A new Gallup poll finds confidence in police across the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level in more than two decades, with just over half of all Americans expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in law enforcement.

To be exact, just 52 percent of all those polled responded affirmatively where officers were concerned, the lowest percentage registered since 1993 when Gallup first commenced conducting such research and right around the time the Rodney King federal civil rights trial was kicking off in Los Angeles stemming from his savage beating by officers two years earlier that was captured on video tape.

Since that time, American confidence in police has ranged from the low of 52 percent to a high of 64 percent back in 2004. Several media outlets have reported the latest data was collected earlier this month from a random sample of 1,527 adults aged 18 and older and living in all 50 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

The findings come at a critical time in the relationship between police and those in many of the communities they patrol, particularly in minority neighborhoods where there has been a recent and dramatic spike in highly publicized shootings and killings involving officers.

In cities from Ferguson, Missouri, to Staten Island, New York, to Cleveland, Ohio, demonstrations and protests have broken out in recent months, stemming from the killings of young black men from those communities at the hands of police.

"These events likely contributed to the decline in confidence in police," said Gallup's Jeffrey Jones in an accompanying report.

The poll also found that 18 percent of all respondents said they have "very little" or "no confidence" in police, the highest level Gallup has measured in all its years of conducting the poll.

Over the last two years, researchers noted African-American confidence in police has averaged just 30 percent, well below the national average of 53 percent, and much lower than any other subgroup. Compared to 2012-13, African-American confidence is currently down by six points, a trend similar to the four-point drop recorded among all Americans.

The largest change among any group was seen among Democrats, whose confidence in police dropped by 13 percentage points over the last two years compared with 2012-2013.

Independents and Republicans' confidence in police remained basically the same over that same time period.