4 in 10 Americans Believe Police Accountability Improved Since George Floyd Murder, According to Zencity Research
Zencity, a government technology company providing survey data to 300 US cities, released data from a national survey gauging public opinion launched immediately following the publication of the video of Mr. Tyre Nichols's death in Memphis, Tennessee. The survey was conducted from January 29 to January 31 2023, with 2,267 respondents across the United States, selected to represent the geographic, racial, age and sex diversity of US adults.
Key observations from the national survey:
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Exposure to the Video
- 51% of U.S. adults report they have watched at least some portion of the video of Tyre Nichols being beaten by Memphis police officers.
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Improvements in Accountability since George Floyd.
- 41% of respondents thought that police who engage in misconduct are being held accountable more often than before the George Floyd incident in 2021, with strong differences by especially age.
- While young people (under 35) are fairly split on improvements in accountability since 2020 (35% say things have gotten worse vs 32% better), older respondents (over 55) are overwhelmingly optimistic, with 46% saying things have improved and only 6% saying things have gotten worse.
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Optimism that Nichols incident will spark change.
- Nearly half of respondents thought the events surrounding Tyre Nichols death would lead to positive change, with Black (58% confident, 28% not at all confident) and Hispanic (65% confident, 20% not at all confident) respondents being the most optimistic and White respondents being the most pessimistic (48% confident/32% not at all confident).
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Gap in Perception of Procedural Justice by Race
- Black (60% agree they would be treated with respect) and Hispanic (63% agree) respondents are less likely to agree that they would be treated with respect if stopped by police than White (70%) respondents.
"Our hope is that this data is useful to public sector leaders who are ultimately responsible for managing what matters most: the public's trust," said Michael Simon, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Zencity. "The proactive steps and atypical transparency from Memphis city officials in recent days have been a sharp contrast to previous tragic incidents. Early indication is that a majority of Americans feel that justice and accountability have improved since George Floyd's murder in 2020."
The full results of the survey are available at the following link: https://bit.ly/nicholssurvey.
About the methodology
This survey ran from January 29-31, 2023. 2,267 responses were collected from adults (18 and over) across the United States via digital recruitment using quota sampling for age, race/ethnicity, and gender. The instrument was optimized for data collection on mobile devices. Rake-weighting was used to ensure the results were representative of the adult population of the United States.
About Zencity
Zencity is a New York and Tel Aviv based Govtech company that serves more than 300 local government agencies in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and Israel. The company, founded in 2016, works with mayors, police chiefs, city managers and other public sector leaders to build trust between governments and the people that they serve by improving responsiveness.
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