The Tide Starts to Turn

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I’ve taken the title of this post from an entry on Power Line by my friend Steve Hayward.  He in turn is recounting a USAToday/Ipsos survey titled, “Stark divide on race, policing emerges since George Floyd’s death.”  The gist of it is captured in the first sentence:

Americans’ trust in the Black Lives Matter movement has fallen and their faith in local law enforcement has risen since protests demanding social justice swept the nation last year, according to an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll.

The article continues:

The debate over the intersection of racism and policing will be in the spotlight again as jury selection opens Monday in the Minneapolis trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, which sparked nationwide marches last year.

The survey finds complicated and shifting views about Chauvin’s actions and broader questions of race. On many issues, there is a chasm in the perspective between Black people and white people.

Last June, 60% in a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll described Floyd’s death as murder; that percentage has now dropped by double digits to 36%. Uncertainty has grown about how to characterize the incident, caught on video, when Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck and ignored his protests that he couldn’t breathe. Last year, 4% said they didn’t know how to describe it; that number has climbed to 17%. . .

Last June, amid accusations of systemic racism in law enforcement, 60% of Americans expressed trust in the Black Lives Matter movement to promote justice and equal treatment of people, compared with 56% who trusted local police to do that.

Now, however, attitudes have shifted significantly. Trust in Black Lives Matter has fallen to 50%; trust in local police and law enforcement has risen to 69%.

I thought the last sentence particularly significant.  Trust in the police is now over two-thirds.  That is considerably higher even than the results reported in the most recent (January 2021) Gallup poll on confidence in various professions, which reported trust in police at a high or very high level for 52%.  Now 52% is a good deal higher than for journalists (28%), much less lawyers (21%), but 69% is higher still.  Sixty-nine percent also easily beats the approval ratings for Joe Biden (56%), much less Donald Trump of First Step Act fame (42%).  See the Gallup job approval poll here.