Pew poll: Respect high for Philly cops

There's good and not-so-good news for the Philadelphia Police Department in the results of a public-opinion poll released Wednesday morning by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

First, the good news:

* Seventy percent of the 1,604 city residents contacted by Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative between Jan. 31 and Feb. 13 said they have considerable respect for police officers.

* Seventy seven percent of people who said they had an encounter with a cop during the last two years described the officer as behaving professionally.

* When asked to name two things they liked least about living in the city, only 29 percent named crime - a sizable drop from 45 percent in 2009.

Now, the not-so- good:

* While 61 percent said they were in favor of officers stopping and frisking suspicious individuals, 43 percent said they don't think cops use good judgment when they pick out and pat down folks on the street.

* Forty nine percent of those surveyed described police protection as "good" or "excellent." But another 49 percent described it as "poor" or "only fair."

* Crime was described as being a "very serious" or "somewhat serious" problem in the neighborhoods of 64 percent of those polled.

Larry Eichel, project director of the Philadelphia Research Initiative, said the poll's findings were interesting, but not particularly surprising.

"People basically like the police and want to rely on them," he said.

There was a gap in people's perception of how cops handled the "Stop and Frisk" policy that played out along racial lines.

The poll found that 57 percent of whites said cops use good judgment in deciding whom to randomly pat down; that number fell to 30 percent among blacks and 48 percent among Hispanics.

"It's not a surprise," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said. "It's something we definitely have to work on. We have to do a better job of explaining what we do and why."

The department has extensively trained officers on how to properly "Stop and Frisk" people, Ramsey said, and supervisors are now able to audit an officer's paperwork to determine how well he is performing the task on the street.

Ramsey said he has stressed the need for cops to behave professionally and courteously and was pleased to see that the majority of those polled had found officers to be just that.

He was said he was heartened, too, to hear that so many people still carried respect for the department in light of ongoing corruption problems that have led to the arrest of more than a dozen cops in the last year.

"That's not a bad number, 70 percent, especially with some of the issues we've gone through," Ramsey said.

"But obviously, we need to work to get it higher."