Contemporary Contexts of Establishing Trustful Relations between a

Police Officer and Citizens

Dmitry Popov

Saint Petersburg University of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 1, Letchika Pilutova str., Saint Petersburg,

Russian Federation

Keywords: Psychology of law-enforcement intelligence operations, trust, trustful relations, sense-bearing activity.

Abstract: The article is related to the phenomenon of trust during communication between a police officer and various

groups of citizens. Trustful relations between police officers and citizens normally exist within the framework

of cultural traditions, running upon values and senses, and in situations of sense bearing interaction they

function in the form of sense manifestation activity of the parties.

1 INTRODUCTION

The background of surveys of a phenomenon of trust

goes back to more than a century. It has also become

a common practice today for various sides of trust and

trustful relations to be an object of scientific and

practical interest of economists, sociologists,

psychologists and educators, lawyers and social

philosophers. The common subject of such kind of

surveys is an intention to find out the reason why trust

is declared to be ambiguous and contradictory in

various types of activities and cultural and historical

contexts. At the moment in the Russian and

international publications there is no single approach

to interpreting the issue of establishing trustful

relations between a police officer and citizens.

However, philosophers mainly refer to the area of

concepts, while social psychologists and educators

rest upon the field of practical actions and social

relations. After turning to a new, partnership model

of relations between police departments and civil

society the phenomenon of trust has become a core

issue in the psychological and legal discourse, while

searching for state-of-the-art technologies to establish

trustful relations between police officers and various

groups of citizens has become a crucial task.

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

Empirical data to prove the provisions of the

conceptual idea were collected via tests and

questionnaire surveys using psychodiagnostic

methods (Jung questionnaire (level of

extraversion/introversion), A.B. Kupreychenko’s

technique of assessment of personal trust/mistrust to

other persons, Rosenberg’s Faith in People approach,

method of measuring trust developed by R. Levitsky,

M. Stevenson, B. Bunker, test to assess motivation for

success by T. Ehlers, proprietary questionnaire to

investigate trust between police officers and citizens

(developed by D.V. Popov and Y.A. Sharanov) and

the expert evaluation method. After processing all

questionnaires, the total number of respondents

amounted to 195 persons.

3 RESULTS AND

INTERPRETATION

Trustful relations are triggered by mutual perception

of subjects, when possibilities of further development

of their communication are found and forecast.

Outrunning reflection and proper arrangement of

these relations eliminate the parties’ concern of their

misunderstanding.

Among the criteria of trustful behavior are

positive attitude, mutual assistance, safety, desire to

communicate again, self-benefit, satisfaction. The

process of meeting these desires and needs goes in

different ways in different contexts.

The possibility to control the limits of trust for a

police officer means to deal with the process of

transformation of his/her own experience and be

Popov, D.

Contemporary Contexts of Establishing Trustful Relations between a Police Ofﬁcer and Citizens.

DOI: 10.5220/0010634700003152

In Proceedings of the VII International Scientiﬁc-Practical Conference “Criminal Law and Operative Search Activities: Problems of Legislation, Science and Practice” (CLOSA 2021), pages

243-248

ISBN: 978-989-758-532-6; ISSN: 2184-9854

243

ready to design new experience of his/her

professional cooperation. However, his/her

professional thinking, i.e. images, ideas, values and

beliefs, constitutes the resource of establishing solid

trustful relations. At the level of language

competence it is proficiency in various references,

connotations, meanings, as well as in percept images

and ability to mutual emotional experience with the

other part of communication. There are no other

studies over the last five years specifically focusing

on trustful relations between a police officer and

citizens either in Russian or in foreign publications.

Moreover, there is no complete consent in the

scientific community in terms of essence, structure,

functions and regular dynamics of trust in various

social contexts. Even in one single scientific branch

we can hardly find out a consensus in interpreting and

defining the scope and limits of that term. The reason

of disagreements is often the languages of

descriptions and methods of surveys, as well as

various psychological and legal practices of using a

concept of “trust” (Meents S., Tan Y., Verhagen T.,

2003). Accordingly, S. Castaldo pointed out that a

variety of typologies could be found in all surveys of

trust; however, there was no distinct and clear

definition of trust.

A.B. Kupreychenko, the Russian psychologist,

also demonstrated a wide approach in interpreting the

concept of trust.

Some authors offer to consider the trust not as a

property of a situation of interaction between the

persons, but as a property of a person as a subject, that

is as an independent, active, responsible, good at self-

reflection, with its own position and capable of its

own decision-making.

T.P. Skripkina offers to distinguish between three

types of trust, which were found when analyzing

various branches of the science of psychology, which

anyhow considered trust as a condition of existence

of the other social and psychological concepts self-

trust, trust to the others, trust to the world.

