Justice Minister Nissenkorn: Police will no longer probe police

PID will hire more Ethiopians, Arabs, haredim

By YONAH JEREMY BOB
Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn along A-G Avichai Mandelblit, August 18, 2020 (photo credit: YOSSI ZAMIR)
Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn along A-G Avichai Mandelblit, August 18, 2020
(photo credit: YOSSI ZAMIR)
Justice Minister Avi Nissenkorn on Tuesday announced that the Police Investigations Department (PID) will no longer employ officials with any connection to the police.
Although the PID has been formally independent from the police and a part of the Justice Ministry since 1992, in practice, many PID employees are “on loan” from the police and often return to serve there after completing a certain term.
Critics say this revolving door between the PID and the police has led the department to be overly lenient when it probes police for misconduct, which in turn has brought the unit under heightened public scrutiny.
Nissenkorn said that any “on loan” employees would need to return to the police within three months, though it was unclear how this would be carried out.
For example, no one explained if officials would need to sign a statement that they would never again be employed by the police or if they would simply be fired or transferred.
Practically speaking, a Justice Ministry spokeswoman said that only three senior PID officials out of 41 investigators fall into this category.
A major source of criticism of the PID has been its handling of the probe and trial of a policeman for the negligent homicide of Ethiopian-Israeli Solomon Teka in June 2019.
The policeman was indicted on February 4, following former state attorney Shai Nitzan’s November 2019 decision to indict pending a pre-indictment hearing.
Though Nitzan had also considered both a murder charge early on and closing the case, under recommendation from the PID, he eventually settled on negligent homicide, balancing evidentiary problems with the fact that the policeman did fire negligently and that the shooting did lead to Teka’s death.
Teka’s killing shook the country and led to nationwide protests by the Ethiopian community about dangerous discrimination by police, and racism against them in general.
New allegations were constantly emerging, including that Teka and some of his friends were chasing the policeman when he fired on them wildly without looking. Other narratives say that Teka and his friends were pursuing the policeman and that they hit him twice with rocks, but that they were still keeping their distance, were not advancing on him when he fired and did not present a danger warranting anything more than firing a shot in the air.
The PID has also been blasted for downplaying complaints against police by Israeli-Arabs and haredim (ultra-Orthodox).
Addressing this last criticism head-on, Nissenkorn said that the investigative department would make special efforts going forward to hire Ethiopians, Arabs and haredim.
Next, the justice minister said that the PID would increase its crackdown on cases of incitement, would prioritize those cases for fast-tracking and would mostly stop closing such cases on the grounds of “a lack of public interest.”
Confronting the charge that it drags its feet on charges against police, Nissenkorn also appeared to promise new resources to the unit so that it can move faster in handling cases against police.
The PID is due to present Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit with a plan within 30 days to increase its case management speed.
A new 24-hour telephone line is set to be established to give the public easier access to making complaints to the unit.
Nissenkorn said that there would be an update on all of these reforms within 30 days and that they should all be implemented on the ground no later than the end of 2020.
Mandelblit and PID director Karen Ben-Menachem both expressed support for Nissenkorn’s reforms, saying that it was a positive move for PID to improve itself, while keeping criticism professional and not political, so that the goal would be to strengthen the unit.
Previously, Mandelblit had blocked former justice minister Amir Ohana from using a commission to reform the PID, which he had appointed without the attorney-general’s input.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel jointly criticized the reforms as too little too late.
They said that PID needs to be completely revamped so that more cases lead to indictment and that the reforms suggested on Tuesday will only impact things on the margins.


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