Assaults on Police Officers in Slovenia - The Profile of Perpetrators and Assaulted Police Officers

Abstract

In the paper, the authors present the results of studying the circumstances of assaults on police officers in Slovenia, with an emphasis on the means of assault, place, time, area of work, and the presence of third persons in committing the crime of assaulting a police officer. The authors evaluated 363 criminal charges submitted to district prosecutors' offices in Slovenia for 2005 and 2006. A total of 531 police officer victims, of whom 514 or 96.8% were men and 17 or 3.2% women, aged between 21 and 50, were registered. Most of the attacked police officers have 5 years of active service. The longer the number of years in service, the lower the risk level, i.e. the rate of potential victims decreases. The proportion of assaults on police officers are most frequent at the smaller police directorates, Nova Gorica and Novo mesto, where every 5th-6th police officer was assaulted, followed by the (former) Slovenj Gradec Police Directorate, where every 9th-10th police officer was assaulted, preceding the largest police directorate in Slovenia, the Ljubljana Police Directorate. Based on the analyses, some proposals for managing the assaults on police officers are discussed in the conclusion of the paper. The proposals are focused on the appropriate composition of patrols, the appropriate technical equipment and the use of protective means at work, and on psychosocial support for police officers; if they have been assaulted in their official duties.