because a higher rate can come from more misconduct or from a department that records more of its complaints. Of the 31 investigations detailed for 2025, 12 reported sustained complaints. Other Departmental Rule Violation was the leading allegation category, with Preventable MV Accident and Demeanor next.

No major discipline records appear in the 2020-2025 releases, and the absence of records is not a finding. Hillsborough Township received a C on the report card, at the 47th 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

24[1]

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

IA investigations, 2025

31[1]

Incidents, 2025

23[1]

Major discipline records

0

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

65[7]

58 years reported

65 sworn officers in 2025, up from 12 in 1968 (+442%).
Yearsworn officers
196812
196913
197017
197118
197218
197320
197424
197524
197627
197727
197825
197927
198027
198131
198231
198329
198430
198533
198634
198734
198837
198939
199039
199137
199239
199338
199441
199542
199642
199748
199853
199956
200057
200154
200257
200358
200454
200556
200655
200756
200855
200955
201055
201151
201250
201350
201451
201553
201652
201751
201853
201953
202054
202154
202257
202359
202459
202565

Civilian employees, 2025

9[8]

0.14 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

5[9]

7.7% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

1.41[10]

Municipal departments only

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

How Hillsborough Township 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, 60+ officers (n=92)

Sworn officers: Municipal police, 60+ officers
RangeAgencies
0–20084
200–4005
400–6001
600–8001
800–10000
1000–12001

Hillsborough Township Police Department: 65 sworn officers: 14th percentile among Municipal police, 60+ officers (n=92).

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 63 active Hillsborough Township Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$96,617[2]

63 active officers

Median local school staff

$88,463

HILLSBOROUGH TWP BD OF ED, 760 TPAF members

Against the local district

1.09x

Median officer to median local school staff

Against the county

1.11x

Median officer to Somerset County school-staff median

AnalysisEvery ratio here is computed by this site from as-reported pensionable salaries. The local school figure comes from the pension employer "HILLSBOROUGH TWP BD OF ED", linked to this municipality only because exactly one district in the county resolves to it. 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 Somerset 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 Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
202121
202248
202344
202446
202531

Incidents

23 in 2025

Internal affairs incidents reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
202121
202233
202332
202433
202523

Officers on IA rows

30 in 2025

Officers listed on the officer-level internal affairs rows for Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
2021not reported
2022not reported
2023not reported
202445
202530
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 Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202214.583
202322.727
202441.304
202538.71

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 30 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, 2025
Other Departmental Rule Violation15
Preventable MV Accident5
Demeanor4
Differential Treatment3
Other Criminal Violation2
Assault1
Improper Arrest1
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Other Departmental Rule Violation · Preventable MV Accident · Demeanor · Differential Treatment · Other Criminal Violation · Assault · Improper Arrest

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, 2025
Sustained12
not provided10
Unfounded4
Exonerated4
Not Sustained1

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2025

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

Other Departmental Rule Violation

59 of 190

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20216
202217
202310
202411
202515

Differential Treatment

31 of 190

Differential Treatment allegations reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20213
20224
202310
202411
20253

Preventable MV Accident

29 of 190

Preventable MV Accident allegations reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20228
20238
20248
20255

Demeanor

25 of 190

Demeanor allegations reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20215
20224
20235
20247
20254

Other (15 categories)

46 of 190

Other (15 categories) allegations reported by Hillsborough Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20217
202215
202311
20249
20254
Internal affairs investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers, 2025 (investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers)
Hillsborough Township Police Department129.2
County median, municipal police (18)141.7
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.

