State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said in a report on Wednesday that law enforcement arrested Ethiopian minors 3.8 times as often as the rest of the population throughout 2019.
Even with Ethiopian adults, the arrest rate was 1.9 times as often, compared to the rest of the population.
“Five years after the police program to strengthen the public faith among Ethiopians, the rate of enforcement against Ethiopians remains much higher than for the rest of the population,” Englman said.
“Law enforcement officials must act to eliminate the phenomenon of racism, over-policing and profiling” of Ethiopians, he said.
The report focuses mostly on police conduct toward Ethiopians between 2015 and 2020 but also reviews the conduct of the Public Security Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the IDF, the Prisons Service and the court system.
There are approximately 155,300 Ethiopian-Israelis, making up about 1.7% of the total population.
The report recounts nationwide protests by Ethiopians in 2015 and 2019 following incidents in which police killed Ethiopians under questionable or clearly illegal circumstances.
Noting moves by a 2015 police initiative and a 2016 government-wide task force to address racism against Ethiopians, Englman said there has been some improvement in recent years.
For example, the report said that even as arrest rates and investigations for Ethiopian minors were much higher relative to the entire population, they have decreased 4.1% and 2.2%, respectively, since 2015.
Despite this modest achievement, the report also said that the differential in over-policing against Ethiopian minors is still far too high. Furthermore, it said that regarding Ethiopian grownups there had been no improvement at all and possibly even a slightly higher rate of enforcement relative to the whole population.
Part of what went wrong, Englman noted, was that over the course of 2015-2018, the police spread out responsibility for improving issues with Ethiopians without having one central authority follow the issue.
ANOTHER CONCERN highlighted by the report is that investigations of Ethiopian minors, even if the probes are closed later and found to be groundless, can severely harm their socioeconomic track by blocking them from being drafted into the IDF.
The comptroller further said that many Ethiopian minors do not even know that a probe has been opened against them and are taken by surprise that their draft process is suddenly halted.
Moreover, the report said that many Ethiopian minors do not have sufficient education or support to know how to deal with investigations, and that the IDF and police have done little to make sure these investigations are wrapped up speedily.
Specifically, there is no maximum time limit or set of standards to encourage the police to wrap up these investigations in light of the national importance of integrating Ethiopians through their draft into the IDF. The report also slammed law enforcement for moving too slowly on a major initiative to eliminate criminal records for Ethiopians convicted of minor crimes.
In November 2018, former president Reuven Rivlin and then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked presented an initiative to eliminate these criminal records. Yet, as of May 2021, only 48 out of 140 requests for eliminating these criminal records have been approved.
Next, the report noted a reduction in the number of indictments being filed against racism. There was a high of 33 such indictments when awareness was heightened in 2015, the report said. However, with reduced momentum in 2019, the number of indictments was down to only nine.
Regarding increasing the percentage of Ethiopians in the police and the Prisons Service, the report found that the campaign on this issue has had limited success. To date, the percentage among the police is around 1%; and for the prisons, it ranges between 2% and 5.5%, depending on whether the issue is officers or rank and file.
ISRAEL POLICE responded to the report later on Wednesday, saying that within this past week alone, it started a local police initiative that “will be a national-professional authority to oversee the issue and to act to create additional mechanisms and processes” to improve relations between police and the Ethiopian sector.
In addition, the police said that this new initiative is “a long-term strategic change that is aimed at improving the quality of police services for the different sectors, including the Ethiopian community.”
The police did not contradict the stats presented by the comptroller, but, rather, tried to reframe the issue along the lines of positive progress, even if it is only incremental.
For example, it did not argue with how few Ethiopians’ criminal records had been erased, but highlighted that those criminal records that had been eliminated were part of a new and positive trend.
In addition, the police said that dozens of its officers had received special training to work with Ethiopians, and that a wider swath of its officials has been exposed to sensitivity training through occasional seminars.
While shying away from discussing the continued inequality of enforcement against Ethiopians, it stressed a reduction of cases relating to physical contact between police and Ethiopian minors (57%) and grownups (17%).
Without releasing specific numbers, the police also said that there had been a substantial reduction in the number of arrests.
One area where it admitted near-total failure was building public faith between the two sides.
According to the police, it had invested time and resources since 2015 to gradually improve the situation, but that the two incidents in 2019 in which police killed Ethiopians under questionable or even illegal circumstances had wiped away much of that hard work. The police said it would continue to try to rebuild trust, but recognized that it is operating in a challenging arena where one or two outlier incidents can destroy substantial efforts.
It did not acknowledge any overly lenient treatment toward police officials who act in a racist manner toward Ethiopians, saying the issue is properly handled by the Police Investigations Department.