7% of 2015 complaints against police lead to indictment

Appeals to reopen closed complaint cases were rejected 98.97% of the time.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Only 7 percent of complaints against police in 2015, 102 out of 1,487, led to indictments, the Police Investigations Department report published on Monday reveals.
Appeals to reopen closed complaint cases were rejected 98.97% of the time.
However, when 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 states: “The unending friction between the police and the public from complex incidents including: public disorder, protests, arrests... creates 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.”
Uri Carmel, director of the PID, noted that 2015 saw “an increase in incidents where lethal force was used by officers...
during the period of the ‘Knife Intifada,’” but emphasized police were doing their best to balance protecting the public with not overreacting.
Most of the instances of police use of lethal force were found to be justified, Carmel said.
The report also noted efforts to fight police corruption, including the indictments of former police superintendence Eran Malka and former Tel Aviv district attorney Ruth David, with Malka sentenced to eight years in prison for taking bribes from attorney Ronel Fisher, and David under indictment in the same affair.