How Conservatives and Liberals See Police and Race Issues.

[Nice Squirrel]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...d12-11e4-a085-34e9b9f09a58_story.html?hpid=z1

In contrast, roughly half of all white Americans say the races are treated equally in the justice system and 6 in 10 have confidence that police treat both equally.

But white Americans are hardly homogenous in their views about these issues. While 2 in 3 white Republicans say minorities and whites are treated equally in the criminal justice system, only 3 in 10 white Democrats agree with that view. Similarly, while more than 8 in 10 white Republicans say they are confident that police treat blacks and whites equally, half as many white Democrats share that opinion.

In the Post-ABC survey, there were areas of common ground across the races and among whites of both parties. Overwhelming majorities say they would support requiring police officers to wear small video cameras whenever they are on duty.

Similar majorities of blacks, whites and Hispanics say they would support a policy requiring an outside prosecutor, unconnected to the police, to investigate any case of a police officer killing an unarmed civilian.

But those two responses were exceptions to the pattern of division on most other questions. There is a 2-to-1 gap between whites and blacks on whether police are adequately trained to avoid the use of excessive force, and slightly larger differences on whether the police try hard to maintain good relations with varied community groups and whether they are held accountable for any misconduct.