31 investigations reported for 2025[1] ÷ 65 sworn officers the department reported to the FBI for 2025[22] = 47.7 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 C: Middle fifth of peers

On reported IA volume and discipline severity; see methodology

Combined standing
47th percentile of 110 peers
Confidence
High confidence

Where this agency falls among its peers

The actual spread of discipline severity across Hillsborough Township 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

Hillsborough Township Police Department: 0 severity-weighted discipline per 100 IA-investigated officers: 15th 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%

86th percentileof 110 peers

148.3 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%

15th percentileof 110 peers

0.0 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%

50th percentileof 110 peers

2.08 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 officers2025129.2211th of 445 municipal police
IA investigations20253174th of 445 municipal police
IA incidents20252381st of 445 municipal police
Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year1.41439th of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.11x333rd of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present20193rd of 458 municipal police

Major discipline records

No major discipline records appear for this agency in the 2020-2025 releases. Absence of records is not a finding; see the methodology for what this data does and does not cover.

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 Hillsborough Township Police Department, from 2021. 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 vehicle pursuits, deaths by suicide in police presence, and medical emergencies. A record is not a finding of fault against the department or any officer. Collection ended in December 2021, so the dataset is frozen there.

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 Hillsborough Township 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.

  • Patrick Chin

    September 28, 2021 · Hillsborough · Highest level of force as recorded: Gunshot

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 Hillsborough Township, 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 124 filed to Hillsborough Township are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

20[4]

Identified by subject line, of 144 filed to Hillsborough Township

Most recent request

May 2026[4]

First recorded May 2020

Awaiting a response

17[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 Hillsborough Township (requests)
Awaiting agency response17
Requester reported success2
Requester reported partial success1

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Hillsborough Township, 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. 2026-05-08Awaiting agency response
  2. 2026-04-24Awaiting agency response
  3. 2026-01-15Awaiting agency response
  4. 2025-11-24Awaiting agency response
  5. 2025-04-25Awaiting agency response
  6. 2025-03-19Awaiting agency response
  7. 2025-02-13Requester reported success
  8. 2024-08-24Awaiting agency response
  9. 2024-05-27Awaiting agency response
  10. 2024-03-05Awaiting agency response
  11. 2023-08-31Awaiting 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 Hillsborough Township 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 Hillsborough Township 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 Hillsborough Township Police Department's internal affairs and discipline record?

Hillsborough Township Police Department, a municipal police agency in Somerset County, logged 31 internal affairs investigations in 2025 and named 24 officers in those cases. Its rate of 129.2 per 100 officers sits below the Somerset County median of 141.7 and above the 125.9 municipal median. Neither reading is conclusive on its own, because a higher rate can come from more misconduct or from a department that records more of its complaints. Of the 31 investigations detailed for 2025, 12 reported sustained complaints. Other Departmental Rule Violation was the leading allegation category, with Preventable MV Accident and Demeanor next. No major discipline records appear in the 2020-2025 releases, and the absence of records is not a finding. Hillsborough Township received a C on the report card, at the 47th percentile among 110 peers in the 30-59 officers group, a high-confidence grade.

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

Hillsborough Township Police Department reported 31 internal affairs investigations in 2025, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 24 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

How many major discipline records does Hillsborough Township Police Department have?

No major discipline records appear for Hillsborough Township Police Department in the Attorney General's 2020-2025 releases. Absence of records is not a finding; discipline is listed only after all appeals conclude.

How many officers does Hillsborough Township Police Department have?

Hillsborough Township Police Department reported 65 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 7.7% of them female. That is 1.41 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 Hillsborough Township Police Department?

The independent Fatal Encounters dataset contains 1 record naming Hillsborough Township Police Department, from 2021 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. Each record links to a page showing it exactly as the project recorded it.

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

The median pensionable salary for the 63 active Hillsborough Township Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $96,617. The median for the 760 TPAF-enrolled staff at HILLSBOROUGH TWP BD OF ED is $88,463, a ratio of 1.09x. Against the Somerset County school-staff median the ratio is 1.11x. 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 2481. 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 Hillsborough Township. 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 Hillsborough Twp 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 8576. 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 8576. 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 8576. 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 8576. 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 441. 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 1462. 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 1970. 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 946. 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 2481. 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 Hillsborough Twp 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 Hillsborough Twp 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 Hillsborough Twp 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 Hillsborough Twp 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 Hillsborough Twp 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 Hillsborough Twp PD row for 2025.
  22. [22]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8576. 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.