Romanian Police Research Articles

APPROACHING ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE VULNERABILITY FROM A MOBILITY MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE. A 5 year ANALYSIS OF ACCIDENT DYNAMICS IN BRASOV COUNTY

Recorded fatalities as a result of road accidents place Romania at the top of the European countries with the most worrying statistics, situating the mobility management in a deficient position, often motivated by the vulnerability of the road infrastructure. The present paper, conducted with the statistics provided by the Romanian Police, analyzes the impact of road quality on the occurrence of accidents in determining the severity of injuries to participants. This study was carried out over a period of 5 years in Brasov County.

THE BORN OF THE ROMANIAN POLICE FROM THE MILITIA DURING THE COMMUNIST PERIOD

During the last decade Romania has undergone major political transformation from communist regimes to democratic forms of government. Despite changes--introducing police ranks, changing uniforms, prohibiting party affiliation, police find it more difficult to persuade citizens that they have really changed. The article details the modifications that came about in tandem with the evolution of the Romanian Police following Romania's 1990 political upheaval. The relationship between socioeconomic shifts and the corresponding modifications to law enforcement agencies has received special attention. These modifications range from renaming the Militia to the Police to altering its personnel, organizational structure, and legal framework. The Romanian Police is a professional organization that serves the public and is commemorating its 202th anniversary in 2024.

The suicides among the Romanian police and public safety personnel in the period 2016-2021

"There is an important concern of public and professional organizations in the police and public safety sector to identify the best practices for suicide risk management, especially in USA. The suicide phenomenon from 2016 to 2021 at the level of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Romania2, captured through the annual suicide rates, varied positively or negatively compared with the annual suicide rates from Romania and with those at the level of institutions with a similar activity profile from the international level, from the USA and Italy. Based on the socio-demographic data available, the self-murderers’ profiles at the level of MIA were created, but in their use, the particular aspects of the suicidal phenomenon must be considered. The self-murderers from the Romanian police and public safety institutions used firearms in 45.7% of the cases during the analyzed period. The algorithm used to predict the annual suicide numbers in the period 2022-2025 at the MIA level revealed that they will follow an increasing trend. In the period 2016-2021, the annual number of suicides among Romanian police and public safety personnel was higher than the number of deaths among the same personnel caused by accidents during service and assaults. Keywords: suicide, police and public safety institutions, suicide prevention"

COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT IN IPJ X

Optimal communication of the system reveals its advantages also within the Romanian Police. The work of a policeman is based on my own knowledge and communication skills and now that I work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, I noticed that this opinion has been substantiated and even emphasized. One thing is certain: being part of a law enforcement body is not easy. The criminal environment is highly dangerous and most criminals want to escape impediments that place them outside the limits imposed by law. The policeman is in the crosshairs of the offender. Taking into account all these aspects, the policeman must be in continuous communication, collaboration with other colleagues and develop various methods of identifying those who commit antisocial acts. The greater number of law enforcement teams can lead to deterrence for criminals. Working in the system, I can say that the optimization of the communication process is permanently targeted by police officers and, as a result, many cases can be solved.

TRAINING STRENGTH AND SPEED IN LOCAL POLICE OFFICERS

Strength training is a fundamental component of physical training activities targeting the employees of the Romanian Police and Local Police. Strength, speed and endurance are basic physical qualities involved in the proper conduct of police missions. As gatekeepers of the criminal justice system, police officers are usually the first to encounter crime victims. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a physical training program in terms of enhancing strength and speed among local police officers. Ten local police members participated in the study, which examines how a three-month physical training program, carried out in 2021, can improve muscle strength and running speed (50 meters). A paired sample t-test was used to assess the differences between the initial and final evaluations. The results indicated significant improvements - following the course of the educational curriculum - in the field of general physical training/in the field of self-defence, related to the initial training course of local police officers. Improvements were recorded in the values of all investigated indicators, including muscle mass, punching strength, and 50-meter running speed. The study discusses the implications, emphasizing that strength should be periodically trained, and force used gradually - and only when necessary - to prevent illegal actions that could endanger the lives or safety of police officers or others.

