Americans' sense of safety, confidence in police decline: Gallup

Americans’ sense of safety and confidence in local police declined from 2020 to 2021, according to Gallup’s annual Law and Order Index. 

The poll found that the United States’s index score, a measure based on a number of questions related to respondents' experiences with crime and how safe they feel, dropped from 87 two years ago to 83 last year, about average compared to the rest of the world. 

Gallup rates more than 120 countries worldwide in the index from 1 to 100, with higher numbers indicating people surveyed in a country feel more secure. 

The U.S. has typically not made the top 10 most secure countries in the world, but its rating usually places it above average.

Pollsters found that the proportion of Americans who trust in their police forces dropped significantly, falling 8 points from 82 percent having confidence in 2020 to 74 percent in 2021. 

Gallup’s analysis states that declining trust in local police in North America is entirely attributable to the declining trust in the U.S. Americans largely continue to trust their local police, but police-involved killings like the murder of George Floyd in 2020 have likely shaken their faith, Gallup states. 

The report found Singapore performed the best on the index with a score of 96, while Afghanistan had the lowest score of 51.

Afghanistan’s score is still an improvement from 2019, when it was at 43. Despite the chaos in the country as the Taliban retook control of the government last year following the U.S. withdrawal of troops, violence dropped significantly as the Taliban’s insurgency ended, Gallup noted in its analysis.

Gallup rated the world overall at a score of 83 on the index, 1 point better than its score of 82 in 2020. 

Gallup bases the index on the composite of a variety of questions it asks respondents, including if they feel confident in their local police, feel safe in their neighborhoods or were victims of assault or theft in the past year.