Officer record · As reported by the employing agency

James Lawson

Department Of Corrections · 2 records · 2021

About this data

Records on this page come from the Attorney General's major discipline releases: final, post-appeal discipline as reported by the employing agency. They are sustained charges, not allegations.
All figures are self-reported by agencies to the New Jersey Attorney General and shown as reported. Blank fields read "not reported," never "no."
Data is a yearly snapshot. Cases are not tracked across years, and major discipline appears only in the year it became final after all appeals.
In internal affairs data, allegations are not findings: many complaints end unfounded, exonerated, or not sustained.
Any compensation figure below comes from New Jersey Treasury pension data, a separate source from the discipline records. It is matched to this officer by name and employing agency at high confidence, not by certified identity.

Full caveats and definitions: methodology. To request a correction against the official record: corrections.

Major discipline · 2021^[1]

Suspended 30 days

Rank as reported: Sergeant
Sustained charge(s): not provided
Separated while IA pending: not applicable (collected 2023 and later)

Plain-language summary (this site, from the cited record only)

Sergeant James Lawson was suspended for 30 days by the Department of Corrections in 2021. The record states Lawson violated the violence in the workplace policy. The agency did not provide the specific sustained charges for this record.

Synopsis as reported by the agency

Violated violence in workplace policy.

Major discipline · 2021^[2]

DemotedSuspended 90 days

Rank as reported: Sergeant
Sustained charge(s): not provided
Separated while IA pending: not applicable (collected 2023 and later)

Plain-language summary (this site, from the cited record only)

Sergeant James Lawson was demoted and suspended for 90 days by the Department Of Corrections in 2021, the record shows. The listed reason was an inappropriate social media post. Lawson was not terminated. The agency did not report the sustained charges or any other sanction.

Synopsis as reported by the agency

Inappropriate social media post.

Compensation and pension

Active member · NJ Treasury YourMoney^[3]

This site: records-based match

Base salary (pension basis): $56,810
Pension fund: Police and Firemen's Retirement System (PFRS)
Reported years of service: 27 years, 5 months

How to read this

The amount is as reported by the New Jersey Department of the Treasury in its YourMoney pension data, as of March 31, 2026. It is the pension-basis figure and may not include overtime, accrued leave, stipends, or other pay. The link between this officer and this pension record is a records-based match at high confidence (exact name and exact employing agency), not a certified identity. If it is wrong, we will remove it: corrections.

Sources

[1]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 2707. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩
[2]New Jersey Major Discipline Data, 2020-2025. New Jersey Office of the Attorney General. Sheet "Major Discipline Data", row 2732. Snapshot retrieved 2026-07-03. ↩
[3]YourMoney Active Pension Members (PFRS/SPRS subset). New Jersey Department of the Treasury. Row 215440, snapshot as of March 31, 2026. Derived from the public YourMoney Active Pension Members dataset, https://www.yourmoney.nj.gov/. ↩