Race plays a major role in how Americans view the police, a new poll shows.
Four out of every five white voters express some level of confidence that police officers in their community do a good job enforcing the law, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. That drops to 58% among black voters.
The shooting death of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., touched off a national conversation about police treatment of African Americans across the country. The shooting spawned protests that drew national media attention and fueled the debate about racial profiling, the use of force andwhether local police departments are too heavily armed.
The racial split is even greater on the question of whether the police treat whites and blacks equally, the poll found. Some 69% of white voters expressed confidence that law enforcement officials gave equal treatment to people of both races, while just 28% of black voters held that view. Instead, 69% of black respondents expressed “just some” or “very little” confidence that police officers treat whites and blacks equally.
Martin Luther King Jr. Protest
Racist cops doing what racist cops do.
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The Journal poll of 1,000 registered voters, conducted Sept. 3-7, showed a big difference in opinion on the use of force question between black and white respondents.
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White voters were more inclined to express some level of trust that police do not use excessive force, by a margin of 70%-27%. Black voters were less charitable in their views about the police, with 40% expressing some level of confidence that police don’t use excessive force and 56% expressing more skepticism.
The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.5%.
Views about the police have not changed all that much among whites since October 1995, the last time the Journal asked Americans about their views of the police.
Blacks, meanwhile, are slightly more inclined to trust that local police officers are doing a good job of enforcing the law than they were in 1995, but less inclined to believe the police treat whites and blacks the same.