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Department profile · Sussex County

Vernon Township Police Department

Reported as: Vernon Twp PDMunicipal police

Jurisdiction context

Civil service jurisdiction

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

Officers named in IA cases, 2025

3[1]

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

IA investigations, 2025

5[1]

Incidents, 2025

5[1]

Major discipline records

1

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[6]

49 years reported

34 sworn officers in 2025, up from 11 in 1976 (+209%).
Yearsworn officers
197611
197710
197812
197914
198015
198116
198216
198318
198419
198518
198621
198723
198825
198924
199026
199126
199226
199326
199428
199532
199629
199729
199829
199928
200029
200129
200229
200332
200430
200535
200634
200734
200832
200932
201029
201129
201229
2013not reported
201432
201532
201630
201732
201832
201933
202033
202133
202232
202333
202433
202534

Civilian employees, 2025

9[7]

0.26 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

1[8]

2.9% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

1.48[9]

Municipal departments only

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

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

Peer group: Municipal police, 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

Vernon Township 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 33 active Vernon Township Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$132,607[2]

33 active officers

Median local school staff

$90,353

VERNON TOWNSHIP BD OF ED, 332 TPAF members

Against the local district

1.47x

Median officer to median local school staff

Against the county

1.52x

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 "VERNON TOWNSHIP 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 Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
20215
202212
202412
20255

Incidents

5 in 2025

Internal affairs incidents reported by Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20213
202211
20247
20255

Officers on IA rows

5 in 2025

Officers listed on the officer-level internal affairs rows for Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
2021not reported
2022not reported
202412
20255
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 Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202233.333
20248.333
20250

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 5 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Vernon Township Police Department, 2025
Demeanor2
Harassment/Stalking2
Neglect of Duty1
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Demeanor · Harassment/Stalking · Neglect of Duty

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Vernon Township Police Department, 2025
Unfounded3
Exonerated1
Administratively Closed1

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2025

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

Other Departmental Rule Violation

10 of 34

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20223
2023not reported
20245
20250

Demeanor

6 of 34

Demeanor allegations reported by Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20222
2023not reported
20240
20252

Conduct Unbecoming/Discredit To The Agency

4 of 34

Conduct Unbecoming/Discredit To The Agency allegations reported by Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20220
2023not reported
20244
20250

Harassment/Stalking

3 of 34

Harassment/Stalking allegations reported by Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20221
2023not reported
20240
20252

Other (8 categories)

11 of 34

Other (8 categories) allegations reported by Vernon Township Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20211
20226
2023not reported
20243
20251

Against peers, 2025

How this grade was built →
Internal affairs investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers, 2025 (investigations per 100 IA-investigated officers)
Vernon Township Police Department166.7
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.

5 investigations reported for 2025[1] ÷ 34 sworn officers the department reported to the FBI for 2025[19] = 14.7 per 100 FBI-reported sworn officers. This is a genuinely different denominator from the rate above, not a correction of it; the two should not be added or averaged together. See the methodology for why these two officer counts diverge.

Report card

Grade D: Second-highest fifth

On reported IA volume and discipline severity; see methodology

Combined standing
74th 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 Vernon Township Police Department's real peer group, not an assumed bell curve. If the group is skewed, it is shown skewed.

Peer group: Municipal police, 30-59 officers (n=110)

Discipline severity: Municipal police, 30-59 officers
RangeAgencies
0–5073
50–10025
100–1504
150–2006
200–2501
250–3001

Vernon Township Police Department: 57.143 severity-weighted discipline per 100 IA-investigated officers: 73rd 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%

60th percentileof 110 peers

129.2 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%

73rd percentileof 110 peers

57.1 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%

41st percentileof 110 peers

2.00 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.[20] How each metric is defined.
This agency's rank on each metric, among agencies of the same type
MetricValueRank
IA per 100 investigated officers2025166.756th of 445 municipal police
IA investigations20255302nd of 445 municipal police
IA incidents20255267th of 445 municipal police
Major discipline2020-20251184th of 282 municipal police
Terminations2020-2025130th of 111 municipal police
Sworn per 1,000 residentslatest reported census year1.48429th of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.52x129th of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present12360th of 458 municipal police

Major discipline records

0 major discipline records in 2025, holding roughly steady.
Yearmajor discipline records
20200
20210
20220
20231
20240
20250

0 major discipline records in 2025, holding roughly steady.

Major discipline records reported by Vernon Township Police Department, 2020-2025
YearOfficerRankSanction as reportedSrc
2023Emanuel RiveraPtl.Terminated[21]

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 Vernon Township, the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 12 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 48 filed to Vernon Township are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

12[3]

Identified by subject line, of 60 filed to Vernon Township

Most recent request

September 2025[3]

First recorded November 2017

Awaiting a response

7[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 Vernon Township (requests)
Awaiting agency response7
Requester reported success3
Request refused1
Requester reported partial success1

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Vernon 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. 2025-09-15Awaiting agency response
  2. 2024-07-31Awaiting agency response
  3. 2023-08-31Requester reported success
  4. 2023-08-31Awaiting agency response
  5. 2023-08-06Request refused
  6. 2021-04-20Requester reported success
  7. 2020-05-28Awaiting agency response
  8. 2020-05-28Awaiting agency response
  9. 2020-05-27Awaiting agency response
  10. 2020-05-27Requester reported partial success
  11. 2020-05-27Awaiting agency response
  12. 2017-11-19Requester 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 Vernon 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 Vernon 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

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

Vernon Township Police Department reported 5 internal affairs investigations in 2025, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 3 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

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

Vernon Township Police Department has 1 major discipline records in the Attorney General's 2020-2025 releases, of which 1 were terminations. These are final, adjudicated actions, not allegations.

How many officers does Vernon Township Police Department have?

Vernon Township Police Department reported 34 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 2.9% of them female. That is 1.48 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 Vernon Township Police Department pay its officers compared with local school staff?

The median pensionable salary for the 33 active Vernon Township Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $132,607. The median for the 332 TPAF-enrolled staff at VERNON TOWNSHIP BD OF ED is $90,353, a ratio of 1.47x. Against the Sussex County school-staff median the ratio is 1.52x. 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 2519. 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 Vernon 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 Vernon Twp 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 8598. 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 8598. 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 8598. 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 8598. 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 473. 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 1496. 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 980. 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 2519. Snapshot retrieved 2026-06-09. ↩
  14. [14]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 Vernon Twp PD row for 2025; row 1 is the header. ↩
  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 Vernon Twp PD row for 2021. ↩
  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 Vernon Twp PD row for 2022. ↩
  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 Vernon Twp PD row for 2024. ↩
  18. [18]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 Vernon Twp PD row for 2025. ↩
  19. [19]FBI Law Enforcement Employees (LEE), New Jersey subset. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Row 8598. Derived from the public Law Enforcement Employees (LEE) / Police Employee Data dataset (1960-2025), https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/. ↩
  20. [20]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. ↩
  21. [21]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 1975. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