Crime fears outweigh desire for police reforms
Poll: Two cities take different paths to reach goal of safety
A comparison of views in Louisville, Kentucky, and Oklahoma City helps explain why changing the way law enforcement works has proved to be so difficult even in the wake of last year’s nationwide protests.
Louisville has been riven by scrutiny and protests since Breonna Taylor was killed in March 2020 by police officers who used a noknock warrant to break into her apartment while she slept. In contrast, Oklahoma City registers wide public approval of the police even though the state has the highest mortality rate from police violence in the country.
But while the two cities have different assessments about whether there’s a problem that needs fixing, residents in both worry more about rising crime than police misconduct.
In new USA Today/suffolk University Cityview polls, they place public safety as a priority well above overhauling law enforcement.
In Louisville, residents were more than twice as likely to cite public safety, not police reform, as the biggest problem facing the city.
In Oklahoma City, police reform ranked last on a list of nine community concerns. In neither place did more than a fraction support the progressives’ slogan to “defund the police.”
“I just would hate to think what our world would actually be like if we were left to fend for ourselves,” said Carol Davenport, 65, a nurse from Oklahoma City who was among those surveyed. “It’s very easy to stand back with a camera or a phone or whatever it is and judge what someone else is doing when you’re not the one that is accountable.”
In Louisville, though, Tyrone Weaver, 52, who works for a defense manufacturer, saw his faith in the police shaken by what happened to Taylor.
“There are some officers that do the right thing,” he said in a follow-up interview, but after her death, “it’s hard to trust police.”
He has seen little change since she was killed. “It’s hard to see baby steps,” he said.
Three questions
Do police use force only when necessary? Does race affect their actions? And where do Americans draw the line between concern about crime and demands for police accountability?
Those questions were asked in the two new Cityview polls, sponsored by USA TODAY and Suffolk University’s Political Research Center in conjunction with the Louisville Courier Journal and The Oklahoman.
Throughout 2021, the series of surveys in major American cities – including Milwaukee, Detroit and Los Angeles – has explored attitudes toward policing and community.
The polls of 500 residents in each city, taken by landline and cellphone Nov. 10-Nov. 15, have a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
The surveys were done before juries returned verdicts in two trials that attracted national attention. Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted last month of homicide and other charges for killing two men and wounding a third during unrest that followed Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
In Brunswick, Georgia, three white men were convicted of murder in the shooting death of a Black man, Ahmaud Arbery.
Since nationwide protests after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis last year brought calls for action, legislation on criminal justice reform has languished in Congress.
The House passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in March, largely along party lines, but months of bipartisan negotiations in the Senate collapsed in September.
Last month, Minneapolis voters rejected a proposal to replace the police department with a new Department of Public Safety.
Marked by sharp partisan and racial divides, the issues are likely to be powerful in next year’s midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race.
The findings also signal a clear opening for Republicans among Latinos, a growing demographic group that has leaned Democratic but is increasingly wooed by the GOP.
Faith in Louisville police eroded
The death of Taylor and the way police handled the shooting’s aftermath have eroded confidence in local law enforcement in Louisville. Forty-five percent of the residents surveyed said they had lost faith in the police as a result, including 4 in 10 white residents and 6 in 10 Black residents. Overall, just 7% gained trust.
“I always knew that there were, obviously, racial disparities, but, yes, it did change more after Breonna Taylor,” said Josie Timmons, 38, a graduate student who was called in the poll.
She said she was frustrated that a chronic pain condition meant she couldn’t join the protests that followed, so she tried to help in other ways, including providing water and snacks for the marchers.
But the protests also drew a negative reaction from most of the city’s residents. By 53%31%, they said the marches had hurt the community, not helped it.
“I just feel like it got blown out of proportion, you know?” said Jean Petri, who added her faith in the police had been strengthened. “I wasn’t there, so who knows what the truth ended up being?” Since then, she said, “I feel a lot of the crime that’s been happening since Ms. Breonna’s death is a reflection of that circumstance.”
In Louisville, there was a significant divide by race in assessing police tactics.
By an overwhelming 62%-23%, Black residents said the police used force when it wasn’t necessary.
But white residents by 49%-38% said the police used force only when necessary.
Oklahoma City reflected a similar division. White residents by 2-1, 61%-29%, said police used force only when necessary. But Black residents by 51%-34% said police used force when it wasn’t necessary.
Trevour Webb, now 27 and the father of two, has never forgotten a frightening episode when he was 12 and playing a game of cops-and-robbers outside with his stepfather.
A disgruntled neighbor “ended up calling the police saying ‘there’s a Black man with a gun and a white man with a baseball bat,’ ” he said.
A dozen or more officers descended on the neighborhood.
“I was too afraid to put my hands down, but everything in me wanted to put my hands down and reach for the gun as fast as I could just to show them ‘Hey, look, it’s a fake gun,’ ” said Webb, an industrial painter.
Later, he asked one of the officers what would have happened if he had. “I remember him specifically looking down, and it still gives me chills to this day: He said it wouldn’t have been pretty.”
Some of those surveyed in Oklahoma City said they were surprised to hear that the state had the highest rate of police violence against Black people in the country, both in the period 2000-2009 and 2010-2019.
The study by The Lancet, released in September, found that the age-standardized mortality rate per 100,000 population for non-hispanic Black Americans was three times the rate in Kentucky, for instance.
“It’s sad because, you know, I’m a 72-yearold Caucasian; I’m not going to be treated the way other people are,” said Candice Tracy, a retired mortgage banker. “And I guess I’m fortunate, but I was really surprised by that.”
Six in 10 of those in Oklahoma City said neither the news media nor the public had paid enough attention to the issue.
But there was also skepticism about what has been reported. By double digits, 57%-36%, they said the news media exaggerates stories of police brutality and racism.
“I just would hate to think what our world would actually be like if we were left to fend for ourselves.”
Carol Davenport Oklahoma City survey respondent