Roughly 50 years ago, in a 1969 question asked by Louis Harris, 76% of blacks said blacks face discrimination in the way they are treated by the police, while 19% of whites gave that response.
In an ABC News/Washington Post survey from December 2014, 74% of blacks said the recent killings of unarmed African American men by police in Ferguson, Missouri and New York City were a sign of broader problems in the treatment of African Americans by police; only 18% felt they were isolated incidents.
Eighty-five percent of blacks in a December 2014 CBS poll said that police officers needed better training on how to handle confrontations with civilians, and 92% in an ABC News/Washington Post question said that they would support a policy that when police kill an unarmed civilian it should be investigated by an outside prosecutor.
In 2014, 52% of blacks in a CBS News question said the police in their communities made them feel mostly safe, but a substantial 43% said mostly anxious.
In the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll cited above, 58% of blacks, up from 49% in 1995, said police officers in their community did a good job of enforcing the law.
