The Genesis and Development of the Police Academy in Szczytno from the Perspective of the Thirtieth Anniversary of its Functioning

2020 is another special year in the history of the Police College in Szczytno. The fourth decade of its existence begins in this year. At the same time, it is a good time to take a retrospective look at the past 30 years of functioning of this university. This is all the more valuable because its author has actively participated in its life for almost all of these years, as a listener and then as an employee (policeman) at the executive and management levels. The perspective of thirty years of functioning of the Police College presented in the article concerns primarily its evolution, which is a consequence of the expectations of the police management and the interior ministry. At the same time, it presents its development as an academic centre, providing education at an increasingly higher level. The real dimension of this direction of development is the University’s ability to award further, increasingly higher titles and degrees. This is the result of the involvement of the academic and teaching staff of the university, but also of its management. This article shows the path taken by the Police College in Szczytno from the university, being the resultant of the socio-political changes of the late 1980s and early 1990s of the last century, to the university being the leading academic centre in the Republic of Poland which educates in the field of social sciences and conducts research showing the relationships between the disciplines included in this one field of science. It not only allows the professional staff of the department’s services to be trained, but also to discover new opportunities for providing safety.