How has your long experience in the military and security shaped your approach to teaching at the Polytechnic of Security Studies?
I had some experience in teaching because while I was in the Ministry of Interior, and since 1990 in the Ministry of Defense, I have been giving lectures at the Police Academy and at the Military Academy, and in 2003 I began teaching the course “Personal and Business Security” at the College of Entrepreneurship Economics.
In the following years, I also taught various courses at other higher education institutions in the Republic of Croatia.
Through all these lectures, I have tried to stimulate the listeners’ awareness, reflection and behavior on how to protect themselves, their family, their property, the property of an institution or company, how to make their environment safer, in a word, to raise their level of security culture.
Namely, security awareness today lags significantly behind the realities of everyday life, and security culture, like any culture, is something that is gradually acquired and grows into an everyday habit.
Security culture primarily means how to recognize threats and dangers and how to adequately confront them.
What lessons from your career and life do you try to convey to your students?
Although people’s daily lives have changed greatly over the past decade or so, and it can be said that all spheres of life, and now artificial intelligence is galloping along, technology is quickly finding its way into our daily lives.
Unfortunately, modern technologies are also used by people who operate on the other side of morality and the law, who have changed and perfected their modus operandi of committing various criminal acts, while at the same time, awareness of security and what to take as countermeasures among our people is still largely lacking and is reflected in comments like “well, they don’t really want me”; “it happens to someone else”… Also, a great contribution to this slow process of acquiring a security culture is made by personal comfort as well as everyday routine in movement, behavior…
By illustrating my lectures with numerous examples from everyday life, cases from my police and military career, I try to present in an extremely illustrative way that threats, suffering and various forms of harmful consequences can occur in various ways, either intentionally, i.e. through illegal acts of individuals or groups, or negligence, carelessness or inattention, that is my “4 N”.
In short, the causes may be different, but the damage or some other consequence has already occurred or threatens to occur.
How do you view the current conflicts in the world and what would be the best way to resolve the conflict?
I have gone through five years of war, seen and experienced all the tragedies that war brings, so that by watching and following today’s current war conflicts through the media, I am deeply aware of the suffering and suffering of ordinary people on any warring side. No media can convey all this suffering with complete accuracy, war has its own smell, the smell of arson, the smell of rot…
Conversations are always the best option. In the end, everyone sits down at the table and finds a compromise solution, I think that will be the case with these conflicts that are taking place today.
Is there a moment in class or during your work with students that particularly inspired you?
Students are wonderful, I enjoy talking to them. Many of them have enviable life and work experience, so I also gain a lot of new knowledge and enrich myself. I like to encourage students to discuss and hear their opinions and views on the situation. I try to be interesting, to convey to them the realities and that nothing in security issues is simple, even if it sometimes seems that way.
Through the form of field teaching, I try to familiarize students even more with what I say and present ex cathedra. For example: when we talk about technical security systems, that these systems are not mystified, that they see that it is just a tool for humans as a factor of security, so that when in an institution or establishment where we practically see the use of these technical security systems during a demonstration we see that something is not working, that the operator is poorly trained, etc., it clearly shows students that it is just a tool that is correct or not, that you know how to work with or not.
What advice would you give to students who want to follow your path in security professions?
I think that through my presentations and free forms of conversation I have shared a lot of advice, if we can call it that. I know that the most expensive things are not bought with money, but with ears and eyes. At least I have always applied this practice.
In all my visits to police or military units in different countries of the world, I have observed which of the techniques, methodologies or tactics I have seen can be applied in our conditions, our mentality, and above all by our finances. There was always something that enriched or improved the segment of the police or military that I led and was responsible for.
Is there a story from your career that you rarely share, but that is especially dear to you?
To tell, in my 53 years I have accumulated novels throughout my career. I am a big fan of comics, I have thousands of them, I especially love “Alan Ford”, and of the characters, “Number One”.