Survey provides insight into public perception of Phoenix Police Department

PHOENIX – A recent independent survey delved into the public perception of how well the Phoenix Police Department performs its duties.

Phoenix was one of six major U.S. cities where a CrimeChannel.org pollster asked residents what they thought about their police departments in November. The website is a repository of crime issue survey data funded by Evan F. Trestman Philanthropies.

“The idea of the survey is to provide a sense of what public perceptions are about crime and about the police department,” Ron Faucheux, who conducted the poll, told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Wednesday after the findings were released. “And hopefully that will help enlighten the public and public officials in terms of how to deal with the issues in the future.”

A representative sample of 800 Phoenix adults participated in the survey through a mix of online and live telephone interviews. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.46%.

How satisfied are residents with Phoenix Police Department?

According to the findings, 49% of Phoenix residents are very or somewhat satisfied with the police department overall. Meanwhile, 24% said they are very or somewhat unsatisfied and 24% were neutral.

The satisfaction level varied widely across racial lines, with 58% of white residents, 46% of Black residents and 39% of Hispanic residents saying they are very or somewhat satisfied.

Less than a quarter of residents overall, 22%, said they though the Phoenix Police Department is doing a worse job now than it did a few years ago. The largest bloc of respondents, 46%, said the department is doing about the same, with 32% saying it was better and 1% saying they didn’t know.

Public perception of police improves closer to home

One trend seen in the poll results is that residents generally feel better about public safety in their own neighborhoods than in the city as a whole.

For example, 53% of residents said they were very or somewhat satisfied with police performance in their neighborhoods, 4 percentage points higher than the overall satisfaction level.

And while 62% said they consider Phoenix a fairly or very safe city, that figure was 72% for their own neighborhoods.

“The survey shows that fear of crime, in particular, has a big impact on how people live their lives,” Faucheux.

How does Phoenix satisfaction level compare to other major cities?

The questions were the same for each of the six cities surveyed by CrimeChannel.org. Houston residents had the highest overall satisfaction level at 54%, 1 point ahead Los Angeles. Chicago and New York matched Phoenix at 49%, while Philadelphia was a tick behind at 48%.

Because of the nature of the polling, none of the questions were directly related to the U.S. Department of Justice’s yearslong investigation into the Phoenix Police Department that found patterns of egregious civil rights violations.

A DOJ report issued in June commended the department’s ongoing reform efforts under interim Chief Michael Sullivan but said more needs to be done.

Sullivan declined a request from KTAR News to respond to the survey results.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Balin Overstolz McNair contributed to this report.

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