What Boston Police Actually Wrote Up This Month: Shoplifting, Hit-and-Runs and a Lot of 'Sick Assist'
The most common BPD incident reports over 30 days weren't the stuff on the evening news.
TV makes it look like it's all chases and shootouts. The paperwork tells a different story. Here are the most common incident types in Boston police reports from Sept. 19 through Oct. 18, 2026.
Number one: "investigate person," 730 reports. Number two: "sick assist," 692, which is basically officers helping somebody who's sick or hurt. Then hit-and-runs with property damage (355), towed cars (351), "investigate property" (288), shoplifting (256), simple assault (238), lost or missing property (201), drug possession or sale (198), and verbal disputes (154).
So a big chunk of what cops log in this city is service calls and paperwork, not arrests. Shoplifting at 256 in a month is about eight a day, and hit-and-runs that only damage property are more common than that.
Same caveat as always: these are reports, not convictions.
How we reported this
Boston Uncut queried BPD's Crime Incident Reports (2023 to present) dataset on Analyze Boston, last updated Oct. 19, 2026, for OCCURRED_ON_DATE Sept. 19 through Oct. 18, 2026, grouped by OFFENSE_DESCRIPTION. Offense names are BPD's.
