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Department profile · Sussex County

Sparta Police Department

Reported as: Sparta PDMunicipal police

Jurisdiction context

Civil service jurisdiction

Discipline at this department is governed by the Title 4A civil service framework, matched to Sparta Township 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

Sparta Police Department logged 43 internal affairs investigations in 2025, its highest count in the reported years, involving 22 officers named in those cases. The rate of 195.5 per 100 officers ran well past the Sussex County median of 150 and the 125.9 statewide municipal median. Volume like that can reflect more misconduct or a department that writes up more of the complaints it takes in. Of the 43 investigations detailed for 2025, 7 reported sustained complaints. Other Departmental Rule Violation led the allegation categories, followed by Demeanor and Neglect of Duty.

Three major discipline records appear across the 2020-2025 releases, from 2020, 2024 and 2025. Sparta received a D on the report card, at the 75th 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

22[1]

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

IA investigations, 2025

43[1]

Incidents, 2025

35[1]

Major discipline records

3

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

37[6]

62 years reported

37 sworn officers in 2025, up from 11 in 1963 (+236%).
Yearsworn officers
196311
196413
196513
196613
1967not reported
196818
196920
197021
197121
197222
197321
197422
197521
197621
197720
197823
197925
198024
198123
198224
198324
198425
198525
198626
198727
198826
198928
199030
199130
199229
199329
199428
199529
199630
199732
199832
199934
200033
200134
200234
200334
200435
200539
200637
200740
200839
200937
201035
201129
201228
201328
201432
201529
201631
201728
201831
201931
202032
202135
202233
202337
202437
202537

Civilian employees, 2025

16[7]

0.43 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

3[8]

8.1% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

1.8[9]

Municipal departments only

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

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

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

Sworn officers: Municipal police, 30-59 officers
RangeAgencies
30–3538
35–4026
40–4516
45–5014
50–5510
55–607

Sparta Police Department: 37 sworn officers: 46th 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 35 active Sparta Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$124,347[2]

35 active officers

Median local school staff

$96,993

SPARTA BD OF ED, 365 TPAF members

Against the local district

1.28x

Median officer to median local school staff

Against the county

1.43x

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 "SPARTA 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 Sparta Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
202133
202216
202317
202421
202543

Incidents

35 in 2025

Internal affairs incidents reported by Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20215
202210
202313
202417
202535

Officers on IA rows

42 in 2025

Officers listed on the officer-level internal affairs rows for Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
2021not reported
2022not reported
2023not reported
202421
202542
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 Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202243.75
20230
20240
202516.279

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 42 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Sparta Police Department, 2025
Other Departmental Rule Violation16
Demeanor8
Neglect of Duty3
Excessive Force3
Attendance Issues3
Other Criminal Violation3
Preventable MV Accident2
Harassment/Stalking2
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Other Departmental Rule Violation · Demeanor · Neglect of Duty · Excessive Force · Attendance Issues · Other Criminal Violation · Preventable MV Accident · Harassment/Stalking

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Sparta Police Department, 2025
Unfounded21
Sustained10
Administratively Closed7
not provided4
Exonerated1

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2025

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

Other Departmental Rule Violation

57 of 130

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
202125
20227
20235
20244
202516

Demeanor

29 of 130

Demeanor allegations reported by Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20215
20225
20236
20245
20258

Excessive Force

8 of 130

Excessive Force allegations reported by Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20220
20234
20241
20253

Other Criminal Violation

7 of 130

Other Criminal Violation allegations reported by Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20220
20230
20242
20253

Other (10 categories)

29 of 130

Other (10 categories) allegations reported by Sparta Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20211
20224
20232
20249
202513

Against peers, 2025

How this grade was built →
Internal affairs investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers, 2025 (investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers)
Sparta Police Department195.5
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.

