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Nearly three-fourths of U.S. adults don’t want the police budget in their area to be cut, a Pew Research poll reveals.
The national survey, conducted June 16-22, 2020 and released by Pew on July 9, finds that 73% of adults want their local spending on policing either increased or held steady, while 25% would like it to be reduced to some degree.
More citizens want their police budgets increased (31%) than cut (25%), with 11% calling for a large increase and 12% seeking a substantial reduction.
Amid the “Black Lives Matter” and “defund the police” protests, Black adults were the most likely to want to reduce police budgets, but a majority of them still opposed cuts, Pew reports:
“While Black adults are more likely than whites to favor cuts in police budgets, fewer than half of Black adults (42%) say spending on policing in their areas should be reduced. That is double the share of white adults who favor cutting funding for their local police (21%).”
Older Americans, both Black and White, were more likely than younger ones to oppose reducing police budgets, Pew finds:
“There also are sizable age differences in views of funding for policing. Among both Black and white adults, those under age 50 are far more likely to support decreased funding for police in their areas than are those 50 and older.”