Psychometric properties and invariance of the Police Stress Questionnaire in the Romanian context

This research evaluates the psychometric properties of the Romanian version of the Police Stress Questionnaire (PSQ), featuring operational and organizational stress scales for police officers. We conducted three studies to test the reliability and validity of this questionnaire. The first study (N = 744) aimed at adapting and validating the Romanian version on the specific population. Confirmatory factor analysis of our two-factor model, each with 20 items grouped in a second-order factor, showed the good value of the fit indices: χ²(738) = 1420.11, p < .001; CFI = 0.992; TLI = 0.992; RMSEA = 0.035 [90% CI 0.033, 0.038]; SRMR = 0.059. Subsequently, we tested measurement invariance, demonstrating that the Romanian version of this questionnaire measures workplace stress (including operational and organizational stress factors) independently of the work environment (police officers vs. correctional officers). The second study (N = 394) confirmed PSQ’s convergent validity through positive correlations with stress perception, burnout, mental health complaints, and psychological distress and its discriminant validity through negative correlations with job satisfaction and work engagement. The third study tested the longitudinal invariance of the stress questionnaire for police (N = 317). The findings suggest that the PSQ is a reliable and valid tool, highlighting its significant impact on the well-being of Romanian police officers by facilitating stress management interventions through baseline and ongoing stress assessment. Future research should longitudinally assess police stress, incorporating multi-source data and diverse units, as well as exploring the impact of socio-demographic aspects for broader insights.

Trauma Outcomes in Pediatric Nonfatal Road Traffic Accidents.

By 2025, road traffic injuries are projected to rank third in the global burden of disease, posing a significant challenge that affects health, social well-being, and economic aspects. According to data from the Romanian Police National Statistics Center, there have been an average of 342 traffic accidents per year involving pediatric patients over the past 10 years. A retrospective research study was conducted, encompassing 358 cases of road traffic accidents identified for the study, with data collected over a span of eight years, and with the aim of analyzing the types of injury and treatment methods in relation to age and sex, while also focusing on the duration of hospitalization and the occurrence of complications. An oscillating trend is observed from 2015 to 2020, with its lowest value recorded in 2017 at around 6.8% and its peak in 2019 at 20.1%. Notably, post-pandemic (COVID-19), the cases underwent a substantial decline of approximately 60%. At least 78.7% of those who did not undergo orthopedic reduction required surgery, whereas among those who underwent orthopedic reduction, only 23.4% needed surgery. Regarding the frequency of complications 17.3% of the total cases experienced complications. According to our findings, age has a significant effect on the type of accident (p < 0.05). Complications occurred in 17.3% of patients, most commonly surgical (24 cases, 38.7%), orthopedic (17 cases, 27.4%), and neurological (15 cases, 24.2%).

Experience of administrative and legal support of the organization and activities of the Romanian police

Experience of administrative and legal support of the organization and activities of the Romanian police

Testing of the pyrotechnic composition of the fireworks and the functional safety in order to evaluate the constructive and functional compliance with the specific rules and standards

The paper presents the way of carrying out the tests necessary to substantiate the working hypotheses in order to fulfill the objectives set out in the ordinance for the technical expertise of pyrotechnic articles intended for entertainment purposes when we talk about the samples made available by the M.A.I., the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police, based on a orderly from a criminal file. A pyrotechnic article intended for entertainment purposes shall be categorised under the Pyrotechnic Articles Directive 2013/29/EU(on the harmonization of the legislation of the Member States regarding the making available on the market of pyrotechnic articles) as a firework belonging to category F1, F2, F3 or F4. The tests required for the technical expertise of the pyrotechnic articles made available are the following: Determination of the content of the pyrotechnic articles, according to PI-97, based on SR EN 15947-4:2016; Checking the functionig of pyrotechnic articles, according to PI-98, based on SR EN 15947-4:2016, SR EN 16261-3:2016, SR EN 16263-4:2016; The categorization of pyrotechnic articles, according to PI-13.

