Efforts to reduce police budgets to allocate the money to other programs are just as unpopular as those that would be defunding police departments, new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows.
According to the survey, almost two-thirds of the public are against defunding police departments, compared to 34% in favor. At the same time, 60% of the public reject reducing the budget for police departments to redistribute it to other public health and social programs, while 39% support that goal, according to the poll.
While 57% of blacks in the U.S. support defunding the police, more than twice that of whites (26%), an overwhelming majority of black Americans favor (64%) putting the money toward other community programs.
Additionally, 75% of white Americans and 57% of Hispanics reject defunding the police, and two-thirds of whites and 58% of Hispanics do not favor moving law enforcement budgets to other programs.
The numbers come shortly after House Democrats unveiled their police reform bill, amid the growing outcry over the death of George Floyd, a black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis. The House Judiciary Committee last week held a hearing on policing practices and law enforcement accountability.
Democrats have been on the defensive over calls by far-left activists to defund local police departments, Democratic lawmakers have largely emphasized their efforts to reallocate funds related to social and safety programs.
“What I’m for is taking a hard look at our practices and have reforms where we need them,” House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, told MSNBC’s Craig Melvin Wednesday. “We need the police. We want the police. They have a role to play. Let’s not get so carried away that we allow sloganeering to hijack this movement,” he added.
Clyburn’s sentiments regarding police reforms were shared by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as well as Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass.
“What it means is, let us take the resources that we have, let us spend it in a way that gives the most protection to the American people, protection for their safety, protection for their rights,” Pelosi said when she called police funding a “local matter” during an interview on MSNBC on Monday.
Although Democrat Party leadership took control of the messaging of the issue on police funding, liberal freshman lawmakers such as New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib have been vocal about their support to defund local police departments.
This split between mainstream Democrats and the more left-wing party base is reflected in the poll.
While Republicans overwhelmingly do not approve of (89%) defunding the police or reallocating money (86%), Democrats are more split on the issue than the GOP and independents in relation to rejecting these stances, with 43% and 41% of Democrats rejecting defunding the police, as well as using the money for other functions, respectively.
The majority of independents, with 67%, oppose defunding the police and 59% are against redistributing money from police departments to other social programs.
