NEW YORK -- A majority of Americans support subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz and three out of four said they also would use deadly force to defend themselves, a poll showed Sunday.
The Gallup Organization, in a copyright poll for Newsweek magazine, interviewed 1,009 adults last Thursday and Friday and found 57 percent of those surveyed approved of Goetz' shooting of four youths aboard a New York subway train.
More than 75 percent said they also would use deadly force for self-defense but 78 percent said they believe the streets would be more dangerous if most people carried guns.
Two-thirds of those surveyed felt Goetz acted in self-defense. Newsweek reported that solid majorities of both whites and nonwhites did not feel the fact that Geotz was white and the youths were black was significant in causing him to shoot them.
The Newsweek poll also showed support for Goetz runs particularly high among men, Republicans, suburbanites and those who carry guns themselves.
Nearly half of those surveyed said they keep a gun or other weapon to deal with crime, although only 10 percent said they actually carry a gun.
Another poll Sunday by the New York Daily News and WABC-TV of 505 New York residents showed 51 percent approved of Goetz's actions and 40 percent disapprove.
In a similar poll Jan. 3 -- 12 days after Goetz shot and seriously wounded the four teenagers who asked him for $5 on a subway -- 49 percent approved and 31 percent disapproved.
The poll showed support for Goetz had eroded among blacks. Fifty-three percent now think Goetz was wrong; only 36 percent disagreed with him in January, the Daily News poll said.
Black leaders contend the shooting was racially motivated.
Goetz, who was mugged several years ago, said he shot the youths because they demanded $5 from him. One of his victims remains comatose and paralyzed.
In a taped interview Sunday on WNBC-TV, Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward said Goetz is talking his support away.
'I think Bernhard Goetz is not unlike a man with a long shovel, in soft soil, digging a deep hole,' Ward said.
'If you do it, eventually the sides will collapse in on you. Now that he's decided to become public and make the public statements that he is making -- he just kind of reminds me of someone who's digging a very deep hole,' Ward said.
Goetz broke months of silence last week in several blunt interviews. Also, his videotaped confession was made public and suggested premeditation in the shooting of one victim. He also appeared in court on behalf of a man charged with stabbing a would-be robber at a subway candy store.
One grand jury refused to indict him for attempted murder, opting instead to charge him with weapons possession. Goetz has pleaded innocent to those charges and is free on $5,000 bail.
District Attorney Robert Morganthau said he may ask another grand jury to hear the case, but the Daily News poll showed that 57 percent of New Yorkers do not think he should be charged with attempted murder by a new grand jury. Thirty-four percent of the respondents do, though sentiments were split along racial lines.