Thus, the Russian and foreign authors interpret

trust as a complex dialectics of shape and contents,

since it combines faith and rational assessment of the

fact that another person, group or organization will

act in the way the person expressing trust expects

them to act; that subject of trust is in the risky and

ambiguous situation, as justifying trust would lead to

the rises of the person who expressed trust and to the

falls in case if the trust was betrayed.

The phenomenon of trust is of particular

importance in the field of legal relations and law-

enforcement activities. Positive interaction between

citizens and police officers can result in new

principles and technologies of practicing trustful

relations, which would provide for not only more

efficient detection of crimes, but also for promotion

of positive influence on other powerful and law-

enforcement bodies of the state.

Within the scope of police activity, trust can be

defined as a specific way of interaction with citizens

based on experiencing joint responsibility for

maintaining public order and safety. In terms of legal

aspects, trust is a part of public, legal consciousness

of citizens a police officer rests upon and controls.

Here a well-known opinion is meant, which is widely

spread in the society that in order to keep the social

order, possibilities of that disruption should be

blocked beforehand. This is the reason why trustful

relations between law-enforcement bodies and civil

society are integrated into different formal and

informal structures in charge of maintaining social

order and providing safety of citizens.

Within the framework of our concept, trustful

relations between police officers and citizens are

mediated by a joint sense bearing activity. It is the

semantic context of trustful relations, which

demonstrates the importance of law for the subjects,

which connects the minds of subjects with the legal

reality.

Manifestation of sense is the main functional

aspect and value of the system of trust. It is in the

process of manifestation of sense when the

professional mind of a policeman meets the mind of

a carrier of latest important information, when the

values of goals of legal activities are realized, each

party finds their own place within the limits of trustful

relations, without which it would be impossible to

achieve a common result. However, the primary sense

of trustful relations inevitably gains an ideological

content, which functions as a resource of bearing a

secondary sense and strengthening the motives of

behavior of the parties.

In our survey we have detected one of the

psychological tools of trustful interaction between a

citizen and a police officer, which provides for the

critical need of a citizen to consider a police officer

as his/her own truster, as a continuation of

themselves. The process of transferring the legally

relevant information to the policeman is the way the

citizen seems to put into practice ihis/her own

intentions, own goals and aims, which could not be

reached in any other context using any other means.

If the primary sense does not acquire secondary

forms, this system would be volatile and too many

resources would be required to maintain it. Volatility

of the system of trust is caused by incompleteness,

termination of sense bearing process, since one of the

CLOSA 2021 - VII INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC-PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “CRIMINAL LAW AND OPERATIVE SEARCH

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parties does not want or cannot come to the

institutional, formally legal level of confirming

trustful relations. In terms of this criterion, all citizens

can be conveniently classified into three groups:

Group 1 of citizens is the largest one and actually

includes all citizens of the country. These are the

persons who anyhow cooperate with police officers in

their daily lives, however there is no actualization of

the values of senses of trust. So there are no legal

consequences of such cooperation.

Category 2 of citizens, in terms of lack of legal

consequences of trustful relations could be also added

to the first group, but it differs by a visible process of

transformation of psychological senses, by

psychological readiness to continue and strengthen

their trust.

Group 3 is the main one, as it combines

transformations of psychological and moral senses of

trust with awareness of the fact that possible legal

consequences may occur within the course of trustful

relations, as well as with the readiness to confirm its

legal status.

Thus, trustful relations between police officers

and citizens normally exist within the framework of

cultural traditions, running upon values and senses,

and in situations of sense bearing interaction they

function in the form of sense manifestation activity of

the parties. Moreover, trustful relations could be

considered as a project and result of building trustful

relations by the subjects, as well as in terms of self-

projection and self-development, which is connected

with the goals of sense bearing activity. Such kind of

sense manifestation activity of the parties exists

within the framework of the laws of selective

perception, determinism of building up an image of

communicative situations based on the experience of

the interacting subjects. It is the experience of

subjects of trustful relations, which is of interest for

us, mainly since it includes transformed personal

values, ideals and views. Contents of experience

normally constitutes a unique formation of a human

mind, which results in individual variability of ways

and methods of building up trustful relations.

The problem is in overcoming the excessive

variability of behavior of psychological types among

police officers and citizens, in limiting variability of

forming the images of each other to ethical and legal

norms in order to transform the unique features of

each party into a resource of building up trustful

relations.

The analysis of the practice of police activities

demonstrates that in terms of its goals and results

trust, to its great extent, is defined by contextual

nature of communication between the subjects. In

particular, the results of interaction between the

subjects may be or may not be subject to

formalization, i.e. be transparent, containing a certain

level of conviction of the parties that they have

individually contributed to something important,

transpersonal, which is out of a situation.

