Survey Shows 30 Percent of Black Citizens Don't Trust LAPD To' Do What's Right'

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — About 30 percent of Black citizens said they trust the Los Angeles Police Department to do what is right "none of the time," according to a survey released Tuesday by Loyola Marymount University.

The survey, conducted by LMU's Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles, found that the majority of respondents that said they trust the police department were White and Asian.

The survey of 1,753 residents in the City of Los Angeles was conducted by telephone and online from August 31 to October 25 of this year.

However, 51 percent of the people surveyed said the LAPD can be trusted "to do what is right" just about always or most of the time.

"Even though a majority of Angelenos say LAPD is doing well in certain areas, this wide gulf in perception between racial and ethnic groups does not bode well for the department's efforts to address fears and suspicions that, in some communities, date back generations," said Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and Chicana/o and Latina/o studies at LMU and director of the center.

The survey also concluded that people who call 911 would prefer to talk to professionally trained mental health workers rather than police for nonviolent emergency calls.

Roughly 83 percent of survey respondents said they want to see unarmed responses to nonviolent calls in L.A.

The survey requested that based on the results, some of the Los Angeles Police Department's budget should be allocated towards recruiting social workers and mental health professionals to answer emergency calls.

The survey also concluded that civilians should have the right to bring lawsuits against individual police officers for misconduct.

Roughly 62 percent of respondents called for moving some of the LAPD's budget to other programs, and more than a third said they would endorse a plan to completely dismantle the department.

"What we see from these results is a population in Los Angeles that has been moved by recent activism here and around the country," said Brianne Gilbert, the center's associate director. "Coupled with the LAPD's history of high-profile incidents involving officer misconduct, the movement to defund police has prompted more Angelenos to reconsider their support for the department's status quo."

The full report is available here.

(© Copyright 2020 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. City News Service contributed to this report.)