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Confidence that police in the United States are adequately trained to avoid using excessive force reached a new low in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, and 60% of Americans say the country should do more to hold police accountable for mistreatment of Black people.
More broadly, 63% say Black people and other minorities do not receive equal treatment as whites in the criminal justice system -- off its peak, 69%, last July, but the next highest in polls dating to 1988. That includes a majority of white people for only the second time.
In political terms, 42%, a plurality overall, say President Joe Biden is doing “too little” to try to reform police practices in this country. Thirty-two percent in this poll, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, say he’s doing the right amount, while many fewer, 15%, say he’s doing too much.
- Just 44% are very or somewhat confident that the police are trained adequately to avoid using excessive force, similar to last summer (47%) and down 10 percentage points from the first time it was asked in late 2014 after a grand jury declined to hand up an indictment in the police killing of Eric Garner.
- A new question asked if the country should do more to hold police accountable for mistreatment of Black people or, alternatively, is doing too much to interfere in how officers do their job. The result is nearly 2-to-1 for more accountability, 60-33%.
- The public long has doubted that Black people and other minorities receive equal treatment in the criminal justice system; only once in a dozen polls since 1988 did a majority say this was so. Still, the share who say equal treatment is lacking now exceeds 6 in 10 only for the second time.
Defund the police, and more police accountability are really two different issues. It's not surprising that more people want accountability than defunding. It's this same desire for accountability that is turning people, including the fraud in the presidency, off to BLM, which is currently not a very transparent institution, with strange things happening with the funds at the very top. Arguably BLM is less transparent than the average police department.
It would be better to work together on how to deal with bad apples in police departments, bad apples of every race. If you really want to reform systemic injustice, you would start with things like civil asset forfeiture which almost guarantees abuse starting with vague laws.
