By Steve Pomper
The anti-cop myth ship may finally be taking on water. But the police-hating extremists continue to sail and bail as if their lives depended on it. Maybe not their lives, literally, but their Anarcho-Marxist ideological existence seems threatened for sure.
Even though most Americans still respect and admire the police to some degree, there are plenty of pockets of cop-hating especially in blue jurisdictions where these pirates plunder the public’s good sense and reason. And the legacy media helps them create, spread, and perpetuate myths such as hands up, don’t shoot, Saint George Floyd, and social workers instead of police.
Leftist media markets make the cop myths seem as if people believe the lies more broadly than they do, thus fooling people who don’t have the time or inclination to get news from other than legacy media. Another myth is their threadbare narrative that cops are hunting and killing black men in the streets.
About the “police brutality” exaggeration, Rav Arora, at the New York Post explains, “Social movements tap into our most primitive emotions, obscuring the complexities of sociopolitical problems. Reason is traded for ideological fervor and skepticism is swapped with religious dogma.”
As I recently wrote at NPA, even the once-esteemed AP is still pushing the “hands up, don’t shoot” anti-police myth even a decade after the DOJ said it didn’t happen. I won’t go into the specific numbers again, but the FBI stats repeatedly show the number of black suspects killed by the police is very low. And almost every suspect was trying to kill the officer when they F—d around and found out.
The myth-making formula involves citing the rare legitimate controversial police incidents and combining them with the mostly non-controversial incidents the anti-cop extremists intentionally twist into controversy. Then they project their warped versions of what they think cops are like, on the public—ACAB, right? Then, the anti-cop media broadcast the extremists’ half-truths, exaggerations, and outright lies—myth-making.
And then there’s the vast toxic projection where the extremists convince themselves they know all about what cops do without knowing even a little bit about what cops do. They refuse to learn about what real police work is like. They prefer the myths. The anti-coppers want Americans to believe cops are brutes who get into the job for the power and authority. Perhaps that’s because it’s how the extremists believe they would act if they were cops.
Most people get into police work because they are good, decent citizens who want to help protect their communities from those who would commit harm. Is this altruism nullified because there are the rare exceptions who tarnish their badges—and give extremists ammunition? No. As with any profession, that will always happen to some degree.
This brings me to some myth-smashing I recently enjoyed thanks to an encouraging Gallup poll. “U.S. Confidence in Institutions Mostly Flat, but Police Up.”
For example, with the apparent mismanagement of many of America’s institutions (government and private), Americans’ confidence in our once revered federal law enforcement agencies’ leadership (FBI, DOJ, CIA, Secret Service, ICE, ATF, etc.) is flailing. Americans don’t trust these agencies’ leaders and neither do the patriot rank-and-file whom they are misusing and who are slogging through a morass of low morale.
Americans’ rising confidence in the police is a surprising bright spot on an otherwise bleak law enforcement horizon.
This public increase in police confidence is a recent phenomenon that occurred between 2023 and 2024. I believe this surge in confidence, in part, reflects the efforts of pro-law enforcement, public education organizations like the NPA have been making. They’re educating Americans about what the police do (and don’t do) and why they do it (or don’t do it). Slowly, steadily, to continue the Marxist myth ship metaphor, we may also finally be taking some wind out of their sails.
The poll showed that, though still too low with some demographics, every age and racial group’s confidence in cops rose and some even spiked.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that good feelings toward cops are growing just as crime rates are soaring due to horrendous anti-law and order policies at all government levels. The people in crime-ridden neighborhoods are finally so fed up they’re demonstrating in the streets.
As a baseline, Gallup’s record high confidence in police of 64 percent occurred in 2004. Since then, confidence has ebbed and flowed with the anti-cop headlines. The new poll showed that all adults’ confidence in police rose to 51 percent from 43 percent. Those 55 and older expressed the most confidence (but didn’t have the most significant increase), rising from 54 to 61 percent.
Those aged 35 to 54 inched up from 41 to 44 percent. But the rise in confidence from younger folks 18–34 was startling—in a good way. It rose to 43 percent, which isn’t laudatory on its own, but that was way up from a meager 27 percent only last year.
By racial groups respondents showed a similar dramatic increase in confidence in the police. White adults’ confidence rose to 54 percent from 49, and non-whites’ confidence increased from 31 to a whopping 44 percent. Political party affiliation increases were also across the board.
Republicans already had a relatively high 60 percent that ticked up to 62. But Democrats’ confidence in police shot up to 44 percent from a scant 31 percent. Lastly, independents recorded another significant increase rising 12 points from 37 to 49 percent.
Small businesses and the military were the only other institutions to gain confidence in the poll. Americans expressed some confidence in other institutions such as, the medical system, higher education, the church or organized religion, the U.S. Supreme Court, public schools, organized labor, banks, large technology companies, and the presidency” but, essentially, their public confidence numbers remained “flat.”
Less than 25 percent of Americans expressed confidence in “the criminal justice system, newspapers, big business, television news and Congress.” Gallup also reported, “Of these, television news and Congress have the unwelcome distinction of earning low or no trust from a majority of Americans.”
These numbers indicate that Americans are yearning for a return to the days of traditional policing, restoring the rule of law and equal justice for all, and to reclaim law and order—for every American. These poll stats, hopefully, also show that the anti-cop extremists’ myths may finally be sinking into the depths of a Marxist sea—let’s all do what we can to help it along.
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