Prior research has shown how police contacts affect community members in many aspects. However, it is unclear how the police are affected by community members’ behaviour or hostility in the line of duty. This study examined the impacts of exposure to citizen incivility and perceived public disrespect on police stress in an East Asian setting. The cross-sectional survey data were collected from seven police departments in a metropolitan jurisdiction in South Korea (n = 458). Ordinary least squares regression and a mediation analysis with bootstrapping were used for data analysis. The results indicated that exposure to citizen incivility (b = 0.112, β = 0.111, p < 0.05) and perceived public disrespect (b = 0.223, β = 0.161, p < 0.01) had direct effects on stress, adjusting for organisational justice, supervisor support, self-legitimacy, perceptions of danger and crime, and workload among other demographic variables. Notably, exposure to citizen incivility also had an indirect effect on stress through perceived public disrespect (b = 0.049, 95% CI b = 0.015–0.086, β = 0.048). The findings highlight the importance of enhancing officers’ interpersonal communication and conflict management skills, as well as procedural justice during police-citizen encounters to mitigate police stress.