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Department profile · Bergen County

Woodcliff Lake Police Department

Reported as: Woodcliff Lake 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

2[1]

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

IA investigations, 2024

3[1]

Incidents, 2024

3[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

21[5]

64 years reported

21 sworn officers in 2025, up from 5 in 1961 (+320%).
Yearsworn officers
19615
19625
19636
19646
19656
19668
196710
196812
196913
197013
197114
197215
197314
197414
197514
197613
197713
197814
197914
198014
198115
198216
198316
198416
198516
198616
198716
198816
198918
199018
199116
199217
199316
199416
199516
199616
199717
199817
199917
200017
200118
200218
200318
200418
200518
200618
200718
200818
200917
201016
201118
201218
201318
201419
201518
201618
201718
201818
201919
202019
202120
202220
2023not reported
202420
202521

Civilian employees, 2025

1[6]

0.05 per sworn officer

Female sworn officers, 2025

2[7]

9.5% of sworn officers

Officers per 1,000 residents, 2025

3.36[8]

Municipal departments only

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

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

Peer group: Municipal police, 15-29 officers (n=166)

Sworn officers: Municipal police, 15-29 officers
RangeAgencies
14–1617
16–1820
18–2027
20–2216
22–2426
24–2624
26–2817
28–3019

Woodcliff Lake Police Department: 21 sworn officers: 46th percentile among Municipal police, 15-29 officers (n=166).

The match between this FBI record and this department is this site's inference, not a certified mapping. If it is wrong, we will remove it: corrections.

Officer pay and school-staff pay

County comparison

A separate dataset from the discipline records above: NJ Treasury pension salaries as of March 31, 2026, for the 21 active Woodcliff Lake Police Department officers in the file.

Median officer salary

$97,843[2]

21 active officers

Median local school staff

$79,170

WOODCLIFF LAKE BD OF ED, 93 TPAF members

Against the local district

1.24x

Median officer to median local school staff

Against the county

1.07x

Median officer to Bergen 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 "WOODCLIFF LAKE 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 Bergen 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 Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Categorycounts
20212
20223
20235
20243

Incidents

3 in 2024

Internal affairs incidents reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20223
20233
20243
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 Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearshare of total
20210
202266.667
202340
202433.333

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 3 officers involved.

Most serious allegation

Most serious allegations reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, 2024
not provided2
Demeanor1
AdministrativeConduct / dutyRights / integrityViolence / criminal

Statewide category pages: Demeanor

Internal disposition

Internal dispositions reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, 2024
Not Sustained2
Sustained1

Allegations by year, 2021 to 2024

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

Demeanor

4 of 13

Demeanor allegations reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20220
20233
20241

Attendance issues

3 of 13

Attendance issues allegations reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20221
20232
20240

Other Departmental Rule Violation

3 of 13

Other Departmental Rule Violation allegations reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20212
20221
20230
20240

not provided

2 of 13

not provided allegations reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20220
20230
20242

Harassment/Stalking

1 of 13

Harassment/Stalking allegations reported by Woodcliff Lake Police Department, by year
Yearcounts
20210
20221
20230
20240

Report card

Grade A: Lowest fifth of peers

On reported IA volume and discipline severity; see methodology

Combined standing
5th percentile of 171 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 Woodcliff Lake Police Department's real peer group, not an assumed bell curve. If the group is skewed, it is shown skewed.

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

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

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

How the grade is built

Three components, each a percentile within the peer group. The combined standing is their weighted mean, re-ranked among peers; the grade is the fifth of the peer group it lands in.

IA volumeweight 40%

13th percentileof 171 peers

104.2 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%

25th percentileof 171 peers

0.0 severity-weighted discipline per 100 officers, 2020-2025

Major discipline records weighted by sanction (termination 4, demotion 3, suspension 2, other 1) per 100 officers.

Allegation severityweight 20%

13th percentileof 171 peers

1.55 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 year3.3693rd of 460 municipal police
Police pay vs school paypension snapshot 2026-03-311.07x348th of 415 municipal police
OPRA requests recordedOPRAmachine, 2017 to present16253rd 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 Woodcliff Lake Borough, the municipal records custodian, which also fields requests about permits, property, and code enforcement. Only the 16 requests whose subject line indicates it concerns the police department are counted below. The other 77 filed to Woodcliff Lake Borough are about something else and are not shown.

Police-related requests

16[3]

Identified by subject line, of 93 filed to Woodcliff Lake Borough

Most recent request

December 2025[3]

First recorded May 2020

Awaiting a response

12[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 Woodcliff Lake Borough (requests)
Awaiting agency response12
Requester reported success3
Requester reported partial success1

Recent requests

The 12 most recent police-related requests to Woodcliff Lake 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. 2025-12-15Awaiting agency response
  2. 2025-10-05Awaiting agency response
  3. 2025-09-13Awaiting agency response
  4. 2025-08-27Awaiting agency response
  5. 2025-08-16Awaiting agency response
  6. 2025-05-17Requester reported success
  7. 2025-03-03Requester reported success
  8. 2024-11-28Awaiting agency response
  9. 2023-08-31Awaiting agency response
  10. 2023-08-31Awaiting agency response
  11. 2023-07-25Requester reported success
  12. 2020-05-28Awaiting 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake Police Department report in 2024?

Woodcliff Lake Police Department reported 3 internal affairs investigations in 2024, according to New Jersey Attorney General data. 2 distinct officers were named in that year's IA investigations.

How many major discipline records does Woodcliff Lake Police Department have?

No major discipline records appear for Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake Police Department have?

Woodcliff Lake Police Department reported 21 full-time sworn officers to the FBI's Law Enforcement Employees census for 2025, 9.5% of them female. That is 3.36 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 Woodcliff Lake Police Department pay its officers compared with local school staff?

The median pensionable salary for the 21 active Woodcliff Lake Police Department officers in the NJ Treasury pension file is $97,843. The median for the 93 TPAF-enrolled staff at WOODCLIFF LAKE BD OF ED is $79,170, a ratio of 1.24x. Against the Bergen County school-staff median the ratio is 1.07x. 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 595. 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 8196. 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 8196. 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 8196. 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 8196. 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 86. 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 1103. 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 1615. 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 595. 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake 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 Woodcliff Lake 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. ↩