Do you trust cops? In Miami-Dade, new poll finds big gaps along race, ethnic and age lines
There’s a striking discrepancy in how Miami-Dade County’s Black population views police when compared to whites and Hispanics, according to findings from a new poll commissioned by a group of academics at one of the largest public colleges in the country.
Though more than 80 percent of Black respondents questioned for the poll were worried about police brutality, less than half the white and Hispanics who took part said it was a major concern. And though almost three-quarters of whites and Hispanics approve of police performance overall, the Black community finds law enforcement performs at a much lower rate, with even fewer young Black males, 43 percent, giving police a positive review.
The findings from the poll, scheduled to be released on Wednesday, are not surprising during a year of tumultuous nationwide social justice protests sparked by the deaths of Blacks at the hands of police. In March, police in Louisville, Kentucky, shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her bed during a botched raid of her home. Two months later, a bystander with a cellphone captured the death of George Floyd, strangling under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
The poll, conducted by the firm Bendixen & Amandi International for The United Faculty union of Miami Dade College, did offer this surprise: Though Blacks, Hispanics and whites differed in many beliefs, the biggest divide wasn’t race. It was age. People polled under the age of 30 believe more than their elders that there are racists in police departments, that money should be siphoned from law enforcement and poured into social services and that this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were justified.
There were, however, several areas of almost universal agreement. A large percentage of all the groups agreed that Black parents are forced into the unjust burden of having to teach their children how to interact with police, for their own safety. They all overwhelmingly agreed on the need for civilian oversight, increased hiring standards, better training and body cameras for all police.
And most people questioned also said that while they don’t believe police departments should be financially hamstrung, reallocating a percentage of law enforcement funds to social services and economic development is the best use of tax dollars.
“What this shows is that the public values law enforcement, but recognizes there are issues that need to be resolved to strengthen the trust and relationship between police and the public,” said Fernand Amandi, president and chief executive of Bendixen & Amandi.
The poll is the most comprehensive on community policing issues in South Florida since social justice protests broke out across the nation this summer. The polling firm used telephone banks to question 650 registered voters throughout the county. Of those questioned, 215 were Black, the rest were mostly white and Hispanic. The questioners were also broken down by party affiliation, age and gender.
The poll, called The Mirror Project, Community Reflections on Policing, was initially set to be released just prior to the October presidential debate in Miami, but was delayed until this week when the debate was canceled due to the pandemic.
Among the findings:
▪ There is a big gap between blacks and the other groups in how they feel they are treated by police. Though two of every three Blacks questioned by pollsters say they are treated unfairly by police, only about half of Hispanics and whites believed that to be the case. And once again, age was a significant marker, as almost 70 percent of the youngest group polled, between the ages of 18 and 29, said Blacks are treated unfairly by police.
▪ Between 20 and 30 percent of all groups questioned said they view police less favorably than other public employees like teachers and firefighters.
▪ Only 15 percent of whites and 8 percent of Blacks say relations between police and the community have improved in recent years. And while 29 percent of whites and Hispanics questioned said they have had negative experiences with police, that number jumps to 40 percent with the Black population. The poll also found that the vast majority of every group believe police work in good faith to protect the community.
▪ While less than 50 percent of Hispanics questioned said they believed there were racists and white supremacists in police departments, almost two out of every three whites and Blacks polled said there most certainly were. And though a high percentage of all the groups said they considered police trustworthy, 47 percent of whites and Hispanics and 65 percent of Black voters agreed that Blacks were treated less fairly by police than other ethnic groups.
Minca Brantley, a professor of psychology at Miami Dade College, is a Black woman and the daughter of a former Miami-Dade police officer. She said the apparent discrepancy between Blacks mistrusting police but believing most are doing their job faithfully can be attributed in large part to family members and friends working in South Florida’s large law enforcement community.
“It’s a very easy discrepancy,” she said. “I see someone in my family [who’s a police officer] and I know they’re out there to do the right thing,” she said.
As for almost half of whites and Hispanics now believing that Blacks aren’t treated fairly by police, she attributed that to modern technology.
“Now everyone has a body camera in their pocket,” said Brantley.
Brantley and Samantha Carlo, an associate senior professor at Miami Dade College’s School of Justice, said the poll was commissioned not only to teach students and the public how local policing is perceived, but to inform students planning to make a career out of law enforcement or criminal justice.
Miami police Sgt. Stanley Jean-Poix, president of the department’s Black police union, said the poll results are pretty much what he expected. Jean-Poix said it’s a combination of historical perspective and more recent interactions with police that form the opinions of the different groups.
“It’s a funny dynamic,” Jean-Poix said. “Everyone realizes they need police. But in Flagami, they want to buy you lunch. While the Black community is more apprehensive because of past experiences. They tend to trust police more individually. Remember, if you look at the history of policing in the South, it started with slave patrols.”
It was the universal support for reforms that struck Carlo. She expected the numbers to be high, but nowhere close to the near 90 percent agreement across ethnic and racial groups on the needs for civilian oversight, body cameras and additional training.
“It’s a testimony to just how big social media is now,” said Carlo. “The fact that people have seen George Floyd and other incidents. I think people are very hungry for even more. You just don’t see those type of polling numbers.”
The poll had an overall margin of error of 3.8 percent. It was higher for Blacks at 6.7 percent, Amandi said, because the survey oversampled that population, a technique pollsters use to increase the validity of the results for minority groups.
Brantley said she’s not all that surprised that younger people are leading the push for reform.
“They have the camera and they’re recording. Generation Z are going to be the greatest activists. They’ve learned to spot a problem and I think technology does a great service in that area,” she said. “They’re also a generation whose parents told them their lives matter. It’s almost seen as embarrassing if you don’t have a cause or an issue.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
