A drunk off-duty sergeant driving the wrong way on a New Jersey highway hit another car head-on, killing a man. A patrolman critically injured a bicyclist in a hit-and-run. Other officers were caught with child pornography, attacked their spouses, stole money, sexually assaulted people in their custody, and otherwise broke the law.
Altogether, 654 law enforcement officers from 169 agencies in New Jersey were suspended, demoted, or fired last year for 817 offenses that ranged from startling to sleazy, according to a new report from the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office.
That’s about 100 officers more than the previous year and the most disciplined in one year since the state expanded such reporting in 2020. Altogether, agencies have levied more than 3,000 disciplinary actions against officers in the past five years, the reporting shows.
The latest report, which covers major discipline finalized in 2025, is the first since Gov. Mikie Sherrill took office in January. Major discipline includes suspensions longer than five days, demotions, and terminations.
Criminal justice advocates welcomed the continued reporting, saying such transparency is more important than ever since the Trump administration eliminated a federal police misconduct database, dropped civil rights probes into troubled police forces, including in Trenton, and ended federal oversight of others, including Newark.
“While the federal government rolls back some of the transparency and tools we had to hold police accountable, New Jersey has to continue to fortify its walls,” said Surraya Johnson, director of criminal justice reform at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. “We as a public need to continue to hold them accountable to make sure that they are upholding the oath that they took to protect and serve.”
Attorney General Jen Davenport said transparency and accountability are key to building public confidence in the state’s 31,000 officers.
“Maintaining faith in government and trust in law enforcement requires that residents know the State holds law enforcement to the highest professional standards,” Davenport said in a statement.
While the 654 officers punished with major discipline last year represent a tiny fraction of all officers statewide, the report chronicling their transgressions stretches over 561 pages.
Thousands more officers were accused of misconduct. State data shows agencies opened more than 16,000 internal affairs investigations last year involving more than 10,000 unique officers stemming from more than 11,000 incidents.
Most cops investigated for wrongdoing get cleared. Three-quarters of internal affairs cases reported last year ended with investigators finding no violations. About 40% of the cases where misconduct allegations were sustained were resolved with verbal or written reprimands, 18% in training or counseling, and 14% in unpaid suspensions, Davenport’s office reported.
Such numbers suggest that police accountability should be more robust, according to Marleina Ubel, a senior policy analyst for progressive think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective. Lawmakers can do that by passing long-stalled legislation to create civilian-led police review boards that would make misconduct investigations more independent, Ubel said.
“That is something that we should still be fighting for,” she said. “We need even more transparency than we have right now.”
Of the officers who faced major discipline last year, seven were police chiefs. More than 100 were repeat offenders. Almost 120 resigned or retired before discipline could be finalized.
The agency with the most misconduct was the New Jersey Department of Corrections, with its disciplinary reports running on for almost 150 pages.
Discipline was ordered for all sorts of infractions. The offenses included violating police pursuit policies, testing positive for drugs while on duty, mishandling evidence, misplacing firearms, and accepting bribes to smuggle weapons and other contraband to people in custody.
State Police Detective Mark Campagna got suspended and criminally charged after he chased a motorcyclist — while off-duty in an unmarked car at speeds topping 100 mph — until the biker collided with an oncoming car in Burlington County and died, the state’s report says. In Lodi, Officer Miguel Perez got suspended for 30 days for ignoring a disabled vehicle while he patrolled Route 46; seconds later, another car hit the disabled vehicle, leaving occupants of both with serious injuries, the report says. A correctional officer at the Burlington County Jail was fired and two supervisors suspended for failing to make required security checks and notifications, so that a deadly fight between cellmates went undetected overnight, the report says. And Bridgeton Police Sgt. Keristan Lowe was suspended for 180 days for failing to complete Megan’s Law registrations of sex offenders from 2022 to 2024, as he was required to do in his role in the juvenile/special victims unit, the report says.
Other disciplinary actions claimed abuses of power, including for officers who illicitly searched internal databases to settle personal grievances, a correctional officer who tampered with inmates’ tablets to cut their access to phones and other communications, and worse. Joshua Munyon of the Atlantic City Police Department was suspended without pay after he was criminally charged with sexually assaulting a handcuffed, intoxicated woman in his patrol car, according to the state’s report.
Excessive force and domestic violence earned dozens of officers discipline.
Vineland’s police chief, Pedro Casiano, resigned after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct stemming from an alleged domestic violence incident, the report says. East Orange police reported they terminated Devin Higgs after he was convicted in 2024 of beating his son, then 9, so badly in 2018 that the boy had 22 rib fractures and spent six weeks in the hospital recovering. Camden County Correctional Officer Tee Lormia got fired after he hit an incarcerated person in the head “with a round house kick,” while Bergen County Correctional Officer Richard Kirk landed a 15-day suspension after he was accused of kicking an incarcerated person who was handcuffed on the ground in the head, according to the report.
Other officers were punished for misbehavior that included getting in bar fights and car accidents, making racial, homophobic, or sexist slurs, posting inappropriate content on social media, sexual harassment, and lying to their superiors.
Other offenses seemed comparatively minor. Some officers got in trouble for uniform violations like poor grooming and wearing earrings, while dozens were disciplined for insubordination, abuse of sick leave, on-duty naps, and habitual lateness and no-shows.
And some infractions were just baffling.
Stephen Bratsch, a patrolman in Springfield Township, was suspended for 24 days after he went for a sit-down breakfast when he was supposed to be responding to a reported shoplifter, the report says. In Middlesex County, sheriff’s investigator Maximillian Biedermann was disciplined for various offenses, including shoplifting Pokémon cards from Walmart, according to the report. And David Williams, a senior correctional police officer for the state, retired after he was charged with several infractions, including taking an on-duty selfie with his privates exposed in a hospital bathroom, the report says.
The range of officers’ misdeeds proves the value of such public disclosures, said Maura Collinsgru, director of policy and advocacy for New Jersey Citizen Action.
“We’re in a moment where the polarization in our society, the economic stress that more and more people are under, the authoritarianism that’s rising — all of that is a recipe for things like this to increase,” Collinsgru said. “So it’s more important than ever that we have that oversight. No one serving in these positions is perfect, and those who are doing a good job serving their communities would support continued oversight and transparency too.”
