Over the past three years, peaking in 2014, numerous deaths of black victims at the hands of white police officers in the United States have fueled debate about police brutality and racism, sparking waves of mass protests across the country.
The ICM Research survey focused on the results of an October study by ProPublica non-profit corporation, which found that the risk of being shot by police in the United States for young black men was 21 times higher than for their white peers.
Asked to give a reason for such a striking difference, 33 percent of respondents said "racism within the police."
Over half of those polled, 51 percent, blamed a perceived general increase in aggression and violence in society for the surge in police killings, while 22 percent put it down to a lack of professionalism within the police force.
Another eight percent of respondents found no objective reason for the difference in the number of white and black people fatally shot by police in the United States.urope and the United States.