I am a Professional Specialist in the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) and a member of Criminal Justice @ SPIA at Princeton University. My research focuses on law enforcement, including their impact on violent crime, the effect of removing ‘bad apples’ on reducing officer complaints, their representativeness to civilians in their jurisdiction, and how race and political affiliations influence officer behavior. I also conduct methodological research on crime data quality and usability, primarily focusing on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data. 

I authored the books A Criminologist’s Guide to R: Crime by the Numbers (Chapman & Hall/CRC The R Series, 2022) and Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program Data: An Opinionated Guide to FBI Data. I have also developed several R packages, including fastDummies, asciiSetupReader, and predictrace, to simplify working with data. My website, Crime Data Tool, enables users to explore crime data from thousands of agencies and hundreds of variables (e.g., arrests, offenses, demographics) through an interactive tool—no data or programming skills required.

My research has been published in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and American Political Science Review. I hold a B.S. in Criminal Justice from California State University, Sacramento, and a master’s and Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. I previously served on the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board (APB) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Subcommittee.