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WASHINGTON, June 3 (UPI) _ A Justice Department
study shows people in 12 selected U.S. cities have a high degree of "satisfaction"
with local police.
The survey, released today, also indicates
that whites are more satisfied than blacks or other ethnic minorities with how they
are served by law enforcement.
Overall, 85 percent said they were "satisfied"
or "very satisfied" with the police officers serving their neighborhoods.
However, only about 10 percent of whites
are dissatisfied with police, while 24 percent of blacks and 22 percent of other
minorities are dissatisfied.
In individual cities, satisfaction with
police ranged from a high of 97 percent in Madison, Wis., to a low of 78 percent
in Washington, D.C.
The survey of the 12 cities was taken in
1998, before the current controversy arose over alleged "racial profiling"
in some police departments.
"Racial profiling" means that
some officers are much more likely to pull over or question people of color than
whites at random stops. The phenomenon is sometimes referred to as committing the
offense of "driving while black."
Jan Chaiken, director of the department's
Bureau of Justice Statistics, which conducted the survey, said, "It's clear
that people of all colors...do have a high respect for police."
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder Jr.,
who released the study along with Chaiken at the Justice Department, said police
departments want to "understand the way they're viewed in the community,"
adding that there is "distrust that is far too common."
Besides race, the degree of satisfaction
with police was influenced by crime rate, fear of crime and the degree that police
became involved in the community. Chicago, for instance, has pushed "community
policing," a strategy that has officers in neighborhoods directly interacting
with residents rather than sitting behind desks or cruising by in patrol cars.
Awareness of community policing ranged from
a low of 42 percent in Knoxville, Tenn., to a high of 67 percent in Chicago.
The 12 cities in the survey were selected
because they represent a range of implementation for community policing.
The impetus for the survey, part of the
larger annual crime victims survey to be released later this year, came from state
and local law enforcement agencies. A state and local advisory board for the FBI's
Uniform Crime Report made the request that all 17,000 communities included in the
UCR be surveyed by the BJS as part of the separate victims survey.
But Chaiken said that would have been too
great an undertaking. Local departments can download the software to conduct their
own surveys at "www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs".
The survey was conducted by civilian members
of the Census Bureau, not police.
The crime victims survey, conducted by the
BJS, is different from the FBI's UCR, which collects crime reported by police departments.
The 12 cities, and the percentage of those
residents satisfied with police efforts, were Chicago, 80 percent; Kansas City, Mo.,
89; Knoxville, 89; Los Angeles, 86; Madison, 97; New York, 84; San Diego, 93; Savannah,
Ga., 86; Spokane, Wash., 87; Springfield, Mass., 87; Tucson, Ariz., 87; Washington,
D.C., 78.
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