Best practices in police personal security: A systematic review

Abstract

The difficult geopolitical situation in Ukraine creates new challenges for the law enforcement system and increases the relevance of ensuring the personal safety of police officers. This necessitates highlighting the problematic aspects of this area, as well as a detailed description of new dangerous challenges for the security and defence sector, shaped by the today’s reality. The purpose of this study was to analyse current trends in the investigation of the specifics of ensuring personal security of a police officer. Fulfilling this purpose required the use of a set of methods, including Internet heuristics, systematisation, and comparison. The principal findings outlined the specifics of the law enforcement system of Ukraine under martial law. A systematic analysis of the literature helped to identify the key dangerous factors and conditions that currently affect the state of personal security of law enforcement officials in the world. It was also found that the modern scientific literature does not sufficiently address the issue of ensuring personal safety of a police officer in the context of military operations. The study showed that in the current scientific discourse this problem is covered only through the lens of the existing shortcomings of standard education (training) programmes for law enforcement officials, which presently cannot ensure their safety. The absence of a theoretical component makes it important to find ways to implement the police officer’s right to safely perform their duties. The practical significance of this study is that its findings can be used by researchers for further investigation of this topic, as well as by practitioners to implement the most effective experience of ensuring the personal safety of police officers