Trustful relations is a controlled process. In case

of establishing trustful relations using the police

officer - citizen model a police officer will be greatly

responsible for keeping the trustful relations. It is

caused by the tasks settled by law enforcement bodies

and by the level of communicative competence of the

police officer.

Trust constitutes one of the psychological

phenomena with all its reach essense as an integral

system exposed by means of a content of cooperation,

assistance, acceptance, transparency, predictability

and reliability shown in relations between police

officers and different groups of citizens.

Empirical data to prove the provisions of the

conceptual idea were collected via tests and

questionnaire surveys using psychodiagnostic

methods (Jung questionnaire (level of

extraversion/introversion), A.B. Kupreychenko’s

technique of assessment of personal trust/mistrust to

other persons, Rosenberg’s Faith in People approach,

method of measuring trust developed by R. Levitsky,

M. Stevenson, B. Bunker, test to assess motivation for

success by T. Ehlers, proprietary questionnaire to

investigate trust between police officers and citizens

(developed by D.V. Popov and Y.A. Sharanov) and

the expert evaluation method. After processing all

questionnaires, the total number of respondents

amounted to 195 persons. The results of techniques

were aggregated and given in Tables 1-3.

Using M. Rosenberg’s method, we have studied a

rational part of trust. The results obtained by means

of this method for police officers and citizens are

presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Comparative analysis of mean values of M.

Rosenberg’s test in groups of police officers and citizens.

Test criteria

Grou

s of res

ondents

Police

officers n=86

Citizens n=

M ±

М ±

Faith in

people (M.

Rosenberg’

techni

)

1,23±0,06 1,41±0,07 0,05

According to the data given in Table 1, the level

of trust shown by the citizens to the others (faith in

people) is adequately higher than the level of trust

Contemporary Contexts of Establishing Trustful Relations between a Police Ofﬁcer and Citizens

245

shown by the police officers. Actually, this value

demonstrates the rational level of trust according to

the conceptual idea of trust, which we have proposed.

Therefore, it is possible to suppose that citizens

originally more tend to cooperate and assist than

police officers. Such result can be caused by specific

aspects of professional activity of police officers

related to prevention and investigation of law

infringements, which provides for prosecutorial bias

to the others and original mistrust to them.

Using the technique developed by A.B.

Kupreychenko we studied the second, emotional part

of our conceptual idea of trust describing the

emotional feelings of persons related to trust and

mistrust.

Table 2 specifies the results of comparison

between the values by means of A.B.

Kupreychenko’s technique related to “the person you

trust most of all”.

Table 2: Comparative analysis of A.B. Kupreychenko’s test

criteria related to “the person you trust most of all” in the

groups of police officers and citizens.

Test criteria

Groups of respondents

Police

officers

n=86

Citizens

n= 79

M ±

М ±

Reliability of “I

trust”

12,85 ±

0,21

12,99 ±

0,21

Unity of “I trust”

11,62 ±

0,22

10,71 ±

0,34

0,05

Awareness of “I

trust”

11,38 ±

0,22

11,95 ±

0,21

0,05

Positive attitude

to “I trust”

11,53 ±

0,25

12,80 ±

0,27

0,001

Expectation of “I

trust”

11,63 ±

0,23

11,66 ±

0,28

Disadvantages of

“I trust”

10,6 ±

0,46

10,00 ±

0,39

As a result of comparative analysis of the criteria

of A.B. Kupreychenko’s technique related to “the

person you trust most of all” show significant

differences between three scales: Unity of “I trust”,

Awareness of “I trust” and Positive attitude to “I

trust”. Unity of “I trust” scale demonstrated

significantly higher values among the police officers,

which means that if they already trust to a person,

their trust is greater and more stable compared to the

citizens. Moreover, police officers provide for similar

views of life and unified principles with the persons

they trust.

Awareness of “I trust” and Positive attitude to “I

trust” scales showed significantly higher values

among the citizens compared to the police officers.

This result means that trust of the citizens is mainly

based on their idea that they know the person very

well and can predict his/her behavior in this or that

situation. Moreover, the citizens feel more positive

emotions to the persons they trust and suppose to have

common interests with the person they trust.

Analyzing the criteria which did not show any

significant differences, we can notice that in terms of

an absolute value, Disadvantages of “I trust” scale

demonstrated higher values among the police

officers, while the citizens demonstrated higher

values for Reliability of “I trust” and Expectation of

“I trust” scales. Higher values of the police officers

for Disadvantages of “I trust” scale prove their greater

reluctance to create their reputation as persons who

always keep their promises which is probably

connected to their reluctance to establish stable

relations and to the fact that they believe that they do

not need such reputation. On the other hand, higher

values expressed by the citizens for Reliability of “I

trust” and Expectation of “I trust” scales mean more

confident attitude to themselves as a reliable person

and greater intention to follow that type of behavior,

as well as greater intention to predictability in their

behavior and wish to meet expectations of the persons

who trusted them.

