Psychological aspects of the National Police’s activities in maintaining law and order and public safety

Based on a comprehensive analysis, this article examines the psychological characteristics of the work performed by officers of the National Police in maintaining law and order and public safety. Studying the characteristics of patrol police officers’ activities from the perspective of psychology as a science makes it possible to identify key trends in the development of the police as a social institution amid the transformational processes in Ukrainian society. This has theoretical and practical significance for improving Ukraine’s law enforcement system in the context of integration into the structures of the European Union, which underscores the relevance of the topic. The object of the study is the psychological characteristics of patrol police officers’ activities. The subject of the study is the dynamics of police officers’ psychological characteristics while ensuring law and order and public safety under the legal regime of martial law. The methodological basis consists of general scientific research methods grounded in the principles of formal logic, dialectics, synergetics, the systems approach, and comparative, contrastive, and structural-functional analysis. It is noted that the status of a patrol police officer in modern conditions is determined by the dialectical tension between the state’s monopoly on the use of force and European requirements for social responsibility. It is noted that the collective nature of the official duties of patrol police officers of the National Police, as part of a response team or a public safety and law enforcement unit, includes a system of legal, tactical, psychological, and preventive actions, and develops psychological tools by embedding coordinated actions in the mind, which ensures the fulfillment of official tasks in both routine and emergency conditions, taking into account the legal regime of martial law. Psychological training includes training in coordinated professional-psychological actions − cognitive-prognostic, communicative, organizational, and preventive − and psychological means of communication; the development of a police officer’s reflective abilities by reinforcing in their consciousness the methods, means, and tools of professional activity.