43 investigations reported for 2025[1] ÷ 37 sworn officers the department reported to the FBI for 2025[21] = 116.2 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
75th percentile of 110 peers
Confidence
High confidence

Where this agency falls among its peers

The actual spread of discipline severity across Sparta 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

Sparta Police Department: 35.714 severity-weighted discipline per 100 IA-investigated officers: 53rd 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%

88th percentileof 110 peers

150.0 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%

53rd percentileof 110 peers

35.7 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%

26th percentileof 110 peers

1.87 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.[22] How each metric is defined.
This agency's rank on each metric, among agencies of the same type
MetricValueRank
IA per 100 investigated officers2025195.530th of 445 municipal police
IA investigations20254352nd of 445 municipal police
IA incidents20253543rd of 445 municipal police
Major discipline2020-2025387th of 282 municipal police
Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year1.80366th of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.43x184th of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present3370th of 458 municipal police

Major discipline records

1 major discipline records in 2025, holding roughly steady.
Yearmajor discipline records
20201
20210
20220
20230
20241
20251

1 major discipline records in 2025, holding roughly steady.

Major discipline records reported by Sparta Police Department, 2020-2025
YearOfficerRankSanction as reportedSrc
2025Matthew LitchfieldPatrolmanSuspended 20 days[23]
2024Kurt MorrisPatrolmanSuspended 20 days[24]
2020Craig GrauerholzCorporalSuspended 45 days[25]

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

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 Sparta Township, the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 33 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 152 filed to Sparta Township are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

33[3]

Identified by subject line, of 185 filed to Sparta Township

Most recent request

June 2026[3]

First recorded November 2017

Awaiting a response

14[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 Sparta Township (requests)
Awaiting agency response14
Requester reported success7
Delivery error6
Agency said records not held3
Request refused2
Withdrawn by requester1

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Sparta 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. 2026-06-29Awaiting agency response
  2. 2026-05-04Request refused
  3. 2026-04-28Request refused
  4. 2026-04-28Agency said records not held
  5. 2026-04-28Agency said records not held
  6. 2026-01-02Awaiting agency response
  7. 2026-01-02Awaiting agency response
  8. 2026-01-02Awaiting agency response
  9. 2025-10-14Awaiting agency response
  10. 2025-10-07Awaiting agency response
  11. 2025-09-15Awaiting agency response
  12. 2025-04-29Awaiting 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 Sparta 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 Sparta 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 Sparta Police Department's internal affairs and discipline record?

Sparta Police Department logged 43 internal affairs investigations in 2025, its highest count in the reported years, involving 22 officers named in those cases. The rate of 195.5 per 100 officers ran well past the Sussex County median of 150 and the 125.9 statewide municipal median. Volume like that can reflect more misconduct or a department that writes up more of the complaints it takes in. Of the 43 investigations detailed for 2025, 7 reported sustained complaints. Other Departmental Rule Violation led the allegation categories, followed by Demeanor and Neglect of Duty. Three major discipline records appear across the 2020-2025 releases, from 2020, 2024 and 2025. Sparta received a D on the report card, at the 75th percentile among 110 peers in the 30-59 officers group, a high-confidence grade.

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

Sparta Police Department reported 43 internal affairs investigations in 2025, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 22 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

How many major discipline records does Sparta Police Department have?

Sparta Police Department has 3 major discipline records in the Attorney General's 2020-2025 releases, of which 0 were terminations. These are final, adjudicated actions, not allegations.

How many officers does Sparta Police Department have?

Sparta Police Department reported 37 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 8.1% of them female. That is 1.8 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 Sparta Police Department pay its officers compared with local school staff?

The median pensionable salary for the 35 active Sparta Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $124,347. The median for the 365 TPAF-enrolled staff at SPARTA BD OF ED is $96,993, a ratio of 1.28x. Against the Sussex County school-staff median the ratio is 1.43x. 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 2515. 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 Sparta 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. ↩
  4. [4]New Jersey Internal Affairs Officers, 2024-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Officer counts summed across every Sparta PD row. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  5. [5]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.
  6. [6]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8596. 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 8596. 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 8596. 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 8596. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  10. [10]New Jersey Internal Affairs Agency Totals, 2021-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Sheet1", row 471. 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 1493. 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 2001. 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 976. 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 2515. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  15. [15]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 Sparta PD row for 2025; row 1 is the header. ↩
  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 Sparta PD row for 2021. ↩
  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 Sparta PD row for 2022. ↩
  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 Sparta PD row for 2023. ↩
  19. [19]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 Sparta PD row for 2024. ↩
  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 Sparta PD row for 2025. ↩
  21. [21]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8596. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  22. [22]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. ↩
  23. [23]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 795. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩
  24. [24]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 1430. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩
  25. [25]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 3004. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