New polling and it’s pretty amazing:
Most Americans, including a majority of President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, support sweeping law enforcement reforms such as a ban on chokeholds and racial profiling after the latest death of an African American while in police custody, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Thursday.
The national survey on June 9-10, shows the public broadly on the side of Democratic lawmakers, who proposed a series of changes to police departments (here) in the United States as protesters gathered nationwide to condemn the death of George Floyd and racism.
The White House and Republican lawmakers are preparing their own plans for changes in policing, though they are expected to fall short of the deep reforms being sought by Democrats in Congress and Joe Biden, their party’s presumptive presidential nominee in the Nov. 3 election to challenge Trump.
The poll (here) conducted online of 1,113 U.S. adults showed bipartisan support for many of the Democrats’ proposals.
For example, 82% of Americans want to ban police from using chokeholds, 83% want to ban racial profiling, and 92% want federal police to be required to wear body cameras.
It also found that 89% of Americans want to require police to give the people they stop their name, badge number and reason for the stop, and 91% support allowing independent investigations of police departments that show patterns of misconduct.
Seventy-five percent of Americans want to support “allowing victims of police misconduct to sue police departments for damages.”
Trump, who has been trying to win back suburban voters by positioning himself as a “law-and-order” president, called on states to crack down on the protests. Trump had previously said that he could use military forces if states did not quell protests, which have been mostly peaceful apart from some arson and looting and clashes with officers.
According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll, rank-and-file Republicans appear to be mostly supportive of the proposals Democratic lawmakers in Congress unveiled on June 8.
According to the poll, six out 10 Republicans supported a provision that would allow “victims of police misconduct to sue police departments for damages.”
Seven in 10 Republicans support bans on racial profiling and chokeholds. Nine in 10 Republicans agree that police should wear body cameras and the same proportion agreed that law enforcement agencies should be open to independent investigations.
Does any of this go far enough? Not by a long shot. But for the first time in my life, most Republicans are not reflexively supporting whatever the police say they need to do to keep control of America’s streets and that is something. If we want to actually accomplish changing the racist and violent policing in this country, this first step is vitally important.
As for the “defund police” demands, get a load of this:
76% said they supported moving “some money currently going to police budgets into better officer training, local programs for homelessness, mental health assistance, and domestic violence.”
Now it’s true that there is less support (although 39%, quite a large number) in favor of completely disbanding all police and using the money to fund social programs to address homelessness, mental health and domestic violence. But the fact that a vast majority are already in favor of spending some of the money currently devoted to policing to do that, is an amazing leap in American culture. And from what I have gathered from many of the defund police advocates, that is actually what they are looking for.
It’s true that we are in a moment. And the right-wing is hardly going to fundamentally change their views on race and policing overnight. But this is very good news nonetheless. Progress happens in fits and starts and I think this may be one of those times when it lurches forward.
That picture above is a screenshot from a video by the Dallas Police Department urging everyone to take a knee and move forward with dialog and understanding:
I realize a lot of this is bullshit PR and yes, it’s police porn of a more friendly kind. But I refuse to be so cynical that I believe every last cop is a psychopath or that there is no way forward from racist policing to a form of public protection that is decent and moral. I don’t know if completely dismantling police departments will happen but I do know that whatever changes occur will, in the end, require some form of state-sponsored public safety. The alternative is likely to be vigilantism and that will not go well for anyone.
I think it’s worthwhile to extend a little bit of good faith in this moment, along with vigilance and strong demands for transparency and reform as the country approaches this window of opportunity. There are a whole lot of white people in this country, many of them conservative, and we all have to live together. It’s smart and strategic to welcome their recognition of the problem and give them some space to sign on to major reform.
Of course, that’s easy for me to say. I’m white and live in a world of privilege and I understand that my thoughts on this are not particularly meaningful. But when I see those shots in the video of young, African American protesters reacting generously and openly in the moment to the cops who took the knee, I choose to follow their lead.