Paleologos: Black Detroit residents show varying opinions on crime, policing
The second Suffolk University/USA TODAY CityView poll of Detroit residents gave us a huge research opportunity that we did not have in our last poll of Milwaukee: we were able to record a statistically significant subset of Black residents, which allowed us to study the nuanced consistencies and differences in the responses of Black men and Black women.
This is largely because more than 3 out of 4 residents in Detroit are Black, according to the latest census figures.
In the overall survey of all residents, 40% rated Detroit’s police as “excellent” or “good,” while 58% indicated “fair” or “poor.” Among Black residents, ratings were nearly identical.
However, Black women thought more highly of the police — 44% responded excellent or good and 54% fair or poor. Meanwhile, only 37% of Black men scored the police as excellent or good and 63% said fair or poor.
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In this column, I almost never stray from the statistics — the whole point of polling is that you need a large sample size to claim results that are accurate and precise.
Nonetheless, the first night our poll was “in the field,” I was monitoring the phone bank and heard the response of a Black man who, unprompted, exclaimed, “I rush to my job worrying about getting stopped by a cop, at work I have no chance to move up, then I duck police cruisers and street gangs on my way home. I worry if my kids are alive and safe. I make excuses to them about why we can’t do things, I can’t breathe. And then it starts all over tomorrow.”
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