The Garrity Perception Survey is a franchise element of The Garrity Group Public Relations.  Since 2011, the firm has commissioned Albuquerque-based Research + Polling to conduct the 3^rd party, statewide, survey of New Mexico residents.

The survey provides insights to the favorability of 17 industries, trust of 14 professions and how New Mexico residents access news and information.  It has a 95 percent level of accuracy.  That means if you ask for the opinion of 10 random New Mexico residents, their answers will align with the survey 95 percent of the time.

Police officers are one of the 14 professions where trust is measured.

The survey question is phrased, “on a scale of 1 to 5, with five being very favorable and one being very unfavorable, what is your level of trust of police officers?” In Albuquerque, this is broad enough to include the Albuquerque Police Department, Bernalillo County Sheriff’s office, New Mexico State Police, United States Marshalls Service, Federal Bureau of investigation and other certified law enforcement officers.

The “favorability” numbers below represent New Mexico residents who responded with either 5 or 4.  The statewide survey was in the field the last week of February 2014 through the First Week of March 2014.

When Albuquerque Police Chief Eden addressed the Albuquerque Economic Forum recently, he indicated wanting to increase trust of police officers as one of his goals.

Why only the “Top Line Data”?

The first year of the survey, representatives of the Albuquerque Police Department requested a copy of the results for the trust of police officers.  They wanted the information so they could respond to a media inquiry from KOAT-TV.  As a favor to the director of communications for the Mayors office and the APD communications staffer, I provided the valuable “cross-tab” information.

However, when I wanted to follow-up and explain the information, neither of them returned my phone, text or email messages.  That urgency to get the data, followed by their lack of responsiveness is why I only release the top line results to the public.  Our clients have access to all of the information.

Both of the city staffers are no longer employed by the Mayors office or APD.