This quantitative study analyzes how Boston Police Department (BPD) officers’ political environments—proxied by 2020 hometown Republican vote share—influence behavior via Internal Affairs (IA) scores (0-5 scale) from 3,412 officers in the Woke Windows dataset, linked to election data and controlled for tenure, role, and pay.

OLS regressions reveal an initial positive association (0.014 per % Republican, p<0.001), weakened by role (normal/leadership higher than specialty officers; chi2 p<0.0001), but eliminated by years at BPD, as officer tenure correlates with residing in more conservative towns.

Findings highlight career length over politics as a possible key to misconduct risk. Limitations include Massachusetts’ liberalism and missing demographics.

Completed!

Independent Research Project for Policing in Society class.

Sep – Dec 2024