Security firm offers to ‘clean up’ TA neighborhoods

Private Israeli security firm contacts TA municipality with plan to fight crime in city’s southern districts, home to many African migrants.

By BEN HARTMAN
Homeless African migrant on bench in south Tel Aviv 390 (R) (photo credit: NIR ELIAS / Reuters)
Homeless African migrant on bench in south Tel Aviv 390 (R)
(photo credit: NIR ELIAS / Reuters)
With the number of African migrants crossing Israel’s southern border averaging between 2,000-3,000 per month, one private Israeli security firm has contacted the Tel Aviv municipality with a plan to fight crime in the city’s southern districts, which tens of thousands of illegal African migrants call home.
Col. Beni Tal (res.), owner of Beni Tal Security, proposed to the city that it contracts his company to send 200- 300 armed security guards to the area, which would also be outfitted with thousands of surveillance cameras. He did not specify what tactics they would use to enforce law and order, but he said they would work with police to “clean up the bad apples and ship them out.”
The 56-year-old Tal said that he came up with the idea after taking a walk through the Central Bus Station district a few months ago, where he said that he felt more threatened than he has when visiting Harlem or rough areas of Brazil.
“We would run active patrols in the area with the goal of bringing a feeling of security aback to the Jews and Israelis in south Tel Aviv, but also to send a message to those criminals and mafiosos operating in these areas.”
He said he does not envision his security officers as being a sort of private version of the Interior Ministry’s “Oz” Immigration Task Force, rather as a supplementary force working hand-in-hand with Israel police.
Tal sees the “African infiltrators” as a problem that will very quickly “blow up in our faces,” stating that many of them could be members of al-Qaida and could easily carry out terror attacks in Israel.
Tal envisions the plan as similar to what former mayor Rudolph Giuliani did in New York in the ‘90s, when he used increased law enforcement to bring down the city’s crime rate.
Contacted by The Jerusalem Post on Monday, Tel Aviv City Hall said that it “receives many different offers from private industry covering all different fields.
The City Hall’s policy is not to hire private security guards for securing the peace [except for school security guards] and therefore, this offer was rejected outright with out any discussion.”