Razvan Neagoe

Razvan is a 2023 graduate of LJMU, having completed his policing studies degree. He has been an exemplar student, getting involved as a Student Advocate with our Outreach Team and winning awards for his excellent academic work. He will now go on to serve as a police officer with Merseyside Police.

Razvan features in our ‘Graduates of LJMU’ miniseries, part of the ‘Humans of LJMU’ series in collaboration with the ‘Humans of Liverpool’ social media account, sharing the stories of the people who make our city, communities and university the vibrant, inclusive place it is in celebration of our bicentenary year.

In his interview he reflects on moving from Romania to the UK, the inspiration behind wanting to work for the police and always remembering that we are all only human, even when dealing with people who have potentially committed a crime.

Razvan’s ‘Humans of LJMU’ interview

“When I first moved here from Romania, I didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t know anyone. My mum didn’t want me to leave, but I wanted a better quality of life and more opportunities. I got a job in a coffee shop in London and started to learn English alone at home. It was really difficult, but I think it helped me grow much faster as a person. Studying also gave me time to think about what I wanted to do.

“I had a customer who was a police officer who would come in every day. We talked all the time and became friends - I would ask him questions about the job and find out about the cultural differences here. He always looked very professional and he was very kind and I thought, I want to be like you. The police are very different back home, this made me see them differently. He was an inspiration.

“When I passed my English test, I decided to study policing in Liverpool, as LJMU has a very good reputation for this. In my first year I was quite nervous as my lecturers were all previously police officers and I was coming from a culture where we fear the police. I thought, how am I going to challenge them when I know they were Inspectors in the police. But I did it.

“I wasn’t sure at first whether I could do it because of my English but I spent thousands of hours in the library and I achieved a first. I’m so glad that I never gave up. I even won a few awards, for my dissertation, for leadership and I was selected to go to Norway to study cybercrime.

“About a year ago, I was working in custody and a guy who was the same age as me came in. We were both in the same place but in different situations. He was there because he was arrested for something he’d done and I was there as a police officer. It just hit me, I thought, that could have easily been me. It made me think back to the choices I made and what could have been different. I felt grateful that I’d tried to strive to be a good person and do the right thing, but at the same time it helped me to understand him - because you never know what he’s been through, maybe he was just in the wrong places at the wrong time. I saw him as a human being, not just for what he’d done.”