CV NEWS FEED // After a year of calls from the political Left to “defund the police,” a new Gallup poll revealed this week that the police were the only major institution to see an increase in public confidence from 2020 to 2021, up by 3 percent.
In the poll, participants were asked if they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in 14 major American institutions.
The only major institutions to enjoy majority public confidence in 2021 were the police (51%), the military (69%), and small businesses (70%).
Politico reported this week that Democratic leaders are now working against the clock to do an about-face on the anti-police rhetoric of the Left ahead of the 2022 midterm elections:
This is the direction Democratic elders hope the party will move: away from slogans like ‘defund the police’ that they see as politically harmful — and which nearly cost them the House majority in 2020 — and toward a more nuanced, measured approach that’s both pro-police and pro-police reform.”
The police being able to buck the downward trend of public trust may be due to the record increase in violent crime across the country, as many request additional police presence in their communities.
The institutions that experienced the largest decreases in public trust included public schools and the medical system, down 9% and 7% respectively.
This rapid loss of public public confidence on the part of the public schools came during a year of school closures and controversial curricula, including Critical Race Theory.
America’s leading teachers unions have also been embroiled in a series of controversies, as CatholicVote has reported.
