Pew Research polling of 8000 law enforcement officers on various issues

[Belgium]

Pew recently published polling of ~8000 law enforcement officers on a number of issues:

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/01/11/behind-the-badge/

I wasn't sure where to put this but considering the length and scope of the article, an individual thread would probably do this topic the most justice. I would highly recommend reading through the whole thing if you have some spare time.

I have selected some of the parts that stood out to me and what I figured would be of most interest to NT.

As H2HKing would say: thoughts? 

 
The survey also finds that officers remain deeply skeptical of the protests that have followed deadly encounters between police and black citizens. Two-thirds of officers (68%) say the demonstrations are motivated to a great extent by anti-police bias; only 10% in a separate question say protesters are similarly motivated by a genuine desire to hold police accountable for their actions. Some two-thirds characterize the fatal encounters that prompted the demonstrations as isolated incidents and not signs of broader problems between police and the black community – a view that stands in sharp contrast with the assessment of the general public. In a separate Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults, 60% say these incidents are symptoms of a deeper problem.

A look inside the nation’s police departments reveals that most officers are satisfied with their department as a place to work and remain strongly committed to making their agency successful. Still, about half (53%) question whether their department’s disciplinary procedures are fair, and seven-in-ten (72%) say that poorly performing officers are not held accountable.

 
Most police officers feel respected by the public and, in turn, believe officers have little reason to distrust most people. Rather than viewing the neighborhoods where they work as hostile territory, seven-in-ten officers say that some or most of the residents of the areas they patrol share their values. At the same time, a narrow majority of officers (56%) believe an aggressive rather than courteous approach is more effective in certain neighborhoods, and 44% agree that some people can only be brought to reason the hard, physical way.

Long-standing tensions between police and blacks underlie many of the survey results. While substantial majorities of officers say police have a good relationship with whites, Hispanics and Asians in their communities, 56% say the same about police relations with blacks. This perception varies dramatically by the race or ethnicity of the officer. Six-in-ten white and Hispanic officers characterize police relations with blacks as excellent or good, a view shared by only 32% of their black colleagues.

 While physical confrontations are not a day-to-day occurrence for most police officers, they are not altogether infrequent. A third of all officers say that in the past month, they have physically struggled or fought with a suspect who was resisting arrest. Male officers are more likely than their female counterparts to report having had this type of encounter in the past month – 35% of men vs. 22% of women. And white officers (36%) are more likely than black officers (20%) to say they have struggled or fought with a suspect in the past month. Among Hispanic officers, 33% say they had an encounter like this.

Black officers are much more likely than white or Hispanic officers to say they worry more that officers will not spend enough time diagnosing a situation before acting (61% for blacks vs. 37% for whites and 44% of Hispanics). Overall, blacks and department administrators (59%) are the only two major groups in which a majority is more concerned that officers will act too quickly than worry that they will wait too long before responding to a situation.
Officers give their departments mixed ratings for their disciplinary processes. About half (45%) agree that the disciplinary process in their agency is fair, while 53% disagree (including one-in-five who strongly disagree). When they are asked more specifically about the extent to which underperforming officers are held accountable, police give more negative assessments of their departments. Only 27% agree that officers who consistently do a poor job are held accountable, while 72% disagree with this.

 
Two-thirds of police officers (67%) say the highly publicized fatal encounters between police and blacks are isolated incidents, while 31% describe them as signs of a broader problem. Yet underlying this result are striking differences between the views of black and white officers – differences that mirror the broader fault lines in society at large on racial issues.

A majority of black officers (57%) say these encounters are evidence of a broader problem between police and blacks, a view held by only about a quarter of all white (27%) and Hispanic (26%) officers.

Black female officers in particular are more likely to say these incidents signal a more far-reaching concern. Among all sworn officers, 63% of black women say this, compared with 54% of black men.

 
Most police officers are deeply skeptical of the motives of the demonstrators who protested after many of the deadly encounters between police and blacks. Fully nine-in-ten (92%) believe that long-standing bias against the police is a great deal (68%) or some (24%) of the motivation behind these demonstrations. In sharp contrast, only about a third (35%) of officers say in a separate question that a genuine desire to hold officers accountable for their actions is at least some of the motivation for the protests.

Once again, race pushes police in opposite directions. Among black officers, 69% say the protests were sincere efforts to force police accountability – more than double the proportion of whites (27%) who share this view. Female officers, older police and department administrators also are more likely than male officers, younger police and rank-and-file officers to believe protesters genuinely seek police accountability.