Department profile · Mercer County
Princeton Police Department
Reported as: Princeton 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
Princeton Police Department, a municipal agency in Mercer County, named 14 officers in internal affairs cases in 2025 and reported 18 investigations. Its rate of 128.6 per 100 officers came in under the Mercer County median of 133.3 and above the 125.9 municipal median. That middle position can reflect the level of misconduct or the department's own appetite for documenting complaints. Of the 18 investigations detailed for 2025, 1 reported a sustained complaint. Demeanor was the leading allegation category, with Other Criminal Violation and Loss Of Or Failure To Safeguard Agency Property also listed.
No major discipline records appear in the 2020-2025 releases, and the absence of records is not a finding. Princeton PD received an A on the report card, at the 11th percentile among 110 peers in the 30-59 officers group, a medium-confidence grade.
Written by this site strictly from the figures on this page; every number is cited below.
Officers named in IA cases, 2025
14[1]
Distinct officers in that year's IA investigations, not total staffing
IA investigations, 2025
18[1]
Incidents, 2025
15[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
54[7]
13 years reported
| Year | sworn officers |
|---|---|
| 2013 | 52 |
| 2014 | 52 |
| 2015 | 51 |
| 2016 | 52 |
| 2017 | 54 |
| 2018 | 52 |
| 2019 | 56 |
| 2020 | 51 |
| 2021 | 51 |
| 2022 | 51 |
| 2023 | 55 |
| 2024 | 55 |
| 2025 | 54 |
How Princeton 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)
| Range | Agencies |
|---|---|
| 30–35 | 38 |
| 35–40 | 27 |
| 40–45 | 16 |
| 45–50 | 14 |
| 50–55 | 9 |
| 55–60 | 7 |
Princeton Police Department: 54 sworn officers: 92nd 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 comparisonA separate dataset from the discipline records above: NJ Treasury pension salaries as of March 31, 2026, for the 53 active Princeton Police Department officers in the file.
Median local school staff
$99,845
PRINCETON BOARD OF EDUCATION, 439 TPAF members
Against the local district
1.20x
Median officer to median local school staff
Against the county
1.36x
Median officer to Mercer County school-staff median
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
| Category | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 6 |
| 2022 | 9 |
| 2023 | 14 |
| 2024 | 30 |
| 2025 | 18 |
Incidents
15 in 2025
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 6 |
| 2022 | 9 |
| 2023 | 12 |
| 2024 | 19 |
| 2025 | 15 |
Officers on IA rows
17 in 2025
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | not reported |
| 2022 | not reported |
| 2023 | not reported |
| 2024 | 30 |
| 2025 | 17 |
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
| Year | share of total |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2022 | 55.556 |
| 2023 | 7.143 |
| 2024 | 16.667 |
| 2025 | 5.556 |
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 17 officers involved.
Most serious allegation
| Demeanor | 13 |
|---|---|
| Other Criminal Violation | 2 |
| Loss Of Or Failure To Safeguard Agency Propert | 1 |
| Other Departmental Rule Violation | 1 |
| Conduct Unbecoming/Discredit To The Agency | 1 |
Statewide category pages: Demeanor · Other Criminal Violation · Loss Of Or Failure To Safeguard Agency Propert · Other Departmental Rule Violation · Conduct Unbecoming/Discredit To The Agency
Internal disposition
| Not Sustained | 12 |
|---|---|
| Exonerated | 2 |
| not provided | 2 |
| Sustained | 1 |
| Administratively Closed | 1 |
Allegations by year, 2021 to 2025
Demeanor
31 of 77
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 2 |
| 2022 | 6 |
| 2023 | 5 |
| 2024 | 5 |
| 2025 | 13 |
Differential Treatment
13 of 77
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2023 | 1 |
| 2024 | 12 |
| 2025 | 0 |
Other Departmental Rule Violation
11 of 77
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 2 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2023 | 5 |
| 2024 | 3 |
| 2025 | 1 |
Excessive Force
5 of 77
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 1 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2023 | 0 |
| 2024 | 4 |
| 2025 | 0 |
Other (8 categories)
17 of 77
| Year | counts |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 1 |
| 2022 | 3 |
| 2023 | 3 |
| 2024 | 6 |
| 2025 | 4 |
Against peers, 2025
How this grade was built →| Princeton Police Department | 128.6 |
|---|---|
| County median, municipal police (13) | 133.3 |
| 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.
18 investigations reported for 2025[1] ÷ 54 sworn officers the department reported to the FBI for 2025[22] = 33.3 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 A: Lowest fifth of peers
On reported IA volume and discipline severity; see methodology
- Combined standing
- 11th percentile of 110 peers
- Confidence
- Medium confidence
- small agency; per-officer rates swing widely on a handful of cases
Where this agency falls among its peers
The actual spread of discipline severity across Princeton 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)
| Range | Agencies |
|---|---|
| 0–50 | 73 |
| 50–100 | 25 |
| 100–150 | 4 |
| 150–200 | 6 |
| 200–250 | 1 |
| 250–300 | 1 |
Princeton 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%
112.7 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%
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%
2.29 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
| Metric | Value | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| IA per 100 investigated officers2025 | 128.6 | 213th of 445 municipal police |
| IA investigations2025 | 18 | 121st of 445 municipal police |
| IA incidents2025 | 15 | 122nd of 445 municipal police |
| Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year | 1.71 | 395th of 460 municipal police |
| Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-31 | 1.36x | 221st of 415 municipal police |
| OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present | 24 | 135th 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)
A single record in the Fatal Encounters dataset names Princeton Police Department, dated 2018. The dataset gives the force label, as recorded, as Gunshot. Fatal Encounters is an independent, crowdsourced journalism project that documented deaths occurring during police encounters of any kind, including vehicle pursuits, deaths in police presence, and medical emergencies. A record is not a finding of fault against the agency or any officer, and it is not connected to the Attorney General discipline records elsewhere on this page. The project stopped collecting in December 2021, so the dataset is frozen and nothing after that date appears here.
