BREAKING NEWS

Only 7% of 2015 complaints against police lead to indictment

The Police Investigations Department report published on Monday revealed that only 7 percent of complaints against police in 2015, 102 out of 1,487, led to indictments.
Once cases were closed, appeals to reopen the cases were rejected 98.97% of the time.
Despite those low percentages, once the PID actually got to the point of questioning a police officer under caution, around 30% of the cases resulted in indictments.
The PID report stated that, “the unending friction between the police and the public from complex incidents including: public disorder, protests, arrests…create fertile ground for filing complaints, whether it is on the basis of an authentic feeling” that the policeman has acted wrongly or used by a criminal “to gain manipulative leverage.”
PID Director Uri Carmel noted that 2015 saw “an increase in incidents where lethal force was used by officers…during the period of ‘the Knife Intafada’,” but emphasized police were still doing their best to balance protecting the public with not overreacting.
Carmel said that most of the instances in which lethal force were used were found to be justified.
The report also noted efforts to fight corruption by police, including the indictments of former police supt. Eran Malka and former head Tel Aviv District Attorney Ruth David, with Malka sentence to eight years in prison for taking bribes from Ronel Fisher and David under indictment in the same affair.