Abstract: The research subject is the peculiarities of formation and manifestation of communication skills of police officers in the digitized environment. The research methodology is based on general scientific methods (formalization, synthesis, generalization of theoretical information on the research issues, and the empirical deductive method), and theoretical methods of the modern social sciences and the humanities. Using the sociological method of questioning, the authors establish the main problems of formation of communication skills of police officers in the digitized environment, analyze the officers’ ideas about prohibitions and restrictions in the digitized environment determined by their professional activities, and detect the weak points of professional training which can damage the image of the internal affairs agencies if ignored. The research helps to reveal several problems connected with communication skills of police officers in the digitized environment. Firstly, it is the absence of normative regulation of the term “communication skills of civil servants” which causes the polyphony in the interpretation of this term. Secondly, it is the absence of formalized requirements to the behavior of police officers in the digitized environment. There are no rules of behavior of police officers on the Internet and in social networks per se, therefore there’s no formal responsibility for their violation. The authors also detect the drawbacks of the professional training and retraining of police officers. The first significant indicator is the fact that most police officers know neither the legislative requirements to digital behavior, nor the current statutory instruments regulating the police officers’ behavior. All these facts prove the necessity to improve the current system of police officers professional training and retraining. 
 

Abstract: The article studies provocation as one of the forms of discriminational actions of citizens aimed at deliberate impairment of dignity and authority of a police officer. The authors reveal the reasons of provocative actions of citizens against police officers, the lack of experience of police officers in the prevention of provocative actions, the absence of regulations imposing legal responsibility of citizens for such actions in the Russian legislation. The authors analyze significant components of legal culture of a police officer which help to interact with citizens within legal boundaries. The authors use the methods of analysis and synthesis of the current scientific concepts considering the essence of legal culture and the ways of forming professional legal awareness of police officers; content-analysis used for studying mass media texts and helping to establish and problematize the research method and detect destructive strategies of interaction between citizens and police officers. The scientific novelty of the study consists in problematizing provocation as one of the forms of discreditation of a police officer by citizens, establishing the motive underlying this destructive behaviour, and the reasons hampering effective prevention of discreditation of police officers. The authors analyze the significance of forming legal culture of police officers for the prevention of provocative actions of citizens, give recommendations about the improvement of legal, moral and psychological training, professional training of police officers aimed at the formation of skills of prevention of provocative actions of citizens.