Overall, about eight in 10 Americans generally think that at least some of the motivation behind the protests has been prejudice against police officers, the Pew survey found.

In this poll, black and white Americans also strongly differed on how they view their local police. White Americans are more than twice as likely as black Americans to think their local police treat different racial groups equally, and the same is true of how white and black people feel about whether police use proper levels of force. (This gap can be found on a micro level, too: A poll in Chicago found that black residents were much less likely than white residents to think police there are doing their jobs well.)

Overall, Americans believe their local police departments are doing a good job, with hefty majorities saying they do an excellent or good job protecting people from crime (72 percent), using proper levels of force (67 percent), treating different racial groups equally (65 percent) and holding officers accountable for misconduct (65 percent). But in each of these cases, white people are far more likely to hold the positive views than black people.