A majority of New York City residents support defunding the NYPD and redirecting that money elsewhere, according to an NBC/Marist poll released on Thursday.
Fifty-five percent of New Yorkers surveyed said they were in favor of "defunding the police in your community to spend more on other local services," while 34 percent opposed the position. Ten percent of respondents were unsure.
The poll appears to show the largest public approval for the "defund" movement since the slogan became a mainstream rallying cry, amid widespread protests demanding an overhaul of policing in the United States.
A statewide poll conducted last month by Siena College found that 60 percent of respondents opposed defunding the police, with just 30 percent in favor. A national survey returned similar results. Unlike the recent NBC/Marist poll, neither of those questions mentioned redirecting police funding to other local services, a core component of the demand made by activists in recent weeks.
Other recent surveys of public opinion suggest many Americans are still making up their minds on where they stand on the issue — and what the "defunding" stance actual entails. In one Associated Press/NORC poll, more than 20 percent of respondents said they weren't sure whether they supported reducing funding for police departments.
The new NBC/Marist poll, which surveyed 718 New York residents through both landlines and cell phones, found significantly less support for defunding in the suburbs and upstate — just 31 percent and 30 percent backed the idea, respectively.
However, respondents in each region of the state said they had a favorable impression of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The poll comes as New York City begins the process of shifting some funding away from the NYPD's $5.7 billion budget, as part of a plan that would cap overtime spending, move NYPD officers to the Department of Education, and eliminate an upcoming police academy class. Mayor Bill de Blasio initially said those cuts amounted to a $1 billion redistribution from police toward social programs — a claim that turned out to be untrue.
The NBC/Marist poll found that exactly half of New York City residents approved of the job the mayor was doing. By comparison, nearly three-quarters of city resident said they approved of the job Governor Andrew Cuomo was doing.
The respondents were also largely optimistic about the future of New York — more than 60 percent said the state was going in the right direction.
