Police Officers' Attitudes Towards the Model Determining the Role of the Police and of the Police Organization

The results of empirical research of attitudes about organisation and functioning of police leaders and those who are not leaders, obtained on a stratified quota sample of the 300 examinees, are presented here. An instrument comprising 42 assertions has been applied. The factor analysis has resulted in four varimax factors that have been named as follows: 1. police and citizcn cooperation/partnership and police education; 2. modified model (community policing); 3, hierarchical relationship in organisation and 4, characteristics of police officers' work. The discriminative analysis has shown that police leaders have more positive attitudes toward the factor police and citizen cooperation/partnership and police education and more negative attitude toward the factor hierarchical relationship in organisation, while the attitudes of police who are not leaders are a mirror image of police leaders' attitudes. In addition to research, the authors state the aim and important changes in terms of developing a line of crime prevention in the Croatian police in the past decade.