The main purpose of the study was to explore the effects of carrying police equipment on spatiotemporal and kinetic gait parameters. Two-hundred and seventy-five healthy men and women attending police academy (32% women) were randomly recruited. Gait analysis without and with a police equipment load (≈3.5 kg) was analyzed using the Zebris pressure platform. Differences and effect sizes were calculated using a Student t-test and Wilcoxon test for dependent samples and Cohen’s D statistics. In both men and women, carrying police equipment significantly increased the foot rotation (effect size 0.13–0.25), step width (0.13–0.33), step time (0.25), stride time (0.13–0.25) and peak plantar pressure beneath the forefoot (0.16–0.30), midfoot (0.15–0.32) and hindfoot (0.13–0.25) region of the foot. Significant reductions in the step length (0.12–0.25), stride length (0.14–0.23), cadence (0.15–0.28) and walking speed (0.20–0.22) were observed in both sexes. Although significant, the effect sizes were mostly trivial in men and small in women. Our study shows significant changes in the spatiotemporal and kinetic gait parameters when carrying police equipment for both men and women. Although the effect sizes are trivial to small, carrying police equipment of ≈3.5 kg may have a negative impact on gait characteristics in first-year police officers.

Purpose: We explore the relationship between urbanicity and police officers’ perceptions of changes in their reactive and proactive work during the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approach: Using the 2021 survey of 1,262 Croatian police offices (436 police officers from a large urban community, 471 police officers from small towns and 155 from rural communities), we examine the perceived changes in their reactive activities (e.g. responses to the calls for service, arrests for minor crimes) and proactive activities (e.g. community policing activities, directed patrols) during the peak month of the pandemic compared to before the pandemic.Findings: The majority of police officers in the study, regardless of the size of the community where they lived, reported no changes before and during the pandemic in reactive and proactive activities. Police officers from urban communities and small towns were more likely to note an increase in domestic violence calls for service. Police officers from urban communities were also more likely than the respondents from small towns and rural communities to report an increase in the responses to the disturbances of public order. Finally, police officers from small communities were most likely to observe a change in the frequency of traffic stops during the pandemic.Originality/value: This study is the first one to explore the differences in perceptions of COVID-19-related changes in reactive and proactive police activities in a centralized police system.

This paper was written as part of the research project "Research of public opinion on the state of safety, behaviour and habits of participants in road traffic in the Republic of Croatia". The goal of this research is to determine the frequency of violations of traffic regulations related to drivers, pedestrians and passengers in vehicles, and to determine whether there is a connection between the experience of suffering of the aforementioned road users and their punishable behaviour. For this purpose, a quantitative research was conducted in which a multi-method approach was used in field data collection, a combination of telephone research (CATI) - 60% of the sample and online research (CAWI) - 40% of the sample. Respondents from the entire territory of the Republic of Croatia (N=2072) over the age of 16 were included in the research. In general, it can be concluded that the violation of traffic regulations is very frequent and present among the majority of different road users, and that road users who have recently experienced a traffic accident in any capacity, very rarely violate traffic regulations, as car drivers. Conversely, involvement in traffic accidents has not been shown to deter pedestrians and vehicle occupants from repeating traffic violations. The obtained results have a practical value, especially in the context of planning preventive programs and strategies, while the limitations of the research are reflected in the fact that only one independent variable was included in the correlation with committing traffic violations, regardless of other known predictors of punishable behaviour in traffic.

The study aims to explain what dimensions of the satisfaction of Croatian police officers with internal feedback are predictors of their readiness to explain their actions to citizens. The survey was conducted in 2020 on a convenience sample of 1260 police officers. The questionnaire measures satisfaction with feedback as one of eight dimensions of satisfaction with internal communication and police legitimacy in two dimensions of police and citizen interaction: accountability (citizens) – attitude and behaviour. The purpose is to compare feedback in internal and external police communication and examine to what extent the satisfaction of police officers with feedback contributes to the understanding of their attitudes and behaviour towards explaining actions to citizens. The results indicate the weak predictive power of variables that measure satisfaction with feedback in understanding the attitudes and behaviour of police officers related to explaining their actions to citizens. However, when introduced into the predictor model that contains the criterion variable "Behaviour related to explaining police actions to citizens" is the variable of attitude, the proportion of the variance explained increases significantly. The contribution of the paper is an analysis of the connection between internal and external communication of police officers in Croatia, and communication research is extremely important in police organizations in transition countries that undergo a transition from the traditional policing models to citizen-oriented policing models. A limitation of the paper is that only one aspect of internal communication has been examined in isolation. Therefore, new research should examine the complex nature of internal communication within a police organization in the context of the quality of police officers' relations with citizens, especially in relation to the willingness to explain police actions, as an important dimension of trust in the police.

United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 5 and 16 focus on gender equality, peace, justice, and strong institutions. One of these institutions is the police. Police work includes many opportunities to protect and promote gender equality. This study aims to find whether differences in attitudes towards gender equality between male and female police recruits before and after basic police training exist. The results reveal that the difference between male and female recruits is statistically significant both at the beginning and at the end of their basic police education. A statistically significant difference concerning the gender of the recruit was determined concerning the combination of three dependent variables that measured attitudes about gender equality, as well as about each individual variable. Furthermore, the research found that the influence of gender on differences in attitudes towards gender equality was stronger after education than before education for the police profession.