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Department profile · Sussex County

Newton Police Department

Reported as: Newton PDMunicipal police

Jurisdiction context

Civil service jurisdiction

Discipline at this department is governed by the Title 4A civil service framework, matched to Newton on the New Jersey Civil Service Commission roster.

Read how the process works or the Title 4A glossary. Browse NJCSNavigator’s civil service jurisdiction directory for the full local-jurisdiction roster.

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

In brief

Newton Police Department reported 30 internal affairs investigations in 2025 with 20 officers named in those cases, a rate of 150 per 100 officers. That matches the Sussex County median of 150 and sits above the 125.9 median for municipal police statewide. A rate that high can reflect either more misconduct or a department that logs more of its complaints. Of the 30 investigations detailed for 2025, 7 reported sustained complaints. Other Departmental Rule Violation was the leading allegation category, with Demeanor and Preventable MV Accident following.

No major discipline records appear in the 2020-2025 releases, and the absence of records is not a finding. Newton PD received a D on the report card, at the 65th percentile among 171 peers in the 15-29 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

20[1]

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

IA investigations, 2025

30[1]

Incidents, 2025

25[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

25[7]

66 years reported

25 sworn officers in 2025, up from 9 in 1960 (+178%).
Yearsworn officers
19609
19619
19629
19639
19649
19659
19669
196710
196811
196912
197012
197111
197210
197312
197412
197512
197612
197713
197813
197914
198014
198114
198215
198314
198414
198515
198615
198715
198815
198916
199016
199117
199218
199318
199424
199519
199619
199719
199819
199921
200021
200122
200221
200323
200423
200523
200624
200725
200825
200925
201024
201123
201222
201322
201422
201521
201623
201722
201824
201925
202022
202122
202222
202315
202415
202525

Civilian employees, 2025

5[8]

0.2 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

1[9]

4% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

2.96[10]

Municipal departments only

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

How Newton 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, 15-29 officers (n=166)

Sworn officers: Municipal police, 15-29 officers
RangeAgencies
14–1617
16–1820
18–2027
20–2217
22–2426
24–2623
26–2817
28–3019

Newton Police Department: 25 sworn officers: 75th percentile among Municipal police, 15-29 officers (n=166).

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 23 active Newton Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$97,202[2]

23 active officers

Median local school staff

$81,048

NEWTON BD OF ED, 181 TPAF members

Against the local district

1.20x

Median officer to median local school staff

Against the county

1.12x

Median officer to Sussex 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 "NEWTON 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 Sussex 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 Newton Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
202121
202235
202315
202420
202530

Incidents

25 in 2025

Internal affairs incidents reported by Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
202119
202229
202313
202414
202525

Officers on IA rows

29 in 2025

Officers listed on the officer-level internal affairs rows for Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
2021not reported
2022not reported
2023not reported
202418
202529
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 Newton Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202245.714
202346.667
20240
202523.333

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 29 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Newton Police Department, 2025
Other Departmental Rule Violation10
Demeanor5
Preventable MV Accident4
Differential Treatment3
Other Criminal Violation3
Improper Supervision/Failure To Supervise2
Improper Arrest1
Harassment/Stalking1
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Other Departmental Rule Violation · Demeanor · Preventable MV Accident · Differential Treatment · Other Criminal Violation · Improper Supervision/Failure To Supervise · Improper Arrest · Harassment/Stalking

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Newton Police Department, 2025
Unfounded11
Sustained7
Exonerated5
Administratively Closed4
not provided2
Not Sustained1

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2025

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

Demeanor

38 of 121

Demeanor allegations reported by Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
202113
202213
20234
20243
20255

Other Departmental Rule Violation

30 of 121

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20214
20226
20234
20246
202510

Excessive Force

9 of 121

Excessive Force allegations reported by Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20213
20223
20230
20243
20250

Improper Supervision/Failure To Supervise

7 of 121

Improper Supervision/Failure To Supervise allegations reported by Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20223
20232
20240
20252

Other (13 categories)

37 of 121

Other (13 categories) allegations reported by Newton Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20211
202210
20235
20248
202513

Against peers, 2025

How this grade was built →
Internal affairs investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers, 2025 (investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers)
Newton Police Department150.0
County median, municipal police (11)150.0
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.

