Since the 1990s the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has commissioned an annual all-Russian public opinion poll on the police, the results of which are considered as an important element in evaluating the activity of territorial subdivisions of the internal affairs bodies. The article deals with the inevitable contradictions between the public opinion assessments and those based on departmental criteria. The case-study in related to 2018 events, when the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Chelyabinsk region was on one of the first places by departmental criteria, but on the last place (in this region only 24.3% of respondents expressed confidence in the police) according to the public opinion poll. The authors, who, as experts, participated in the explanation of this case, concluded that it showed systemic contradictions of the exaptation in post-Soviet Russia of community policing model. The desire for a partnership between the police and civil society manifests itself in the form of monitoring public opinion polls rather than an NGO audit, which reflect rather social tensions in the region.