Majority of police in the U.S. say their jobs have gotten harder...

stringer bell
stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/survey-reveals-disconnect-between-police-and-public-attitudes/2017/01/10/65b24f3a-d550-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.42d7a4c10377
Survey reveals disconnect between police and public attitudes

Two-thirds of the nation’s police officers say the deaths of black Americans during encounters with police are isolated incidents, not a sign of broader problems between law enforcement and black citizens, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday.

The findings underscore a stark disconnect between many rank-and-file officers and the public and reveal that scrutiny since the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown has prompted many officers to be less aggressive in day-to-day policing.

The survey of nearly 8,000 local officers is the first nationally representative measure of police reaction to the debate about officers’ treatment of black Americans that followed Brown’s shooting in Ferguson, Mo., and sparked a national protest movement.

The survey, which drew on departments with at least 100 officers, was administered from May to August 2016 by the National Police Research Platform in partnership with Pew.

It reveals in detail how officers view their jobs and the scrutiny they face: More than 8 in 10 officers say the public does not understand the risks and challenges of their jobs, and a similar number say their departments are understaffed. Half reported concerns about their safety.

“Our goal was to measure how police think about these issues,” said Rich Morin, senior editor at the Pew Research Center. “And to offer an insight into police lives, both the good and the challenges.”

When a separate Pew poll asked Americans overall about black individuals who died in police encounters, 60 percent said the deaths represent broader problems between police and black citizens. But only 31 percent of police officers say the same, Pew found.

Police expressed cynical views of protests across the country following controversial deaths. The poll finds that 92 percent say protests have been motivated at least in part by long-standing anti-police bias; only 35 percent say protesters were motivated by a genuine desire to hold officers accountable.

Officers say the high-profile deaths have changed the way they do their job — and have made it harder.


More than 7 in 10 say officers have become more timid about stopping to question suspicious people, roughly three-quarters say fellow officers report they are more reluctant to use force when necessary, and more than 9 in 10 say fellow officers have grown more worried about their safety.

“How officers see their job and how they perform on their job has changed as a result of these high-profile incidents and the resulting protests,” Morin said.

The degree to which the nation’s officers reject the notion of systemic racial issues and dismiss protests surprised some policing experts, including some chiefs and union officials. Several said that the gulf in perception between police and the public underscores a much deeper divide.

“I wish the community had a greater understanding of why the police do what we do, and sometimes we have to do a better job of putting ourselves in their shoes as well,” said Don De Lucca, the chief of police in Doral, Fla., and president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “We’re at a crossroads, and we both need to be willing to listen.”

In the survey, most officers say their departments have tried to improve relations with black citizens and that many officers have been trained to de-escalate potentially deadly situations. Two-thirds support the use of body-worn cameras by officers.

At the same time, only 1 percent of officers say their department’s rules on using force should be stricter, while more than 7 in 10 say they are “about right.”

“If we climb into the mind-set of police officers who are going to keep doing this job, if they are policing from a defensive stance, then it changes the nature of police and citizen encounters and not in a positive way,” said Cara Rabe-? , a criminal justice professor at Illinois State University. “What we’re seeing is that this divisiveness is likely to lead to increased violence rather than the lessening of violence.”

Rabe-? said that Pew’s findings underscore a theme she has heard often from officers: “What you’re hearing is the police saying that ‘we’re already accountable.’ ”

For decades, white and black Americans have expressed divergent views toward police and violent encounters between officers and black citizens. But Pew’s new survey of officers reveals even wider racial divisions among officers.

Seventy-two percent of both white and Hispanic officers say they see blacks killed in police altercations as isolated incidents, but only 43 percent of black officers agree. A majority of black officers say those deaths are a sign of broader problems between police and black citizens.

On racial equality, 92 percent of white officers say the country has made the changes needed to achieve equality between black and white citizens, compared with only 29 percent of black officers. Among the public, 57 percent of white people and 12 percent of black people say the necessary changes have been made.

In the survey, black officers also express more sympathy than their white colleagues toward protesters — nearly 7 in 10 black officers say protests are driven by a genuine desire for accountability, while fewer than 3 in 10 white officers say so.

More than half of the officers surveyed said they have become more callous since joining law enforcement.

