Blacks Overwhelmingly Want the Police Presence They Have Now — or More.

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One of the narratives we hear constantly from the Left is that African Americans distrust the police and want their malign presence in black neighborhoods decreased if not eliminated.  Like so much else we hear from progressives  —  the people who ceaselessly wail that we need to pay more attention to “fact-based” this and “evidence-based” that  —  their claims are not merely fact-free but affirmatively false.  According to a Gallup poll released today, more blacks than whites want increased police patrolling in their neighborhoods.

An article from National Review has a good summary of the poll’s findings  —  findings that Gallup introduces with a sub-heading that, “most [African Americans] (81%) want police to spend same amount of or more time in their area.”

Got that?  Eighty-one percent want the same amount of patrolling or more.  The willingness of the Left aggressively to lie about this is astonishing.

Here is Gallup’s table summarizing its main findings:

 

Would you rather the police spend more time, the same amount of time or less time as they currently spend in your area?

 

More time Same amount of time Less time
% % %
Black Americans 20 61 19
White Americans 17 71 12
Hispanic Americans 24 59 17
Asian Americans 9 63 28
U.S. adults 19 67 14
GALLUP PANEL, JUNE 23-JULY 6, 2020

One of the oddities of the poll, at least to me, is that Asian Americans were considerably less well-disposed to the police, although they are arrested in disproportionately small numbers.

The National Review article continues:

Among the general population, 67 percent of Americans say they want the police presence near them to remain the same, with 71 percent of white Americans saying so. A majority of other minority communities also said they do not want to see fewer police officers patrolling their neighborhoods, with 59 percent of Hispanics preferring the current police presence.

Overall, a whooping 86% of Americans want the same or more policing, while only 14% want less.  And lest it be thought that the poll fails to reflect attitudes that might have changed against the police in the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, National Review notes this:

The Gallup poll was taken after weeks of unrest in metropolitan areas around the country over police tactics involving interactions with minority communities, particularly black Americans. Protests and riots broke out in May in many cities following the police custody death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck as he pleaded for air….Calls to defund police have been particularly prevalent in Portland, Ore. and Seattle, Wash., both of which are predominantly white cities.

The woke crowd might be fooled into believing that the police are The Enemy, but African Americans, who (unlike the Wokesters) are disproportionately the victims of crime, know better.