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Poll: Respect For Police Near All-Time High

By Tom Kludt

PHILADELPHIA (CNN) -- Americans' respect has climbed to a near-record high, according to a new Gallup poll.

The findings, released Monday, show that 76% of adults said they have "a great deal" of respect for their local police -- a 12-point jump since last year and just one point shy of the all-time Gallup high in 1967.

Another 17% of Americans said they have "some" respect, while 7% said they have "hardly any."

The poll was released against the backdrop of more than two years of regular nationwide protests over police encounters with unarmed African-Americans.

Gallup found racial split in attitudes toward police, with 80% of whites saying they have "a great deal" of respect for local law enforcement, compared with 67% of non-whites.

Those numbers for each group were higher than the previous year, when 69% of whites and 53% of nonwhites said they have "a great deal" of respect.

The Gallup survey also showed police improving their public standing in another area earlier this year, too. A poll in June showed 56% of Americans have confidence in police, up from a 22-year low of 52% in 2015.

The Gallup poll was conducted October 5-9 via telephone with a random sample of 1,017 adults, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

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