Skip to content
POLICE TRANSPARENCY NJ
Menu

Department profile · Somerset County

Somerville Police Department

Reported as: Somerville 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.

Officers named in IA cases, 2024

5[1]

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

IA investigations, 2024

6[1]

Incidents, 2024

6[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

34[5]

66 years reported

34 sworn officers in 2025, up from 22 in 1960 (+55%).
Yearsworn officers
196022
196124
196224
196324
196424
196525
196624
196727
196826
196929
197030
197131
197232
197332
197434
197534
197633
197734
197834
197934
198033
198134
198234
198333
198431
198532
198632
198732
198832
198934
199033
199133
199233
199335
199434
199534
199632
199731
199832
199932
200032
200132
200232
200332
200432
200530
200632
200732
200831
200932
201031
201131
201230
201330
201429
201531
201632
201731
201831
201932
202031
202131
202234
202334
202434
202534

Civilian employees, 2025

2[6]

0.06 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

3[7]

8.8% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

2.26[8]

Municipal departments only

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

How Somerville 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
30–3537
35–4027
40–4516
45–5014
50–5510
55–607

Somerville Police Department: 34 sworn officers: 29th 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 34 active Somerville Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$146,648[2]

34 active officers

Median local school staff

$92,080

SOMERVILLE BD OF ED, 256 TPAF members

Against the local district

1.59x

Median officer to median local school staff

Against the county

1.69x

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 "SOMERVILLE 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 Somerville Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
20212
20229
20234
20246

Incidents

6 in 2024

Internal affairs incidents reported by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20226
20234
20246
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 · 4 reported years

Share of internal affairs investigations sustained by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202211.111
202325
202416.667

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

Complaint mix, 2024

Most serious allegation per investigation, as categorized by the reporting agency. Officer-level rows list 6 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Somerville Police Department, 2024
Other Departmental Rule Violation4
Demeanor1
Differential Treatment1
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Other Departmental Rule Violation · Demeanor · Differential Treatment

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Somerville Police Department, 2024
Exonerated3
Not Sustained2
Sustained1

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2024

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

Differential Treatment

7 of 21

Differential Treatment allegations reported by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20222
20232
20241

Demeanor

6 of 21

Demeanor allegations reported by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20225
20230
20241

Other Departmental Rule Violation

6 of 21

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20221
20231
20244

Excessive Force

1 of 21

Excessive Force allegations reported by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20220
20231
20240

Sexual Assault/Criminal Sexual Violation

1 of 21

Sexual Assault/Criminal Sexual Violation allegations reported by Somerville Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20221
20230
20240

Report card

Grade B: Second-lowest fifth

On reported IA volume and discipline severity; see methodology

Combined standing
32nd 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 Somerville 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

Somerville 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%

63rd percentileof 110 peers

130.0 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%

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%

64th percentileof 110 peers

2.24 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.[18] How each metric is defined.
This agency's rank on each metric, among agencies of the same type
MetricValueRank
Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year2.26256th of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.69x53rd of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present22156th 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.

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.[3] 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 Somerville Borough, the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 22 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 120 filed to Somerville Borough are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

22[3]

Identified by subject line, of 142 filed to Somerville Borough

Most recent request

March 2026[3]

First recorded November 2017

Awaiting a response

13[3]

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 Somerville Borough (requests)
Awaiting agency response13
Requester reported success7
Requester reported partial success2

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Somerville Borough, 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. 2026-03-04Awaiting agency response
  2. 2025-08-16Awaiting agency response
  3. 2025-04-28Awaiting agency response
  4. 2025-03-21Requester reported success
  5. 2025-02-13Requester reported partial success
  6. 2024-11-28Awaiting agency response
  7. 2024-10-25Awaiting agency response
  8. 2024-09-28Awaiting agency response
  9. 2024-08-26Awaiting agency response
  10. 2024-06-18Requester reported success
  11. 2024-05-10Requester reported success
  12. 2024-04-20Requester reported 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 Somerville Borough 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 Somerville Borough 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

How many internal affairs investigations did Somerville Police Department report in 2024?

Somerville Police Department reported 6 internal affairs investigations in 2024, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 5 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

How many major discipline records does Somerville Police Department have?

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

Somerville Police Department reported 34 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 8.8% of them female. That is 2.26 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.

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

The median pensionable salary for the 34 active Somerville Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $146,648. The median for the 256 TPAF-enrolled staff at SOMERVILLE BD OF ED is $92,080, a ratio of 1.59x. Against the Somerset County school-staff median the ratio is 1.69x. 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 955. 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]Records-request activity for Somerville Borough. 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. ↩
  4. [4]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.
  5. [5]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8582. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  6. [6]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8582. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  7. [7]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8582. 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 8582. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  9. [9]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 450. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  10. [10]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1471. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  11. [11]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 1979. 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 955. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  13. [13]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 Somerville PD row for 2024; row 1 is the header. ↩
  14. [14]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 Somerville PD row for 2021. ↩
  15. [15]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 Somerville PD row for 2022. ↩
  16. [16]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 Somerville PD row for 2023. ↩
  17. [17]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 Somerville PD row for 2024. ↩
  18. [18]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. ↩