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 Princeton 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.
- Scott Mielentz
March 20, 2018 · Princeton · 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 Princeton Township, the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 24 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 93 filed to Princeton Township are about something else and are not shown.
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.
| Awaiting agency response | 14 |
|---|---|
| Requester reported success | 3 |
| Agency said records not held | 3 |
| Request refused | 3 |
| Under internal review | 1 |
Recent requests
The 12 most recent police-related requests to Princeton 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.
- 2025-09-16Awaiting agency response
- 2025-05-31Awaiting agency response
- 2025-05-30Awaiting agency response
- 2025-05-15Awaiting agency response
- 2025-04-29Awaiting agency response
- 2025-02-13Requester reported success
- 2024-07-31Agency said records not held
- 2024-07-29Request refused
- 2024-07-29Request refused
- 2024-04-30Request refused
- 2023-10-01Agency said records not held
- 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.
A member of the public requested: “BWC Footage”
2025-09-16 · Awaiting agency response
A member of the public requested: “Arrest reports of incident case #23-20-AR”
2025-05-31 · Awaiting agency response
A member of the public requested: “Arrest reports of incident case #23-52-AR”
2025-05-30 · Awaiting agency response
A member of the public requested: “Princeton Police Department Records Request”
2025-05-15 · Awaiting agency response
A member of the public requested: “Arrest reports of incident case #23-4-AR”
2025-04-29 · Awaiting agency response
A member of the public requested: “Synopses of Officer Misconduct and Major Discipline”
2025-02-13 · Requester reported success
A member of the public requested: “Arrest reports of incident case #23-1222-OF”
2024-07-31 · Agency said records not held
A member of the public requested: “BWC, Dashcam Footage, Reports from 7/28/2024 TD Bank Robbery”
2024-07-29 · Request refused
A member of the public requested: “BWC, Dashcam Footage, and Reports from the Incident at Clio Hall on 4/29”
2024-07-29 · Request refused
A member of the public requested: “BWC, Dashcam Footage, and Reports from the Incident at Clio Hall on 4/29”
2024-04-30 · Request refused
A member of the public requested: “BWC, Dashcam Footage, and Reports from the Incident on Hulfish St. on 9/30”
2023-10-01 · Agency said records not held
A member of the public requested: “Invoice of Body Camera Purchase in the Police Department”
2023-08-31 · Awaiting agency response
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 Princeton 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 Princeton 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 Princeton Police Department's internal affairs and discipline record?
Princeton Police Department, a municipal agency in Mercer County, named 14 officers in internal affairs cases in 2025 and reported 18 investigations. Its rate of 128.6 per 100 officers came in under the Mercer County median of 133.3 and above the 125.9 municipal median. That middle position can reflect the level of misconduct or the department's own appetite for documenting complaints. Of the 18 investigations detailed for 2025, 1 reported a sustained complaint. Demeanor was the leading allegation category, with Other Criminal Violation and Loss Of Or Failure To Safeguard Agency Property also listed. No major discipline records appear in the 2020-2025 releases, and the absence of records is not a finding. Princeton PD received an A on the report card, at the 11th percentile among 110 peers in the 30-59 officers group, a medium-confidence grade.
How many internal affairs investigations did Princeton Police Department report in 2025?
Princeton Police Department reported 18 internal affairs investigations in 2025, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 14 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.
How many major discipline records does Princeton Police Department have?
No major discipline records appear for Princeton 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 Princeton Police Department have?
Princeton Police Department reported 54 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 11.1% of them female. That is 1.71 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 Princeton Police Department?
The independent Fatal Encounters dataset contains 1 record naming Princeton Police Department, from 2018 through 2018. 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 Princeton Police Department pay its officers compared with local school staff?
The median pensionable salary for the 53 active Princeton Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $119,684. The median for the 439 TPAF-enrolled staff at PRINCETON BOARD OF EDUCATION is $99,845, a ratio of 1.20x. Against the Mercer County school-staff median the ratio is 1.36x. 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]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 2297. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [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]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]Records-request activity for Princeton 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]New Jersey Internal Affairs Officers, 2024-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Officer counts summed across every Princeton PD row. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [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]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8378. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
- [8]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8378. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
- [9]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8378. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
- [10]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8378. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
- [11]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 264. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [12]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1282. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [13]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1785. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [14]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 767. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [15]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 2297. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
- [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 Princeton PD row for 2025; row 1 is the header. ↩
- [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 Princeton PD row for 2021. ↩
- [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 Princeton PD row for 2022. ↩
- [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 Princeton PD row for 2023. ↩
- [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 Princeton PD row for 2024. ↩
- [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 Princeton PD row for 2025. ↩
- [22]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8378. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
- [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. ↩