Poll of Newark Residents Reveals Strong Support for Police Reforms

Residents Believe Newark is Handling Policing Issues Better than Other Cities

As protests against racial injustice have swept across the nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, Newark-based non-profit Project Ready commissioned a poll of Newark residents to reveal how the people of a majority Black and Latino city feel about issues of race and police reform in their city.

“Newark has been held up as a national model for cities that responded well to the protests after George Floyd’s murder, but the message we heard directly from Newarkers was more nuanced,” said Shennell McCloud, Executive Director of Project Ready, which is working to mobilize voters in the July 7th primary and future elections. “By a wide margin, Newark residents agree that their city is handling race and police matters better than other cities and support the mayor on the issue, but nearly a third of Black Newarkers say they’ve been harassed by police, and across the board residents strongly support a variety of police reforms.”

The poll of 416 residents revealed that 60% of Newarkers believe that when it comes to race and excessive use of force by police, things are better in Newark than the rest of the country, while only 5% say it is worse. In addition, residents strongly approve of the job Mayor Ras Baraka (85% approve-11% disapprove) is doing on issues of race and policing and two-thirds (67%) rate the Newark Police Department during the protests and pandemic as excellent or good, while just 19% rate it negatively.

Despite positive ratings of police overall, a quarter of Newarkers (26%) have felt they or a family member were harassed by the Newark police. This has happened more to African-Americans (31%) than Hispanics (22%) or whites (15%). Of those who say they have experienced harassment, only 12% say they reported it. Conversely, 28% of Newarkers report having an experience in which a Newark police officer helped keep them safe from a potentially dangerous situation, although the rate was more prevalent among white (39%) and Hispanic (37%) than Black (21%) residents.

At the same time, there is strong support for reforms to policing in Newark including requiring police to de-escalate situations (88% support, 71% strongly), banning chokeholds (85% support, 80% strongly), requiring comprehensive reporting when a weapon is pointed at civilians (84% support, 75% strongly), publicly sharing discipline records and police data with all residents (81% support, 64% strongly), and banning shooting at moving vehicles (76% support, 60% strongly).

Few Newarkers (10%) believe white and black people are treated equally in America’s criminal justice system – including only 3% of Black and 28% of white residents – while 85% believe they are not.

Methodology

Polling was conducted online from June 15-17, 2020. Using its Dynamic Online Sampling technology to attain a sample reflective of adults, Change Research polled 416 people in the city of Newark. Post-stratification weights were made on age, gender, zip code, education, and race and ethnicity to reflect the distribution of adults. All polls are subject to errors caused by interviewing a sample of persons, rather than the entire population. In 95 cases out of 100, the responses to this survey should be within plus or minus 5.6 percentage points of those that would have been obtained from interviewing the entire population of adults. The sampling error for subgroups of the survey will be greater.