OREANDA-NEWS. February 07, 2011. The President announced the law’s signing at a meeting examining the Interior Ministry’s main areas of work. Mr Medvedev congratulated the meeting’s participants and everyone in the Interior Ministry on the news, and said that they now need to make sure they measure up to the new law’s demands.

The President emphasised that the new law sets out the rights and obligations of Interior Ministry personnel essential for ensuring the police force’s proper and efficient work and preventing unjustified misuse of police powers. The law also frees the police from duplicating other agencies’ responsibilities and performing duties not properly part of their work, and reinforces a partnership model of relations between society and the law enforcement agencies.

Mr Medvedev stressed that police officers are responsible for a number of tasks of national importance, including preventing terrorism, guaranteeing security at infrastructure facilities and public places, preventing attempts to incite interfaith and interethnic conflict, and fighting organised crime and corruption. 

The new law’s adoption is a significant event, but it is only the first step in the law enforcement agencies’ transformation. Police officers must receive social benefits that guarantee them a decent standard of living, and in this respect the President instructed the Government and Presidential Executive Office to complete work in the nearest future on the relevant laws and submit them to the State Duma for examination.

Mr Medvedev visited the Moscow Northern Administrative District’s Interior Ministry Department before the meeting, where he looked over the work of the Safe City integrated system. The President said is important to develop a unified information and telecommunications system and expand the use of navigation monitoring systems in law enforcement work.

The meeting was held at the Interior Ministry Management Academy, one of the oldest educational establishments within the Interior Ministry’s organisation.