8. Crime and Safety

Method and what the numbers are

This section reports offense counts and rates as recorded by the FBI Crime Data Explorer (CDE) for the Ridgewood Police Department (ORI NJ0025100) and four adjacent agencies, for calendar years 2021 through 2025. The CDE figures are the counts each department submitted to the FBI through the New Jersey State Police UCR program. Annual counts below are sums of the twelve monthly counts returned by the CDE summarized-data API; the CDE data was last refreshed August 15, 2026, with data through August 2026 [1].

Rates per 1,000 residents use the population the FBI assigns to each agency in the CDE for that year (stated in each table). For Ridgewood, a second set of rates is computed on the Census 2020 count of 25,979 [2]. The two denominators differ by roughly 2 to 3 percent and do not change any figure by more than 0.15 per 1,000.

Two definitions apply throughout. Violent is the sum of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Property is the sum of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is excluded from both, following FBI convention.

Counts are offenses reported to police, not convictions and not victimization surveys. A category with fewer than 30 events in a year is subject to large year-to-year swings from small numbers; every violent-crime cell in this section is in that range, and n is shown on every row.

The NIBRS transition and data gaps

The FBI retired the Summary Reporting System (SRS) and moved all agencies to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) effective January 1, 2021. The CDE lists NIBRS start dates for the five agencies covered here as follows: Ridgewood, January 1, 2021; Glen Rock, January 1, 2021; Wyckoff, January 1, 2021; Midland Park, August 1, 2021; Ho-Ho-Kus, October 1, 2021 [3].

Three consequences for the data:

1. 2020 and earlier are SRS; 2021 onward are NIBRS. SRS applied a hierarchy rule (only the most serious offense in an incident was counted); NIBRS counts every offense in an incident. Counts across the 2020/2021 line are not strictly comparable. Ridgewood’s 2020 figures are shown for reference only.
2. Months not reported are missing, not zero. Ho-Ho-Kus reported 2 of 12 months in 2021, 10 in 2022, 11 in 2023, 10 in 2024, and 12 in 2025. Midland Park reported 5 of 12 months in 2021. Wyckoff reported 11 of 12 months in 2022 and 2023. Ridgewood and Glen Rock reported all 12 months in every year 2021 through 2025. Annual figures for agencies with missing months are shown with the number of months and are not rated.
3. Statewide coverage was incomplete in 2021. Agencies covering 85.3 percent of New Jersey’s population reported to NIBRS in December 2021; coverage was 96.1 percent in 2022, 95.4 percent in 2023, 98.2 percent in 2024, and 97.7 percent in 2025 [4]. Statewide rates below are computed on the participating population, not the full state population, and the 2021 statewide row should be read with the coverage figure beside it.

The New Jersey State Police publishes its own annual Uniform Crime Report with per-municipality and per-county tables. As of September 7, 2026, the most recent full-year report posted is 2023 (released April 16, 2025) and the most recent partial-year release is January through March 2024 [5]. The NJSP municipal tables are the cross-check for the FBI figures below.

Ridgewood: five-year table

Ridgewood Police Department, offenses reported, 2021 through 2025 (2020 shown for reference, SRS) [1]

Five-year totals, 2021 through 2025: 49 violent offenses, 797 property offenses.

Same counts on the Census 2020 denominator (25,979) [2]

Composition of the violent count [1]

Composition of the property count [1]

The CDE property-crime total exceeds the sum of its three components by 2 in 2020 and by 1 in 2022. The source of the difference is not identified in the API output. Component figures are used for composition; the CDE total is used for the rate.

Larceny-theft accounted for 71 percent of Ridgewood’s property offenses in 2021 and 79 percent in 2025.

Motor vehicle theft

Ridgewood motor vehicle thefts reported to the FBI: 9 in 2020, 26 in 2021, 53 in 2022, 10 in 2023, 12 in 2024, 9 in 2025 [1]. Within 2022, 35 of the 53 thefts were recorded in April through July (12, 8, 7, 8). No month in 2023, 2024, or 2025 exceeded 3.

Catalytic converter theft is not a separate UCR offense category. Under NIBRS it is recorded as larceny-theft (theft from motor vehicle or theft of motor vehicle parts). The CDE summarized endpoint used here does not break larceny into sub-types, so a catalytic converter series cannot be produced from this source.

Neighboring municipalities

Offenses reported and rates per 1,000, 2021 through 2025, CDE population denominators [1] [6]

Wyckoff’s 2022 and 2023 property sums (89 and 90) equal the sum of their components for the 11 months reported. Ho-Ho-Kus’s 2022 property total (20) equals its components for 10 months. Every rate above is on a base of fewer than 18,000 residents, and every violent cell is a single-digit count.

New Jersey statewide

Offenses reported to NIBRS by New Jersey agencies, with participating-population coverage [4]

The 2021 statewide counts are affected by the coverage gap: the monthly violent count for January 2021 (591) is less than half of January 2022 (1,417), consistent with agencies entering NIBRS during the year rather than a change in offending. Rates are computed on the December participating population because that is the denominator the FBI uses for reported-offense rates; they are not adjusted for the months in which non-participating agencies were absent.

The FBI does not publish a county-level series for municipal agencies; a Bergen County comparison will be added from the NJSP county tables.

Ridgewood Police Department: staffing

Full-time employees reported to the FBI Police Employee data collection, as of October 31 of each year [7]

The 2025 civilian count (11) is more than double any prior year in the series (4 to 6). The FBI collection does not state whether this reflects new positions or a reclassification (for example, dispatchers moved into the police count).

The Patrol Division is organized as four squads, two day and two night, each supervised by one lieutenant and one sergeant, under a division commander at the rank of captain [8].

Fire and EMS

Staffing, budget and incident figures for the Ridgewood Fire Department and emergency medical services were not available at the time of writing; the Village budget carries them.†

† Figures marked with a dagger are best-effort research, so verify them with the issuing office (the Village of Ridgewood, the school district, the county, the state or the utility) before making judgment calls or decisions on them.