Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

Gallup Poll: America's Confidence in Law Enforcement

Aired July 18, 2001 - 08:35   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: Moving along now to more on one of our top stories though, the reports of laptops and some weapons having gone missing from the FBI. It's the latest in a series of missteps by the Bureau.

Last week, now, before the disclosure of the missing equipment, Gallup asked Americans about their confidence in the FBI. But it was after the spy scandal involving the alleged spy Robert Hanssen and also, those documents in the Timothy McVeigh case that went missing. With results of the CNN/"USA Today" Gallup poll, we've got editor-in- chief Frank Newport joining us now from Princeton, New Jersey.

So Frank, how are people feeling about the FBI with all of this?

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: Well, we have one basic question we ask a lot about both the politicians and entities, like the FBI, and that's a favorable/unfavorable opinion. And we were, frankly, a little surprised to find that the opinions were on the positive side in general rather than the negative side. And we broke it up.

This was a -- I'll show you in a minute why we did it, but this is a 10-point scale from very favorable to unfavorable. But 70 percent of Americans were on that favorable side of the scale down here. Just about one out of four had an unfavorable opinion of the FBI, which is not as high as some might have anticipated. Now, note they're not in the very favorable side, but they're in the somewhat modestly favorable side overall, Colleen, and -- when we ask them about the FBI.

MCEDWARDS: What about longer term trends though?

NEWPORT: Well, that's a good point. We go all the way back to J. Edgar Hoover on this. He died in 1972 but Gallup first asked this question back in the '60s. And there you can see this is the FBI of old. Look at that back then, 84 percent of Americans put themselves in that very favorable opinion, on the left-hand side there, the FBI.

Actually, Colleen, that started coming down right around Watergate. See those very favorable numbers started coming down, all the way down to where we are today, down to just 27 percent. So there has been a big change. But a lot of that change actually occurred before more recent years it looks like. MCEDWARDS: Yes, I was going to say different times, different issues. That's for sure. Now, what about other law enforcement agencies, how does the FBI stack up against those?

NEWPORT: Well, you know, that's a very interesting question because the FBI's kind of the super agency that a lot of local police forces go to when they need real, you know, crime solved and special help. But boy, our data shows that Americans have a lot more confidence in their local police than they do in the FBI.

This is how we asked it, confidence. These are just the people that have a lot of confidence in state police, local police, Colleen, six out of 10. The FBI comes way back down here. Just 38 percent have a lot of confidence in the FBI. We put the CIA in the mix because we wanted to give another national entity there. Notice, it's even lower than the FBI. So, these national things aren't doing so well in the eyes of the public.

All in all, the bottom line here is we think Americans still have some support, Colleen, as we showed you, but certainly, the opinion seems to have come down, particularly, compared to the good old days back when Jimmy Stewart, remember, was in that movie, the "FBI Story" and they could do no wrong -- Colleen.

MCEDWARDS: Understood. CNN's Frank Newport, thank you very much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com