Devin Brown Shooting Impacts Public Opinion

The Los Angeles Times released a poll on March 3 (5 days before the Mayoral Primary) which measures the impact of the Devin Brown shooting on police-community relations among registered voters in Los Angeles:

A majority of registered voters, 52%, said incidents
of LAPD brutality were common; 42% disagreed.
And pluralities of whites and Latinos, along with
a large majority of blacks, said officers were
"tougher on blacks" than on other residents. Among
whites, 43% said officers were tougher on blacks
and 40% said police treat everyone equally. Among
Latinos, 36% said blacks received the toughest
treatment; 32% said everyone was treated equally
and 22% said Latinos were treated the toughest.

The gap between the attitudes of blacks and
non-blacks toward the department was at a record
before the DevinBrown shooting. It has expanded
since. In the poll taken before the shooting, 40% of
black voters said they approved of the LAPD. That
has fallen to 28%, with 65% saying they disapprove
of the force.

The police chief (Bill Bratton, formerly of the NYPD) had an approval-disapproval rating of 48%-27% on his handling of the shooting. There were more specific polling results on the public's thoughts on the shooting itself:

A majority of Los Angeles voters, 56%, said the
shooting was an overreaction by officers and 31%
said the officers acted reasonably. Thirteen percent
were unsure.

Four of five black voters and nearly two of three
Latino voters saw an overreaction. Among whites,
45% said the officers overreacted and 38% said they
reacted reasonably.

...

Similarly, a 53% majority of voters overall said
police would have handled the incident differently
"if Devin Brown had been a white teenager driving
in a middle-class neighborhood."Again, white
voters were the most closely divided, with 42%
saying that a white teenager would have been
treated differently and 45% saying that police
would have handled the incident the same way.
Black and Latino voters overwhelmingly said
police would have handled the incident differently
if a white teenager had been involved.

This article was paired with another one which demonstrated how each of the mayoral candidates opportunistically uses different aspects of crime data to make the case to the voters that they should pick him to be the next Mayor. The interesting question that the media is trying to answer (in advance) is what will be the most important issue in the mayoral election? Well, we just have 3 more days before we get the answer....