Violent Crime - City of Boston 2023-2024

The crime incident data used for this study was extracted on May 20, 2025, in a tabular format. It includes incidents reported to BPD and to which officers responded, up until the date of data extraction. For the purposes of this research study, violent crime incidents consist of the following categories: aggravated assault, murder and non-negligent manslaughter and robbery. These three categories are used as a combined metric for violent crime. These three violent crime categories were used as a selection criterion to identify incidents that noted an increase within the timeframe of January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2024. It includes only violent crime with geographical coordinates (latitudes and longitudes) and all reporting areas to which BPD officers responded, within the jurisdictional boundaries of the City of Boston. All other violent crimes without geographical coordinates, external reporting areas, and reporting areas outside of the jurisdiction of Boston, were excluded from the selection. Of these violent crime categories, only aggravated assaults were used as a dependent variable, that is the crime outcome event in Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM). The study focuses on aggravated assaults with the presence and absence of shootings, that occurred within the timeframe of January 1, 2024 – December 31, 2024. The data was filtered to incidents of aggravated assaults with geographical coordinates (latitudes and longitudes) and with reporting areas in the jurisdiction of the City of Boston, by the BPD Offense Code 423 (Assault & Battery - Aggravated).