30 investigations reported for 2025[1] ÷ 25 sworn officers the department reported to the FBI for 2025[22] = 120.0 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
65th percentile of 171 peers
Confidence
High confidence

Where this agency falls among its peers

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

Peer group: Municipal police, 15-29 officers (n=171)

Discipline severity: Municipal police, 15-29 officers
RangeAgencies
0–50120
50–10024
100–15015
150–2007
200–2503
250–3002

Newton Police Department: 0 severity-weighted discipline per 100 IA-investigated officers: 25th percentile among Municipal police, 15-29 officers (n=171).

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%

94th percentileof 171 peers

157.0 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%

25th percentileof 171 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%

55th percentileof 171 peers

2.07 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 officers2025150.098th of 445 municipal police
IA investigations20253076th of 445 municipal police
IA incidents20252574th of 445 municipal police
Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year2.96130th of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.12x329th of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present5135th 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 Newton 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 that logged deaths occurring 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, and it does not say police caused the death. 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 Newton 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.

  • Gulia Dale III

    July 4, 2021 · Newton · 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 Town of Newton, the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 51 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 74 filed to Town of Newton are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

51[4]

Identified by subject line, of 125 filed to Town of Newton

Most recent request

June 2026[4]

First recorded November 2017

Awaiting a response

20[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 Town of Newton (requests)
Awaiting agency response20
Requester reported success20
Requester reported partial success7
Request refused3
Under internal review1

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Town of Newton, 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. 2026-06-23Request refused
  2. 2026-04-17Requester reported partial success
  3. 2026-03-29Requester reported partial success
  4. 2026-03-09Awaiting agency response
  5. 2026-03-06Under internal review
  6. 2026-03-04Requester reported partial success
  7. 2026-02-13Awaiting agency response
  8. 2026-02-13Awaiting agency response
  9. 2026-02-13Awaiting agency response
  10. 2026-01-27Requester reported success
  11. 2026-01-21Request refused
  12. 2026-01-02Requester reported partial success
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 Town of Newton 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 Town of Newton 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 Newton Police Department's internal affairs and discipline record?

Newton Police Department reported 30 internal affairs investigations in 2025 with 20 officers named in those cases, a rate of 150 per 100 officers. That matches the Sussex County median of 150 and sits above the 125.9 median for municipal police statewide. A rate that high can reflect either more misconduct or a department that logs more of its complaints. Of the 30 investigations detailed for 2025, 7 reported sustained complaints. Other Departmental Rule Violation was the leading allegation category, with Demeanor and Preventable MV Accident following. No major discipline records appear in the 2020-2025 releases, and the absence of records is not a finding. Newton PD received a D on the report card, at the 65th percentile among 171 peers in the 15-29 officers group, a high-confidence grade.

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

Newton Police Department reported 30 internal affairs investigations in 2025, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 20 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

How many major discipline records does Newton Police Department have?

No major discipline records appear for Newton 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 Newton Police Department have?

Newton Police Department reported 25 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 4% of them female. That is 2.96 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 Newton Police Department?

The independent Fatal Encounters dataset contains 1 record naming Newton 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 Newton Police Department pay its officers compared with local school staff?

The median pensionable salary for the 23 active Newton Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $97,202. The median for the 181 TPAF-enrolled staff at NEWTON BD OF ED is $81,048, a ratio of 1.20x. Against the Sussex County school-staff median the ratio is 1.12x. 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 2512. 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 Town of Newton. 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 Newton 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 8594. 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 8594. 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 8594. 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 8594. 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 470. 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 1491. 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 1999. 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 975. 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 2512. 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 Newton 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 Newton 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 Newton 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 Newton 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 Newton 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 Newton PD row for 2025. ↩
  22. [22]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8594. 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. ↩