“If officers feeling like ‘all of these guys are calling me racist’ then they shut down and go into defensive mode,” said Daniel Linskey, the former superintendent in chief of the Boston Police Department. “It becomes us versus them. I’m just going to come in every day, make my arrests and go home safe.”

While the vast majority of officers say high-profile shootings have made their jobs harder,
67 percent say they agree that “most people respect the police,” seven percentage points more than in a similar survey that ended in early 2014.

Yet, 75 percent of officers say that interactions between police and black citizens have become tenser, and there are signs relations may be worse than many officers think.

Six in 10 white and Hispanic officers alike say their department’s police have a positive relationship with the black community, but only 32 percent of black officers say the same.


“The police are the most visible component of a failed government system in those communities, and we’re taking the brunt of it, some of it well deserved,” said Garry McCarthy, the former superintendent of the Chicago police.

McCarthy said that the public needs to understand how relatively rare killings by police are, less than one half of 1 percent of the gun deaths last year in Chicago. And, he said, police need to be willing to acknowledge that many residents and protesters have legitimate complaints about encounters with law enforcement.

“In many cases the police have earned the distrust,” McCarthy said.

The Pew Research Center National Survey of Law Enforcement Officers was conducted online May 19-Aug. 14, 2016, among a national sample of 7,917 police officers in local police and sheriff‘s departments with at least 100 sworn officers (excluding state agencies). The margin of sampling error is between two and three percentage points for many questions but is as high as nine points for department-specific questions. General public results based on a survey of 4,538 U.S. adults conducted online and by mail Aug. 16-Sept. 12, 2016; the error margin is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

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Comments

  • stringer bell
    stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pew-report-police-20170111-story.html
    Though research has been conducted on the public’s attitude toward police in the wake of these events, showing decreased confidence and racial divides, less attention has been devoted to the attitudes of police officers themselves, said Parker — a deficiency she and her team set out to correct.

    What they found was that three-quarters of officers said that relations with the black community had become more tense and they were now less willing to stop and question suspects and to use force when necessary. More than 90% of officers said their colleagues worried more about their personal safety, with that trend having begun even before the July incidents in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

    “Those are really high percentages that you don’t always see in opinion surveys,” Parker said.

    But experts who study policing and race say they aren’t surprised.

    “Police officers are under greater scrutiny — the public is paying more attention,” said Jack Glaser, a social psychologist and professor of public policy at UC Berkeley. He said ubiquitous recording devices and social media had increased the public’s awareness of such shootings in recent years.

    Similarly, while officer fatalities were slightly up in 2016, they remained far below record highs set in the 1970s. “For the average officer their job has not gotten categorically more dangerous in the last year or two, but it has gotten incrementally more dangerous,” Glaser said, and “it’s very likely that it is a real result of this tension that has occurred.”
    Pew researchers also found a significant divergence between police officers’ attitudes and those of the public with regard to fatal police-citizen encounters.

    For example, most U.S. adults (60%) believe that the deaths of black Americans at the hands of police in recent years are symptomatic of a broader societal problem, while two-thirds of police officers view those deaths as isolated incidents. Similarly, about two-thirds of the public believes that the protests that have followed these incidents arose out of a genuine desire to hold the police accountable, but 9 in 10 officers believed they arose out of anti-police bias.


    If a 2016 Pew survey of public attitudes toward police is any guide, the outlook isn’t very good. Only about half of all black adults say local police do an excellent or good job combating crime, compared with 80% of all white adults. And even fewer black adults — 1 in 3 — say police in their communities do an excellent or good job of using appropriate force on suspects, treating all racial and ethnic minorities equally and holding officers accountable when misconduct occurs.
  • The Lonious Monk
    The Lonious Monk Members Posts: 26,258 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I can actually understand where the average cop is coming from though. We can all agree that there is a lot of racism in law enforcement and the legal system in general. But there are a lot of cops in the US, and the ones out there shooting unarmed blacks makes up a very small minority. That said, most of the rest aren't innocent because they refuse to take steps to rid the force of the bad cops.

