NEW POLL: Voters Want The Police To Focus On Solving Murders
Overall crime declined last year in America, according to the FBI’s latest data, released yesterday. Murders, however, increased significantly as the coronavirus raged and gun sales skyrocketed across the country.
Before giving in to the urge to launch a partisan football or rattle off a commentary on city life, it might be helpful to remember that both Republican- and Democratic-led cities saw increases, and murders rose in urban, suburban, and rural areas, across the country. Also important: the murder rate remains dramatically lower today than it was in the 1990s, the period before homicides began to decline steadily.
So, what’s going on?
Last week, we detailed recent polling showing that for both Democrats and Republicans the most agreed upon factor for explaining why murders rose last year is “the social and economic disruption of the pandemic”.
But the second most agreed upon factor is the failure of law enforcement to solve enough murders. We also found that solving more murders is the solution that likely voters most agree would be effective for reducing gun violence.
Yet, in far too many cities across the country, most murders go unsolved. For example, last year, the Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Nashville, and New Orleans police departments let half or more of murders go unsolved.
Why don’t the police solve more murders? One problem is that, as The New York Times reported earlier this year, police departments spend 96% of their time not focused on crimes defined as “violent”.
Here’s a visualization from the New York Times:
If you just read the phrase “violent crime,” thought about shootings and murders, and wondered how it could be that the police only spend 4% of their time focused on these serious offenses, we’ve got even more bad news for you: “Violent” crime is defined very broadly to include behavior that everyday people wouldn’t conceptualize as violent. So, in reality, experts estimate that the police only spend about 1% of their time on violent crimes like shootings and murder.
To summarize: 1) murders are up; 2) many police departments fail to solve most murders in their jurisdictions; 2) likely voters believe the failure to solve more murders is an important reason why murders are up; 3) likely voters believe that solving more murders would be important for reducing gun violence; and 4) the police spend very little time trying to solve serious crimes like murder.
Thus, there is a wide gap between how important it is to voters for the police to solve murders and the tiny fraction of time that police departments actually spend trying to solve murders.
To better understand public opinion of the importance of competing uses of police time and resources, Safer Cities conducted a survey of 1,311 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents on the Data for Progress infrastructure. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.
KEY FINDINGS:
72% of likely voters said that “solving shootings and murders” is a very important “job or role of police departments.”
69% of likely voters said that “solving rapes” is a very important “job or role of police departments.”
29% of likely voters said that “responding to reports of vandalism” is a very important “job or role of police departments.”
28% of likely voters said that “arresting people for possessing or using drugs” is a very important “job or role of police departments.”
27% of likely voters said that “responding to mental health and homelessness related issues” is a very important “job or role of police departments.”
18% of likely voters said that “responding to traffic violations” is a very important “job or role of police departments.”
CONCLUSION:
The chasm that exists between how the police spend their time and how likely voters think the police should spend their time presents a looming crisis in legitimacy for law enforcement.
This conclusion is particularly true in light of the evidence that the public believes both that the failure of police departments to solve murders is an important explanation for why murders rose across the country last year, and that solving more murders is a solution that voters most agree would be effective for reducing gun violence.
