Factors forming the image of the police officer
Mykolo Romerio universitetas |
The article analyses the overall attitude that society holds towards serving police officers who swear an oath to serve the law and humans. On this basis, officials must maintain a close relationship with the public and foster a positive image in its eyes. Due to the dynamic social changes taking place in society, the image and its determinants need to be constantly explored. Otherwise, the work of police officers with the population will be meaningless and unsuccessful. Failure to reach this goal could negatively affect the performance of the police force, the stability of our societal norms may also be at risk. An image is generally seen as a set of factors that affect emotions, behavior, relationships, and include communication and personal feelings when evaluating an organization. A positive image increases the public trust, support and willingness to cooperate. Public relations are considered as one of the most important factors shaping the image. The object of the article is the image of a police officer, the main object of this thesis is to reveal the overall image of a modern police officer and unveil factors that affect it. To achieve this aims the thesis set out three tasks: to examine the concept of the image and its importance to public relations, identify the factors influencing the image of police officers, and investigate how society values police officers. The methods of systematic-structural analysis of scientific literature, questionnaire and mathematical analysis, as well as generalization are applied in the thesis. The article has concluded that the public holds a positive overall image of police officers. The image of officers is formed by personal, relatives and friends experiences, media reports, and by legal acts and normative documents regulating police activities. Also, the personal qualities, legal competence, appearance in the service, corruption and conduct on and off duty. Quantitive research participants opinion the formation of the image in society works strongly is: first of all, the personal qualities of officials, followed by the competence, work knowledge and professionalism of officials.