A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF ROAD ACCIDENTS ASSOCIATED WITH ALCOHOL AND PSYCHOACTIVE DRUG USE: A 5-YEAR SURVEY (2018-2022)

Road accidents are one of the biggest challenges to public safety worldwide. Although there are many factors that contribute to these accidents, drink and drug driving remains one of the most dangerous but avoidable risk factors. The radiography of road accidents in recent years shows an increasing propensity to use banned substances behind the wheel, even though Romanian legislation does not allow any degree of use. This paper, based on official information provided by the Romanian Police, explores the impact of this behavior on road safety and the measures needed to combat this serious problem.

"Road Crash Severity Level in Urban Areas. A Study on Traffic Crashes in the Romanian Cities "

Road traffic in urban areas is highly prone to the occurrence of road crashes, while crash severity level differs at the city level and in relation to the leading cause. In the case of urban sustainable environments, strategic planning and development measures have been implemented for safer mobility by effective traffic management and road user education. Still, in crowded cities, where mobility and transit traffic are major factors, road crashes are the antithesis of road safety and they occur in simple or complex circumstances mostly related to road users and road infrastructure. The aim of this study was to define the severity level of road traffic crashes in the cities of Romania during the reference period 2008 - 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, while highlighting the leading causes of road crashes in urban areas that determine their highest occurrence and severity level. Official crash data records provided by the general Directorate of the Romanian Police were employed. The general severity degree of road crashes was calculated, particularly in relation to the first five leading causes, and cities were ranked accordingly. Results are rendered at the local level, for all 319 cities and towns in Romania, by the five leading causes and by severity level, comparatively for the years 2008 and 2019. Synthetically, we pinpoint the Romanian cities that are most affected by this phenomenon. This could help local and national decision-makers direct their focus towards mitigating the negative effects of the frequent crash triggering factors, decrease road crash severity levels and create customized measures for better traffic management and increased road safety at the local level.

The formal notice of persons

The public order policeman is a civilian, armed civil servant, with a special status, who usually wears a uniform and performs the duties provided by law for the Romanian Police, as a specialized institution of the state. The policeman exercises his function by officially intervening, when the situation requires it, against any individual, regardless of his rank or social position. Any action taken must be motivated by the need to defend the life and bodily integrity of the individual, but also the property, or to maintain the climate of public safety. In the interaction with the citizens, various situations have been noticed in which the police officers do not address them with sufficient kindness, they apply the legal provisions abusively and even commit acts of impropriety, things incompatible with the status of a police officer or, even better said, the status of the police from a member country of the European Union. The job of a policeman, due to its specificity, comes with special duties and risks, so that through the law on the organization and operation of the Romanian Police and the Statute of the policeman, he is granted rights and obligations by which he can fulfill his entrusted missions, taking at the same time in calculating and ensuring protection. Precisely in order to carry out everything according to the legal provisions and for the safety of people, during and in connection with the fulfillment of the duties, the policeman is invested with public authority. As a result of the usual activities, the operational staff of the Romanian Police may face several situations that can only be solved by means of the laws in force and based on the experience gained. That is why it is necessary to know and respect the methods of intervention by applying appropriate rules, the intervention being an imperative condition for the successful fulfillment of professional duties.