Table 3 specifies the results of comparison

between the criteria of A.B. Kupreychenko’s

technique related to “the person who lost your trust”.

Table 3: Comparative analysis of A.B. Kupreychenko’s test

criteria related to “the person who lost your trust” in the

groups of police officers and citizens.

Test criteria

Groups of respondents

Police

officers

n=86

Citizens

n= 79

M±

М ±

Reliability of “I

do not trust”

6,47 ±

0,23

6,04 ± 0,24 -

Unity of “I do

not trust”

6,30 ±

0,24

6,67 ± 0,23 -

Awareness of “I

do not trust”

7,87 ±

0,29

8,54 ± 0,28 -

Positive attitude

to “I do not

trust”

6,33 ±

0,25

6,46 ± 0,33 -

Expectation of “I

do not trust”

7,83 ±

0,28

7,90 ± 0,31 -

Disadvantages of

“I do not trust”

16,03 ±

0,47

15,73 ±

0,48

As a result of the comparative analysis of the

criteria according to A.B. Kupreychenko’s technique

CLOSA 2021 - VII INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC-PRACTICAL CONFERENCE “CRIMINAL LAW AND OPERATIVE SEARCH

ACTIVITIES: PROBLEMS OF LEGISLATION, SCIENCE AND PRACTICE”

246

related to “the person who lost your trust”, no

significant differences were found between the

citizens and the police officers. Such result indicates

similarity of their emotional attitude to the persons

who lost their trust. However, we can see that in terms

of the absolute value, the citizens demonstrated lower

values for Reliability of “I do not trust”,

Disadvantages of “I do not trust” scales, while the

police officers showed lower values for the other

scales.

Higher values of the police officers for Reliability

of “I do not trust” and Disadvantages of “I do not

trust” scales mean a higher level of mistrust and

unreliability to the person who lost their trust and lack

of awareness of the fact that such loss of trust would

cause larger losses than possible benefit from

fraudulent conduct.

As for Unity of “I do not trust”, Awareness of “I

do not trust”, Positive attitude to “I do not trust” and

Expectation of “I do not trust” scales, higher values

were shown by the citizens compared to the police

officers. That means that the citizens experience

greater difference in their view of life compared to the

person they do not trust, as well as their different

principles of life and interests, their poor knowledge

of that person and impossibility to absolutely suppose

about the way that person would act in this or that

situation, his/her unpredictable behavior.

During our survey we have detected significant

differences between the citizens and the police

officers according to the proposed conceptual idea of

trust incorporating two conceptual parts (levels):

rational and emotional. According to the obtained

data, the citizens compared to the police officers have

a higher rational level of trust expressed in their

greater intention to assistance and cooperation. The

significant differences we have found at the

emotional level of trust mean that trust of the citizens

compared to the police officers is more based on their

conviction that they know the person very well and

can predict his/her behavior in this or that situation

and they also have more positive attitude to the person

they trust and suppose that they have common

interests with that person.

A specific feature of the emotional level of the

police officers, unlike citizens, is that if they have

already formed trustful attitude to a person, the level

of their trust is much higher and more stable. A high

level of trust of police officers is based on their

expectations from the other person of a similar view

of life and commitment to the same values and

principles.

Generally, we can note that the proposed

conceptual idea of trust can be used to study the

phenomenon of trust in relations between citizens and

police officers, while the structural elements of the

conceptual idea, which we have mentioned, i.e.

rational and emotional level of trust, substantially

differ between the groups of respondents.

Trustful relations are triggered by mutual

perception of subjects, when possibilities of further

development of their communication are found and

forecast. Outrunning reflection and proper

arrangement of these relations eliminate the concern

of misunderstanding of each other.

Among the criteria of trustful behavior are

positive attitude, mutual assistance, safety, desire to

communicate again, self-benefit, satisfaction. The

process of meeting these desires and needs goes in

different ways in different contexts. The most

important is not to lose the essence of relations.

The possibility to control the limits of trust for a

police officer means to deal with the process of

transformation of his/her own experience and be

ready to design new experience of his/her

professional cooperation. However, his/her

professional thinking, i.e. images, ideas, values and

beliefs, constitutes the resource of establishing solid

trustful relations. At the level of language

competence it is proficiency in various references,

connotations, meanings, as well as in percept images

and ability to mutual emotional experience with the

other part of communication.

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