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Before July shootings, blacks divided on U.S. police behavior

Xinhua, July 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

Just before the fatal shootings last week of black men by police in Louisiana and Minnesota, blacks in the U.S. were evenly divided over their treatment by police, Gallup has found in a latest poll.

The poll was released as tensions between blacks and police are once again on the rise in the U.S. in the aftermath of the two separate fatal shootings that sparked nationwide protests against racial discrimination against blacks.

A black sniper also killed four white police officers and one Hispanic officer in the city of Dallas, Texas during a protest against police brutality.

The June 7-July 1 poll, conducted before these incidents, found that half of blacks say police in their local area treat blacks and other racial minorities fairly, while 48 percent said they treat blacks unfairly, Gallup found.

Nineteen percent of blacks thought local police treated blacks very unfairly, similar to what Gallup found in 2015, Gallup said.

These results are based on Gallup's Minority Rights and Relations survey. The 2016 poll was conducted by telephone with 3,270 national adults, including large samples of blacks and Hispanics.

Although young black men have been the focal point of recent news stories about police shootings, black women -- along with younger blacks -- are more likely to express criticism of the police than are black men and older blacks.

Fifty-three percent of black women versus 43 percent of black men say local police treat blacks and other minorities unfairly. Similarly, 52 percent of blacks aged 18 to 49 versus 43 percent of blacks 50 and older think police treatment of minorities is unfair, Gallup found.

African Americans' perceptions of how racial minorities are treated by local police are markedly different from the views of Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, according to the poll.

While almost half of blacks believe racial minorities are treated unfairly, only 34 percent of Hispanics and 20 percent of whites agree.

The overall percentage of Americans believing blacks receive worse treatment than whites from the police remains at a record high - 45 percent, up from 43 percent recorded in 2015, Gallup found. Enditem