15 July 2021
Data: Gallup. Chart: Axios Visuals
Americans' trust in all big institutions has cratered, but look at the massive gap in who we do trust.
By the numbers: New Gallup polling finds a 45-point split in trust of police — 76% of Republicans vs. 31% of Democrats. Confidence in the church or organized religion — twice as many Rs as Ds, 51% to 26%.
So who do Democrats trust instead?
- With President Biden in the White House, 62% of Ds said they trust the presidency vs. 13% of Rs. That's a 49-point delta — the biggest in the survey.
- No surprise here: Blue America trusts the media by double digits more than red America does.
- But this is interesting: Twice as many Democrats trust public schools as do Republicans, 43% to 20%.
The big picture: Overall trust in key U.S. institutions has dropped 10 points in the past decade, according to Gallup, which began tracking the question during the Watergate year of 1973.
- The police (51%) are one of just three institutions in which a majority of Americans express confidence. The others — small business (70%) and the military (69%) — have consistently led the list.
- At the other end of the spectrum, Gallup reports, are Congress, TV news, big business, the criminal justice system and newspapers — each with a confidence rating at or below 21%. Congress (12%) and big business (18%) have ranked at the bottom of the list since 2007.
Gallup found a big racial difference in trust of police:
- 56% of white adults trusted police vs. 27% of Black adults.
- That's up from 19% of Black adults in 2020, right after the killing of George Floyd. Confidence among whites was unchanged.
The fine print: The telephone poll of 1,381 U.S. adults was taken June 1 to July 5, with a margin of error of ±3 points for the full sample.
📊 Go deeper: Read the Gallup report. ... Police breakout ... Institution-by-institution data back to 1973.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.