    At the end of the day, the cops are not the issue. The system is. Plenty of policies that could help with the problem have been suggested, and those in a position to implement the policies completely ignore them. Stuff will never improve like that. Not for cops or citizens.
  • mryounggun
    mryounggun Members Posts: 13,451 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I don't doubt that cop's jobs have e gotten harder over the last however many years.

    And? So? Meaning what exactly?
  • 1CK1S
    1CK1S Members Posts: 27,471 ✭✭✭✭✭
    AZTG wrote: »
    First step to solve any problem is to accept the problem. Long as they still call these issues isolated incidents, we'll never move towards a solution.

    The problem is the police unions won't admit that there's a problem and with Trump as president, it's gonna continue.
  • ThaNubianGod
    ThaNubianGod Members Posts: 1,862 ✭✭✭✭✭
    mryounggun wrote: »
    I don't doubt that cop's jobs have e gotten harder over the last however many years.

    And? So? Meaning what exactly?

    It means our communities will continue to get poor policing, while white communities get good policing. The goal should be to end corruption on the force and in the courts. But what we're seeing is hardly any of that...but instead two partisan sides grandstanding over symbolic cases, and on the backs of local tragedies. At the end of the day we loose on both ends if this continues because most killed will still be black and incarcerated black.
  • atribecalledgabi
    atribecalledgabi Members, Moderators Posts: 14,063 Regulator
    Cops are saying what the people are frustrated is not actually happening...what's new? These the same ppl that, with the backing of their unions, will straight up to our faaaaaaace say what killings we saw on video isn't what we saw.
  • mryounggun
    mryounggun Members Posts: 13,451 ✭✭✭✭✭
    mryounggun wrote: »
    I don't doubt that cop's jobs have e gotten harder over the last however many years.

    And? So? Meaning what exactly?

    It means our communities will continue to get poor policing, while white communities get good policing. The goal should be to end corruption on the force and in the courts. But what we're seeing is hardly any of that...but instead two partisan sides grandstanding over symbolic cases, and on the backs of local tragedies. At the end of the day we loose on both ends if this continues because most killed will still be black and incarcerated black.

    So everything is the exact same as it has been then. Got it.
  • Trillfate
    Trillfate Members Posts: 24,008 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I feel so sorry for those brave officers
  • rapmusic
    rapmusic Members Posts: 4,130 ✭✭✭✭✭
    So what's the solution? Cops say their jobs are hard and we say ? them.. what's the solution? You got people out here right now saying that there shouldn't be ANY police out here. We need real solutions, not some "in a perfect world I would love this" type ? . These cops need to learn how to do their jobs without vekng lazy, but I also would love for crime to go down too. Little kids being killed in drivebys and ? .. tired of seeing that. I'm also tired of cops shooting people cause they don't feel like chasing people that day or whatever. We need to come up with SOLUTIONS! You see cats get riled up and they'll march and stuff, but then when it's time to talk, you see the same people folks get mad at calling them talking heads on the news and ? . You can't go hard for a couple weeks then go home, you got to keep applying the pressure until ? happens!
  • kzzl
    kzzl Members Posts: 7,548 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    Theyve allowed loose cannon cowboys of white supremacy to run amuck, so theyve earned the stigma of being treated as such. Police culture is naturally racist, the only way to curb that is to punish the corrupt behavior it results in.

    It's no different from what every other company does with poor ethical behavior. I'd say cops are the only profession that rewards such behavior with paid leave and legal protection. For poor behavior that results in a person's death at that.
  • Mister B.
    Mister B. Members, Writer Posts: 16,172 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited January 2017
    rapmusic wrote: »
    So what's the solution? Cops say their jobs are hard and we say ? them.. what's the solution? You got people out here right now saying that there shouldn't be ANY police out here. We need real solutions, not some "in a perfect world I would love this" type ? . These cops need to learn how to do their jobs without vekng lazy, but I also would love for crime to go down too. Little kids being killed in drivebys and ? .. tired of seeing that. I'm also tired of cops shooting people cause they don't feel like chasing people that day or whatever. We need to come up with SOLUTIONS! You see cats get riled up and they'll march and stuff, but then when it's time to talk, you see the same people folks get mad at calling them talking heads on the news and ? . You can't go hard for a couple weeks then go home, you got to keep applying the pressure until ? happens!

