Police and Security, Vol. 34 No. 3, 2025.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.59245/ps.34.3.1
Public Perception of the Profession and Ranks of Police Officers
Dunja Ilovača
; Sky Fort Systems d.o.o., Zagreb, Croatia.
Joško Vukosav
; University of Applied Sciences in Criminal Investigation and Public Security, Ministry of the Interior, Croatia.
Hrvoje Filipović
; University of Applied Sciences in Criminal Investigation and Public Security, Ministry of the Interior, Croatia.
Abstract
Protecting people's lives is the main task of the police, and safety is the most important and invaluable thing for everyone. Some professions that protect or save human lives are said to be vocations, and this is precisely the police profession, which is compared to the military profession. Often, due to ignorance of police ranks, generalisations of jobs in the police occur, and this is even more evident in the way they are addressed, so that high police ranks are often identified with the first police ranks, unlike in the armed forces, where military ranks are recognisable and logically ranked. The aim of this paper is not to compare two professions (professions or occupations), but to check how the population perceives police ranks in relation to military ranks, and whether there are differences and connections in the general attitudes of respondents about systems, ranks and knowledge about the army and the police. The research showed that among members of the system (mostly police officers), there is a prevailing feeling of injustice in relation to the military hierarchy. They believe that in our society, it is common to call all persons working in the police force police officers, unlike members of the military. The practical implications of these results should encourage possible changes in the names of certain police ranks, especially the highest ones, in order to make them better recognised by the public.
Keywords
police ranks; military ranks; professional hierarchy; public safety; perception.
Hrčak ID:
334198
URI
Publication date:
23.9.2025.
Visits: 837 *