BPD Data Shows That Boston’s Most Common Police Incidents are Vague and Unjust

“Investigate person” was the most recorded police incident in 2023, according to public data from the Boston Police Department (BPD). A large portion of these incidents occurred in Dorchester, Boston’s largest neighborhood and a victim of historic redlining. 

Boston, Massachusetts, is home to around 650,000 residents. However, the city has a deep history of redlining, which has long lasting and noticeable effects today. These practices have affected health outcomes, environmental stressors, and policing patterns. In Boston, the BPD has historically engaged in racially discriminatory policing practices, which have disproportionately targeted minority populations. These effects are still felt in Boston crime data today.

Interact with this map on Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/grace.sawin/viz/BPDCrimeDatabase/MapTypesofCrime?publish=yes

“Investigate person” was the most common type of incident; however, the BPD failed to disclose any details detailing their criteria for the classification. This could encompass anything from running background checks or checking identification on an individual to stop-and-frisk, where an officer can question and pat down an individual due to reasonable suspicion. Investigations with vague justifications have long been called into questions for ethical reasons. “Verbal dispute” and “investigate property” were also among the highest recorded incidents, which could also be called into question for their lack of detail.

Dorchester, MA

There was a positive correlation between neighborhoods affected by redlining and high police incidents

View on Tableau Public: https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/grace.sawin/viz/DorchesterIncidents/Sheet2?publish=yes

Dorchester is the largest neighborhood in Boston, housing over a fifth of the city’s population over approximately six square miles. However, the neighborhood also has the highest amount of police activity in the city. Beyond its undeniable size, the neighborhood has also been a victim of historic redlining, a large driver of the segregation Boston experiences today, making it one of the most segregated cities in the country. The second neighborhood with the highest police incidents, East Boston, was a victim of these same practices.

During the 1930s, Boston's banks and institutions would deny residents in certain neighborhoods from accessing financial services like home loans, drawing literal red lines on maps to indicate these restricted areas. However, these neighborhoods were typically home to a high number of minority groups or low-income residents. The lack of financial resources eventually created major structural and social barriers for residents, specifically those residing in Roxbury, the South End, East Boston, and Dorchester, among others.

Dorchester still feels the effects of redlining today, with the majority of its residents identifying as people of color. Due to the vagueness of a high volume of incidents, the trend is concerning.

Looking Ahead

The majority of shootings took place on the weekends and were associated with “Investigate Property”

The majority of shootings took place on the weekends and occurred when property was investigated. Although this classification can be concerning, the data does show a promising trend. In 2023, 144 shootings took place in Boston compared to 180 in 2022 and 274 in 2020. Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox thinks this can be attributed to the public’s perception of crime, which isn’t accurately reflected in the media.

“We’re receiving the benefit of actually establishing a true partnership with the public like we had before in the past,” Cox said in an interview with NBC Boston. However, there is still significant work to be done in almost every regard, which the data clearly highlights.

Nevertheless, a public focused approach from the BPD is extremely promising when tackling the underlying social issues that continue to characterize Boston’s police response. Current accountability efforts, like maintaining a regularly updated Crime Hub, are a strong first step; however, the highest number of incidents lacking elaboration can be disheartening and hard to understand without context. Further strides in transparency must be made in order to earn and maintain the trust of Boston residents and fulfill the BPD’s civic responsibilities.

Methods:

Link to data source: https://boston-pd-crime-hub-boston.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/d42bd4040bca419a824ae5062488aced/explore 

The data used to make the graphs and charts is from The BPD Crime Data Hub, which  provides public data on shootings, field interviews, and offenses. The offense data documents the details surrounding the BPD’s response to an incident. Incidents can range from vandalism to larceny to missing persons to simply “investigate person.”

Although the Crime Hub is updated daily, the offense data analyzed was only from 2023, in order to identify patterns over the course of a year. The data columns used were: offense description, city, zip code, day of the week, and neighborhood. There were several offense descriptions; however, the data was centered around the top 10 most common offenses.

All charts and graphs were made in Tableau.

Chart one maps the incidents that occurred in 2023 using their longitude and latitude, labeling them by color. The top 10 incidents are filtered in order to make the map easier to read due to the volume of incidents as well as preventing overlapping colors.

Chart two is a stacked bar chart that expands on the findings of chart one by identifying a correlation between the neighborhood and the number of incidents. By hovering over the bars, the viewer can see the break down of police incidents in each neighborhood. The top 10 incidents were also filtered again. The correlation was placed in the tooltip (viewable by hovering over the bars) and was made with a custom calculated field, with the formula: 

Finally, chart 3 uses a stacked bar chart to display the number of shootings that took place in 2023. The bar charts are further split up by the day of the week they occurred on to give a larger breakdown. Charts 2 and 3 both use a red color palette, as red communicates crime/danger and also represents redlining.