NJ Township Spent Opioid Funds on Police SUVs and Flock Cameras

Washington Township reported to New Jersey that it spent $170,446.70 in opioid settlement money on drug education in 2024 and 2025. Its own bill lists, meeting minutes and audits tell a different story: the Gloucester County township bought two 2024 Chevrolet Tahoe SUVs and 15 Flock license plate cameras for its police department, according to an NJ.com investigation published Friday.

The amount matches — to the penny — what township officials told the state they spent on youth education programs.

What the municipal records show

NJ.com built the account from documents obtained through New Jersey's Open Public Records Act: municipal ledgers, receipts, bill lists, meeting agendas and minutes, audit reports and social media posts. The reporting found no spending on drug education programming at all in the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years. The township spent nearly $268,000 on the police vehicles and cameras between November 2024 and April 2026, according to the Inquirer's summary of the investigation.

The township is the most populous municipality in Gloucester County, and NJ.com's headline noted it has the worst heroin problem in the county.

The schools stopped teaching drug education

A Washington Township school district official told NJ.com that the district's elementary schools no longer offer any comprehensive drug education. That detail is what turned a budget irregularity into a case study in how prevention money can disappear without anyone noticing.

"That's absolutely egregious," Sandy Gibson, an addiction researcher and counselor at The College of New Jersey, told NJ.com. "But I would hold the state accountable. We're not auditing?" The state comptroller's office and the Attorney General's Office declined to confirm whether Washington Township is under investigation, the Shore News Network reported. Township officials blame the previous mayoral administration for both the expenditures and the misreporting.

A spending pattern New Jersey has already documented

The investigation deepens a story that had been building for months. In August, NJ.com reported that dozens of New Jersey towns had spent a combined $2.3 million in settlement funds on items including concerts, monogrammed apparel and a muscle car. Reporting nationally has found the same drift: a Mother Jones investigation published in August identified 19 law enforcement agencies across 10 states that spent more than $920,000 in settlement money on automated license plate readers and surveillance cameras.

New Jersey's own fiscal 2026 spending reports, released October 1, showed municipalities directing settlement dollars to graduation parties, inflatable bounce houses, ice cream socials and officer wellness programs, prompting a fresh push for oversight rules. Assemblyman Cody Miller introduced legislation on September 24 that would impose spending deadlines, require repayment of improperly used funds and tighten transparency. The bill is still being revised in committee.

Why the money is supposed to be fenced

New Jersey is receiving about $1.1 billion from the national opioid settlements, roughly half of it disbursed directly to towns and counties. Under the 2021 settlement agreement, a 2022 state attorney general's memorandum and a 2023 state law, the funds are meant for prevention, treatment and outreach. National terms require at least 85 percent of payments to go to opioid remediation — a category that includes naloxone distribution, medication for uninsured patients and warm handoffs from emergency departments into medication-assisted treatment.

Police equipment is not on that list. But New Jersey, unlike some states, has no explicit prohibition on using settlement funds for law enforcement purposes, and towns select their own projects with little pre-approval oversight, relying instead on after-the-fact public records audits. That structure is the reason local spending decisions rarely surface until a reporter files a records request.

What happens next

The oversight legislation that would change the rules is not yet law, and the dollars keep moving. Advocates have said the state should be auditing municipal filings rather than accepting them at face value, and the state comptroller's earlier review of Irvington — more than half a million dollars for two drug-awareness concerts — showed the pattern predates this year's reports.

For Washington Township residents living in a county that has recorded some of New Jersey's heaviest overdose losses, the practical effect is straightforward: the prevention and education spending that settlement documents promised in exchange for the police purchases did not happen, and the schools that were supposed to receive it are no longer offering the programming at all. People looking for substance use disorder treatment or help for a family member can search for licensed programs in New Jersey and nationwide.