The Boys in Blue Are Watching You: The Shifting Metropolitan Landscape and Big Data Police Surveillance in the United States.

This article examines the expansion of proactive police surveillance in U.S. metropolitan areas through the lens of big data policing, focusing on how recent changes in residential segregation influence this trend. Using a newly developed measure of big data police surveillance and data from 381 metropolitan statistical areas between 2009 and 2019, the study finds that increases in sprawling economic segregation—defined as income segregation between municipalities—are strongly associated with the rise in big data surveillance, whereas racial segregation and overall income inequality show no such positive relationship. The findings partially support racial threat theory by showing an inverse association between racial segregation and surveillance but contradict the carceral state hypothesis, which predicts that racial segregation and income inequality increase policing. This research highlights the importance of economic segregation in shaping contemporary policing practices and contributes a novel empirical measure of big data surveillance technologies used by law enforcement.