Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe police officers' opinions on the prevailing anxieties, feeling of fears and threats, attitudes towards crime and punishment.Design methodology approach - The paper took a quantitative approach to data collection that included a survey on a representative sample of the Slovene police.Findings - Comparisons of attitudes (anxieties of everyday troubles, feelings of insecurity, importance of appropriate measures against crime and adequate severity of punishment) has been conducted to find similarities and differences between police officers regarding gender and age. The results show that male police officers and senior police officers have more conservative attitudes towards the most appropriate measures against crime and are more likely to defend severe punishment of offenders. Such attitudes indicate persistence of traditional authoritarian police orientation in (post)modern society.Research limitations implications - The results are generalizable for the Slovenian police but not generalizable for the police worldwide.Practical implications - A useful source of information learning about some characteristics of police professional culture and police officers' attitudes towards punishment and their understanding of threats in society.Originality value - This paper furthers understanding of police occupational culture in a new democratic country.