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Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department

police agency

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 29, 2026
Entity authorityQ17020544
Source-derived summary

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department (MIT Police, formerly MIT Campus Patrol) is the police agency charged with providing law enforcement to the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin. The MIT Police is a special state police agency authorized by Massachusetts General Law.

History

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), established in 1861, is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1987, MIT had about 65 employees in its police department. In 2018 it employed 64 officers and 14 civilians. This is up from the 51 officers and 3 civilians it had in 2011.

In 1987, MIT appointed Anne P. Glavin as its Chief of Police, making her the first woman in New England to be appointed chief of a professional, armed campus police department at a major university.

In 1994, students famously "hacked" (or pranked) the MIT Police by placing a reconstruction of an MIT Police cruiser on top of the Great Dome.

Shooting by Boston Marathon bombing suspects

On April 18, 2013, around 10:25 pm, MIT patrol officer Sean Collier, age 27, of Somerville, Massachusetts, was shot in his patrol car while sitting outside MIT's Stata Center.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department” is police agency. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Massachusetts, Institute and Technology, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1861, 1987, 2018, 2011—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Massachusetts, Institute and Technology is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “police agency” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17020544. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1861, 1987, 2018 and 2011.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department primary sources, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department archive and Massachusetts research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Police Department” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.