Boston indexed trends, 2015–2024 (2015 = 100): civil traffic stops vs. sworn officers, population, and median traffic volume.
Data sources.
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Civil traffic stops: MassDOT Driver Citation Data Portal, violation-level extracts for the City of Boston (2015–2024), filtered to civil (non-criminal) operator citations issued by the Boston Police Department on non-accident stops. https://drivercitationdata.dot.mass.gov/
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Sworn officer counts: City of Boston Employee Earnings Reports, 2015–2024, published on Analyze Boston (data.boston.gov, dataset
418983dc-7cae-42bb-88e4-d56f5adcf869); BPD sworn personnel identified by department and rank/title. -
Population: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program (PEP) — 2019 Vintage for 2015–2019 and 2024 Vintage for 2020–2024.
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Traffic volume: Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Traffic Counts; the median Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) across all permanent and short-duration count stations within the City of Boston for each calendar year.
Methods. Annual counts of civil, non-accident operator-level traffic citations issued by the Boston Police Department from 2015 through 2024 were aggregated from the MassDOT Driver Citation Data Portal and joined on calendar year to (a) BPD sworn-officer headcounts derived from City of Boston Employee Earnings Reports, (b) Boston resident population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program (2019 vintage for pre-2020 years; 2024 vintage thereafter), and (c) the median AADT across all MassDOT count stations located within Boston for the same year. Each series was indexed to its 2015 value (2015 = 100) so that proportional changes could be compared on a single axis. The year 2025 was excluded because both the citation series and the AADT panel were incomplete at the time of analysis (partial-year citations; only one reporting count station). All processing was done in Python (pandas/matplotlib)
by ARPE19
9 Comments
I wouldn’t want cops in my area spending all their time writing traffic tickets, I want them to go after violent crime and theft.
Have you dealt with Boston drivers before?
Police forces across the country are quiet quitting.
Body cameras. I can guarantee it. No one wants to make much effort with the oversight. Each interaction now exposes you to critique.
Based, traffic enforcement is just a legalized racketeering scheme
In my area they’ve been ramping up traffic cameras (speeding, red light) — I wonder if maybe that is a factor? Perhaps the cops are leaving it to the automated systems to deal with these things?
This is a nationwide pattern
Great question; I suspect the answer is “resources”. Property crime is through the roof, with low-level drug crime also rampant. Cops are busy arresting people that will be released hours later. Only to arrest them again the next day.
Has their use gone up in other areas?