Public Confidence In Police Shows A Big Racial Gap

This chart was made from a recently released Gallup Poll. They surveyed a random national sample of 9,442 adults from 2006 through 2014, and the poll has an overall margin of error of 1 point because of the large sample. The margin of error is larger for Blacks (4 points) and Hispanics (5 points) because those samples were smaller -- 730 Blacks and 568 Hispanics.

I think these results should bother all decent Americans. Look at the difference in police confidence between Blacks and the rest of America. Nearly two-thirds of Blacks (and three-fourths of urban Blacks) don't have a lot of confidence in the police. That's because they are the victims of different and unfair treatment by many officers. Meanwhile, the rest of American doesn't have that same kind of treatment (and many don't want to believe it exists), so they have significantly more confidence in police.

I know a lot of right-wingers will try to explain this away by accusing Blacks of being less law-abiding and more "thuggish" than other Americans -- but that is pure crap. Blacks are no different than any other Americans. Most are decent and law-abiding people, and they just want to live in peace and be treated like everyone else. Their low opinion of the police doesn't spring from any deficiency among Blacks, but from misconduct by police.

I have a couple of other points to make. First, that 57% support of all adults (54% among urban adults) should be much higher if police misconduct was not happening far too often. It should scare the hell out of police departments in this country that at least 43% of all Americans don't have a lot of confidence in them -- and it should spur them to stop making excuses for the misconduct, and make a better effort to get rid of the bad officers instead of trying to protect them.

Second, note that most of this survey was done before the killings of unarmed Black men became big news. It would not surprise me at all if the percentages of those with a lot of confidence in the police (among all groups) was lower today than these results.