Before turning to the issue of police misconduct, it will be helpful to first profile Americans' overall satisfaction with the police who serve their cities and neighborhoods. It is important to document such general opinions because they are indicators of the level of popular trust in and legitimacy of the police as well as the amount of basic confidence citizens have in their local police department. It also provides a baseline for our examination of more specific attitudes later in this and following chapters.

OVERALL SATISFACTION WITH THE POLICE

Opinion polls and our own survey show that the vast majority of Americans rate the police favorably in general terms. Most Americans say that they “trust,” have “confidence” in, and “approve” of the police. However, the factors that shape such overall satisfaction are not fully understood. To what degree and in what ways is satisfaction influenced by race and ethnicity, by the conditions in one's neighborhood, by personal encounters with police officers, by people's general beliefs about police misconduct, or by media reporting on the police? As noted in Chapter 1, consensus is lacking on the impact of these factors on citizens' perceptions of the police; instead, the research literature contains a hodgepodge of diverse findings (Brown and Benedict 2002). Nor have previous studies examined all of these factors simultaneously, as we do here. In addition to standard demographics, we include the following independent variables in our analysis of overall satisfaction with the police.