During a meeting on improving the judicial system this past July, President Dmitry Medvedev noted that “the modern-day court must be open for public control and in a greater degree accessible for citizens.” The president also spoke about the issue of public oversight in discussing the new draft law «On the police». In the words of Medvedev, one of the main differences between the new law and the current law “On the militia” will consist of the fact that in it “must be in a detailed manner determined the norms that provide for pubic control over the activity of the MVD and its official persons”. We already know just how much effect public opinion has on the MVD: after mass media and bloggers showed the beatings of peaceful citizens by a warrant officer from St. Petersburg, the MVD for a long time claimed that it could not locate this employee, and then, upon having found him, did not find any grounds for sanction or dismissal. There is an uneasy hunch that the wishes of Medvedev about control over the MVD are going to remain just that – wishes. Moreover, despite the fact that some kind of norms are going to be determined.