Method of action in the case of a public disturbance in public spaces

Since the beginning of the first forms of human coexistence, the need for order and safety has undoubtedly become imperative. During the development of the state, the idea of public order was outlined in different ways, but it was always accompanied by the police law of the state. Until now, the consolidation of the state has relied on the maintenance of order and public safety. This concept is reflected in the state's focus on protecting social rights, life and integrity of citizens, compliance with established rules and other accepted values. Thanks to the authorities to which the state resorted, the priority of ensuring public order became satisfied, through the activities of preventing and countering antisocial phenomena. The complete realization of social equilibrium is disturbed by facts against which the forces must fix measures. Thus, the local police, one of the current institutions used by the state, constantly struggles with circumstances in which the action of law enforcement is required to restore peace. Whether acting alone or cooperating with other public safety maintenance forces, such as: the gendarmerie, the Romanian police, the courts, the local police respects a set of specific principles and rules that guide its activity in different fields. So, the duties of a policeman are reflected in the sectors of public order and peace, environmental protection, traffic on public roads, commercial activity, records of persons and other legally regulated areas. I believe that, for each area of activity, the police officer must follow a series of rules that protect him from errors in the intervention. The indispensability of knowing how to act in certain situations is determined by the fact that the legal provisions that illustrate the rights and obligations of the police officer do not subject to rules the difficulties regarding the procedures for intervention, behavior and reaction to incidents. The police force performs its service in the field, in particular, making direct contact with the population, and in this way it becomes the first frontier of confrontation with criminals. Therefore, the performance of a professional service is closely related to the manner in which a police officer acts in the interest of the community.

Stop and account process

Over time, we notice that the measure of identification of persons has undergone small changes, and the refusal of identification has become a problem among police officers performing their duties. Thus, the laws were created to ensure public order and the safety of citizens, and then to sanction violators. In the theme, we took into account what various authors have published in the books written by them, regarding the identification of people and all the activities that a policeman has the obligation to perform, as well as the laws by which the French police carry out their activity. The purpose of stop and account a person is to procure a set of rules for establishing a person's identity and carrying out the tasks regarding the preparation and approval of the documents related to this procedure. Romanian and foreign citizens have the obligation to legitimize themselves on the territory of Romania either with an identity document, or verbally if they do not have any document on them, whenever they are asked to do so by the officers and agents of the Romanian Police, as well as on the territory of France.

Case Study on Road Safety Analysis in the Area of Educational Units

The article addresses the topic of road safety in the area of educational units, respectively the effect of road traffic. The aim of the study is to clearly highlight the causality between road accidents involving children as victims and road systematization. To achieve our main objectives, we used as a research method the analysis of documents: Road Accident Database, an application of the Romanian Police in which all traffic incidents registered in Romania are implemented, according to the criteria of Mehedinti County, student quality, road category (national, county, communal), the location of the school unit in the vicinity of the public road and the production of the traffic incident. One of the factors that decisively influences the quality of road traffic, therefore, implicitly the risk in traffic, is the public road network. The specialized studies, as well as the available international statistics, show that the main categories exposed to the risk of road accidents resulting in deaths and serious injuries are: pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and mopeds, in other words, the category known in specialized practice as "the most vulnerable traffic participants”.

Workplace aggression, wellbeing, and job satisfaction: The specificity in border police organizations.

In male-dominated work contexts, the challenges faced by women and their impact on wellbeing and work attitudes have been documented, most extensively in other than police organizations. This study was conducted as a cross-sectional quantitative descriptive correlational predictive study to validate a model of relationships among workplace aggression, job satisfaction, and wellbeing at work with a sample of 1,066 female and male officers from the Romanian Border Police. The results obtained in the study showed that no differential gender effects were found, although women reported higher levels of workplace aggression than men (1.61 vs. 1.52; F = 4.20, p = 0.04). Also, workplace aggression significantly and negatively predicted job satisfaction (R2 = 0.27) and wellbeing at work (R2 = 0.31). In conclusion, although this research is an exploratory approach to the study of workplace aggression in the Romanian police organization, it can generate interventions that would lead to the reduction of undesirable behaviors such as verbal aggression, malicious jokes, discrimination, perception of inequalities, gossip, and defamatory words. In the future lines of research, different sources and conditions of victims and witnesses can be considered the. We also studied the limitations of the study and the future lines of research.

