[zpallin]

Nice. This is very interesting. I suppose it would be hard to make any assumptions about the reasoning here. At least Vox interprets this as black people "view inadequate protection and inadequate service levels as part of the larger pattern of mistreatment." That's entirely reasonable. If someone were to believe that the police institution itself is not racist, and it's just the individual cops who are the problem, then it's fair to come to the conclusion that more policing may solve the very real issue of crime in black communities.

However, just like the author of the article, I agree that we would need to see a similar poll now after the George Floyd protests to see if the opinion still stands, but it's important to note.

[rayiner]

Here is a post-George Floyd poll: https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/86ijosd7cy/20200611_yahoo_race_p...

A plurality of African Americans (38-31) oppose cutting police budgets. African Americans are split 50-50 in whether we need more or fewer police on the streets. A supermajority (64-33) believe that the current police departments can be reformed.

A majority (51-17) support spending less on police and increasing funding for social programs, but try to reconcile this with the statistic above, where half want more police on the streets. (People might perceive this question as reduced budgets would hit management, etc., rather than beat cops).

[zpallin]

Nice. However, since yougov experiences sample bias due to their data collection method being only online participants, and the sample size of black people isn't anywhere near even 5% margin of error (meaning it could be completely wrong) this study is not usable to draw conclusions on its own.

[JamesBarney]

The sampling bias would have to be very large to throw off those numbers with 140+ African American participants.

Do you have a better poll that shows different numbers?

[zpallin]

I don't but that's not really my point -- the poll itself isn't a problem, it's the lack of multiple polls that cautions me to draw concrete conclusions from it as rayiner did. 140 people out of 30 million is about 10% margin of error. Add sample bias to that and this poll alone is nowhere near conclusive, although as I indicated it's still useful to reflect on the issue.

[II2II]

> then it's fair to come to the conclusion that more policing may solve the very real issue of crime in black communities.

It depends upon what more policing means. I have been keeping a closer eye on what's happening in Canada, and it seems clear that the police are not trained or do not internalize training to handle certain situations particularly well. In extreme cases, this has resulted in situations being escalated and deadly force being used. Given complaints ranging from excessive force to racial profiling, it sounds like problem routinely plays itself out on a smaller scale. If a community is reluctant to trust the police, I doubt that they will see benefits from more traditional policing.

Some of the de-funding discussion has been about reducing police funding to allocate it to other social services, but I suppose that it could also be reallocated training officers who's primary purpose is community relations, responding to mental health issues, or handling criminal activity that is unlikely to require an armed response. This may make more sense than dumping responsibility onto social service agencies both due to the quality of training and the ability to immediately access police resources if escalation is inescapable.

[zpallin]

Agreed. To a lot of people, policing means "solve disruptions in society" but that's an oversimplistic and unrealistic idea of what police are trained to do and what is even possible with an institution that treats violence as a necessary means to do their job.

And for the record, I am squarely in the defund camp, but also open minded to discussion.