Respect For Cops Has Increased. A Lot.

Written by Aaron Banler

A new poll shows that the despite the poisonous rhetoric from the Black Lives Matter crowd, respect for police officers has increased significantly over the past year.

A Gallup poll released on Monday found that 76 percent of Americans said they respected their local police officers “a great deal,” close to the all-time high of 77 percent in 1967. Gallup first started this particular survey in 1965.

Among political ideology, conservatives had the most respect for cops, at 85 percent. Self-described moderates and liberals were recorded at 72 percent and 71 percent, respectively. The results were similar among political parties: 86 percent of Republicans said they have “a great deal” of respect for cops, as did 75 percent of Independents and 68 percent of Democrats.

Across racial lines, whites had the most respect for cops at 80 percent, while 67 percent of nonwhites said they had “a great deal” of respect for cops. Older people also tended to have more respect for cops, as 81 percent of those aged 55 years or older said they have a “a great deal” of respect for cops, compared to 77 percent for those in the ages 35-54 years range and 69 percent for 18-34 year olds.

The 76 percent figure is an increase from 64 percent in 2015, with the increase appearing to stem from the shooting of police officers in Dallas, TX and Baton Rouge, LA.

William Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, told theWall Street Journal that those shootings were “eye-opening” for the American people. Laurie Robinson, criminology professor at George Mason University, also told the Journal that “the rallying support of law enforcement in the wake of the shootings” as cause for the higher respect for police officers.

“The optimist in me thinks it’s more than just a knee-jerk rallying and really has to do with reflection on what the role of police should be and the complex challenges they face,” said Robinson, who was one of the co-chairs on President Barack Obama’s policing task force.

The Journal‘s report included this interesting tidbit:

In a separate poll conducted before the police shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Gallup found that 56% of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in police, up from a 22-year low of 52% in 2015.

A Pew Research Center survey released last month showed that six in 10 Americans believe police killings of black people are a sign of a broader problem between blacks and police, while 39% say they are isolated incidents. Nearly eight of 10 black people said these deaths signal a larger problem, compared with 54% of whites.

The anti-police rhetoric and violence from the radical left appears to have backfired.

This article was originally posted at The DailyWire.com