Go Hunt Me by Kelly deVos

Reviewed by: Go Hunt Me by Kelly deVos Natalie Berglind Devos, Kelly Go Hunt Me. Razorbill, 2022 [320p] Trade ed. ISBN 9780593204856 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9780593204863 $10.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 8-12 A group of film students catches their big break when an actress invites them to shoot their feminist interpretation of Dracula at the castle where Vlad Dracul once lived. The opportunity is especially important for Alex, whose application to her dream school USC is waitlisted while several of her male friends are accepted. Instantly, though, the castle trip feels wrong: the actress that promised to chaperone them leaves; there is no wi-fi or cell service; and the GoFundMe that funded their trip is hacked. What was merely a creepy vibe becomes a direct threat when a figure in a Dracula mask begins to pick the friend group off one by one. The framing device of Alex retelling her story to the Romanian police as the last survivor is compelling from the get-go; readers already know what happens but not how. In a nod to the structure of the source material, excerpts of police evidence, including the film students' script, social media posts, and the interrogation itself, are interspersed with Alex's narration and allow readers to piece together more than what Alex is sharing. The building paranoia about the identity of the killer is executed well, and readers who enjoy bloody, locked-room horror stories and masterfully built suspense should pick this book up. Copyright © 2022 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Authority Figures in Post-Revolutionary Society: Examining Romanian Attitudes Toward the Police in Pororoca and Police, Adjective

The Romanian New Wave is intensely focused on Romania’s history and identity. There is a self-reflexiveness in these films, an awareness of communism’s lingering shadow. Police, Adjective’s examination of the Romanian police force from the inside offers a harsh outlook on the Romanian bureaucracy. Pororoca, on the other hand, examines the police from the point of view of an average citizen, and its ending gives us a dark vision of a society in which we cannot hope for justice. These two films provide us with a frame of reference for understanding the Romanian New Wave and its attitude toward the Romanian Police.

The Aesthetic Surveillance of Performance Art by the Romanian Securitate in the 1970s and 1980s

This article discusses the specific case of the surveillance by the Securitate, the Romanian secret police, of artists who engaged in performance art (body art, action art, live art) during the last two decades of Romanian communism. Building on Cristina Vătulescu’s concept of ‘police aesthetics’ and Mogoș and Berkers’s ‘mechanisms of control’, this article analyses the aesthetic surveillance by the Securitate and the different strategies to prevent problematic art it employed towards performance artists that ranged from control, to discouragement, and support given to complying artists. Through a close reading of the files by the Securitate of three artists, Alexandru Antik, Imre Baász, and Wanda Mihuleac, I show performance art was considered as having an ‘interpretative’ or ‘hostile content’ depending on the status inside the regime of the artist who practiced it.

Rule of Law in Tough Times – A Case Study on the Romanian Sanctioning Policy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was a genuine stress test for societies around the globe. Societal values were put under public scrutiny, while fear reigned supreme allowing large margins of maneuver for governments in taking restrictive measures promising at least to win some time for health systems to adapt to the new challenges. Along with health systems governments, judicial systems and societies at large had to change the way they function to face the pandemic. In this paper we will present a case study on Romania and the usage of sanctioning mechanisms by the Police and Gendarmerie during the state of emergency, March 16–May 14, 2020. We will explore the challenges regarding the adoption of a sound legal basis for restrictive measures in line with the constitutional provision and the actual implementation of these restrictions with a focus on the performance of two enforcement institutions – the Romanian Police and the Gendarmerie – in this process. In times of crisis, or particularly in times of crisis when the government enjoys even more power than usual, the governmental action must be transparent to build trust and ensure that abuses do not happen. Moreover, the data gathered during the first wave of COVID-19 could help shape public policies for the subsequent waves with the view to improve efficiency while possibly decreasing the restrictions of human rights.