Is trust in authority deteriorating?

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - In recent weeks, there have been several stories involving people of authority making poor and even dangerous decisions, and in one case admitting it.  

A former White Cloud police officer is accused of lying in a murder investigation.

Two off-duty Battle Creek officers were disciplined after being caught in a drunk driving crash. One of them was suspended for 20 days while a lieutenant who helped them got demoted.

So is public trust in authority deteriorating?

Julie Yunker, a police academy criminal justice trainer at Grand Valley State University, said the cases are, to a degree, a black eye on law enforcement.

"Discouraging, but hopefully they're not the type of thing that will take away complete trust from the community," she said.

Yunker spends hours teaching ethics to prospective officers.

"As a matter of fact, the State of Michigan requires that we spend four hours talking about ethics, and at Grand Valley we actually spend 14 hours," she told Target 8.

And then there is the Rep. Roy Schmidt re-election scandal. He agreed to pay a fake opponent to run against him as a Democrat in the November race for the 76th District House seat after abruptly switching parties minutes before the filing deadline.

"Although I don't think it's the same level, law enforcement versus the politician type of trust, I think it certainly adds to that image of people in authority making bad choices," said Yunker.

Confidence in local police dropped to a 10-year low in 2005.

A Gallup Poll from that year showed 53% of Americans saying they had "a great deal" of confidence in the police to protect them. The poll also showed a new low in the percentage of Americans with a "great deal" of respect for the police in their area.

While the numbers have gone up or down a few percentage points since 2005, the same poll showed confidence in the police dropped 3 percentage points from 2010 to 2011 and stuck for this year's poll at 56%.
    
"It's discouraging to see that officers that are placed in a position of trust make bad decisions," said Yunker.