Latinos Back Youth Curfew, Poll Finds

California Latinos overwhelmingly favor strict curfew laws to reduce juvenile crime and gang activity, and believe that parents should be held financially liable for property crimes committed by their children.

However, Latinos also call police brutality widespread, say Latinos receive unequal treatment from law enforcement agencies, and more than one-quarter call police corruption a “major cause” of crime in their neighborhoods.

Those are among the sometimes contradictory findings contained in a new, independent survey of California Latinos commissioned by the Tomas Rivera Center, a think tank affiliated with the Claremont Colleges and the University of Texas. To be formally released today, the survey closely examines viewpoints among the state’s fast-growing Latino population on four hot-button issues: crime and police relations, affirmative action, immigration and welfare.

What emerges is a portrait that is sometimes paradoxical:

* Latinos favor controversial crime-fighting steps but are deeply distrustful of the police. “This is a law-and-order population being abused by the cops,” concluded Rodolfo O. de la Garza, a vice president of the Rivera Center who is also a professor of government at the University of Texas.

* While Latinos generally support affirmative action, surprising numbers lack knowledge of those hiring policies, particularly the young, and noncitizens tend to be less optimistic about its impact than U.S. citizens. A majority responded “Yes” when asked if “a Latino in your community has as good a chance as an Anglo in getting a job for which they are both qualified”; 40% said “No.”

* Despite an overall positive impression of immigrants, more than one-third of respondents would favor restrictions on legal immigration; 40% say it would be a “good idea” to issue national ID cards--an anathema to civil libertarians. Yet almost three-quarters oppose construction of “walls and fences” along the U.S.-Mexico border.

* The great majority believe that government services should be available to all residents, regardless of immigration status. But the same population backs a two-year welfare cutoff for all recipients and labels most welfare clients as laggards--a sentiment that is particularly strong among women.

The wide-ranging results again underscore how U.S. Latinos, often viewed monolithically by non-Latinos, are a heterogenous, diverse group whose attitudes cannot be pigeon-holed.

“People who think that Latinos are liberal-progressive on all these issues are as wrong as people who think Latinos are conservative on all the issues,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Rivera Center.

The new survey--indicative of pollsters’ accelerating efforts to identify opinions among subgroups of the nation’s ever more diverse population--involved bilingual interviews with both citizens and noncitizens, the latter a slight majority among California Latinos. Similar surveys were conducted in three other states--Texas, Florida and New York--with high Latino populations. Results from those areas are to be released in coming weeks.

Almost three-quarters of the 411 Californians surveyed preferred to be interviewed in Spanish, an indication of the state’s huge immigrant population, the nation’s largest. The survey had a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

Latinos represent an emerging majority in Los Angeles and now number almost 30% of all Californians--and about 10% of the U.S. population. Those of Mexican and Central American ancestry dominate among Californian Latinos, but others trace their heritage to the Caribbean and South America.

In general, the survey found substantial, and sometimes surprising, agreement among Latinos born abroad and U.S. natives, though opinions on some issues may differ considerably. The overall picture clashes somewhat with frequently aired charges that U.S.-born Latinos widely resent new immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere because of job competition, cultural clashes and other factors.

While most of the survey findings are not surprising--Latinos have long been considered largely pro-immigrant, socially conservative and supporters of the work ethic and of affirmative action--other results raise eyebrows.

One striking finding: Almost 60% of California respondents called police brutality against Latinos “widespread” and stated that Latinos receive unequal treatment from police. In general, noncitizens were more suspicious of police than citizens.

Such profound distrust, experts say, may help explain periodic outbursts against police in Latino communities--such as recent Eastside disturbances after police shootings of neighborhood youths.

Apprised of the results, Cmdr. Tim McBride of the Los Angeles Police Department called the findings troubling, although he credited the LAPD with improving neighborhood relations via community policing, the hiring of Latino officers and other efforts.

“The perception indicates that law enforcement in California definitely has work to do on its image,” said McBride, who heads the LAPD’s community affairs group.

But Lucas Guttentag, who directs the national immigrants’ rights project for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the hostility toward police goes well beyond perception.

“Even the new levels of our society are being victimized by the old forces of discrimination and racism,” said Guttentag.

Latinos’ traditional conservatism on law-and-order matters was evident in their strong support for curfews for youths and proposals to hold parents financially liable for property damage caused by their children. Civil libertarians call both measures Draconian and likely to heighten the very abuse that Latinos complain about, though such tactics are often popular at the community level.

The ACLU’s Guttentag said: “It is not unusual for people in high-crime neighborhoods to support curfew laws without appreciating that it is those very laws that give police more power to engage in discriminatory and abusive action.”