Whites are more confident than ever that their local police treat blacks fairly

months, with shootings and chokings of unarmed black men sparking nationwide protests charging racial bias.

But a new poll includes a surprising finding: The episodes might have actually increased white Americans' belief that their local cops treat blacks fairly.

An NBC News/Marist College poll released Sunday found 52 percent of whites saying they have a “great deal” of confidence that police officers in their community treat blacks and whites equally. That is 11 points higher than in a September NBC/Wall Street Journal poll asking the same question (albeit using a different polling firm). It also clearly exceeds levels of trust seen in a series of Pew Research Center and USA Today/Gallup surveys dating to 2007, as well as another NBC/WSJ poll conducted after the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995.

There’s been no such boon in confidence among African Americans, though. Just 12 percent express a great deal of confidence in local police’s equal treatment of blacks and whites -- a number that is squarely within the 10-to-17-point range in previous surveys. Only one-third have at least a “fair amount” of confidence in their neighborhood police, compared with 78 percent of whites.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/09/whites-are-more-confident-than-ever-that-their-police-treat-blacks-fairly/