    Solutions:

    Better Sensitivity Training - how to INTERACT with citizens instead of just "policing" them. Before the whole "Stop Snitching" trend, people actually did know cops that did a foot beat in their neighborhood. Think back on a scene in S3 or 4 of the Wire at a community meeting.....that ? was true. If police aren't so scared to TALK and get to know the citizens of the neighborhood, the neighborhood won't be so hesitant to exist with them around.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAf23H2Dz7I

    More Accountability - When an incident happens, all body cam footage much be accounted for, and there needs to be sanctions, punishments, SOMETHING done to those who break that.

    A few community events to introduce the police to the community, I mean...they ARE people under that badge.
  • Inglewood_B
    Inglewood_B Members Posts: 12,246 ✭✭✭✭✭
    "Job got harder..." = "I can't be wild reckless anymore because everybody got a gotdamn camera phone."
  • rapmusic
    rapmusic Members Posts: 4,130 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Mister B. wrote: »
    rapmusic wrote: »
    So what's the solution? Cops say their jobs are hard and we say ? them.. what's the solution? You got people out here right now saying that there shouldn't be ANY police out here. We need real solutions, not some "in a perfect world I would love this" type ? . These cops need to learn how to do their jobs without vekng lazy, but I also would love for crime to go down too. Little kids being killed in drivebys and ? .. tired of seeing that. I'm also tired of cops shooting people cause they don't feel like chasing people that day or whatever. We need to come up with SOLUTIONS! You see cats get riled up and they'll march and stuff, but then when it's time to talk, you see the same people folks get mad at calling them talking heads on the news and ? . You can't go hard for a couple weeks then go home, you got to keep applying the pressure until ? happens!

    Solutions:

    Better Sensitivity Training - how to INTERACT with citizens instead of just "policing" them. Before the whole "Stop Snitching" trend, people actually did know cops that did a foot beat in their neighborhood. Think back on a scene in S3 or 4 of the Wire at a community meeting.....that ? was true. If police aren't so scared to TALK and get to know the citizens of the neighborhood, the neighborhood won't be so hesitant to exist with them around.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAf23H2Dz7I

    More Accountability - When an incident happens, all body cam footage much be accounted for, and there needs to be sanctions, punishments, SOMETHING done to those who break that.

    A few community events to introduce the police to the community, I mean...they ARE people under that badge.
    Sensitivity training is definitely something that needs to happen. One of the saddest things that I've seen is how these police officers live way across towns or even in other counties away from their beats. That needs to stop! Police need to live close to the areas that they patrol. They need to get to know the community and the community need to get to know them.
  • blakfyahking
    blakfyahking Members Posts: 15,785 ✭✭✭✭✭
    AZTG wrote: »
    First step to solve any problem is to accept the problem. Long as they still call these issues isolated incidents, we'll never move towards a solution.

    ^^^this

    that's the main issue is we can't even get most cops to even admit that there is a problem

    then they try to use anecdotal statistics to justify living in denial...........but people need to understand that even rare cases are still instances of someone losing their life......people are more than "numbers"

    if police don't value protecting innocent life, then there will never be a real solution

    there are too many goon-minded mofos in police departments IMO
  • MarcusGarvey
    MarcusGarvey Members Posts: 4,569 ✭✭✭✭✭
    So ? -jacks want license to ? but no oversight?
  • konceptjones
    konceptjones Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 13,139 ✭✭✭✭✭
    being a cop still ain't in the top 10 most dangerous job in the US.
  • farris2k1
    farris2k1 Members Posts: 1,937 ✭✭✭✭✭
    ? them, do they ? job right and this wouldnt be an issue
  • obnoxiouslyfresh
    obnoxiouslyfresh Members Posts: 11,496 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Police don't have jobs. I have a job. Police have taken a sworn oath of duty. So anytime a police officer starts to gripe about their work, they should recite that oath and remind themselves why there is so much expected from them.
  • themadlionsfan
    themadlionsfan Members Posts: 9,133 ✭✭✭✭✭
    VIBE wrote: »
    Must be so hard they can no longer hid their racism, hatred and murders.

    This guy has done a full 180 from a couple of years ago....

    You have made me proud