“We don’t have enough officers, we can’t provide quality service as a police force should,” said Shabtai.
Israel Police are lacking 1,720 officers, not only causing the closure of police stations and lack of ability to properly respond to life-threatening events, but also putting a lot of pressure on working officers.
More specifically, the police are short of 566 patrol officers, 322 investigators and 198 detectives among other roles, causing the closure of 18 police stations across the country and leaving 12,880 cases unattended.
The lack of manpower is also hitting existing stations. The city of Rishon Lezion, for example, had a police force of 180 officers back when the city’s population was at 180,000 several years ago. Now that the population has almost doubled, but the amount of officers remains the same.
In a meeting with the Public Security Committee, Israel Police Insp.-Gen. Kobi Shabtai spoke of the severe lack in manpower, pinning most of the blame on inadequate pay and lack of funding.
“We don’t have enough officers, we can’t provide quality service as a police force should, a commanding shift officer in a station has so many open events with such little manpower that he has to start prioritizing which ones to respond to, people’s security is at risk,” Shabtai said.
Some assignments the police regard as a must, like presence in the old city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, are also lacking enough manpower, with 60 officers in the corresponding station.
Other officers are being pulled in to fill in the gap, causing more issues in other stations.
“We’re constantly understaffed, every day we have officers from other stations come and help us out, sometimes even completely new recruits”
Police officer
“We’re constantly understaffed, every day we have officers from other stations come and help us out, sometimes even completely new recruits,” according to an Old City police officer.
He explained that it’s difficult to bring officers from other stations in because they do not understand the complexity of the area.
Many officers are taking on extra work outside the force to make ends meet.
A riot police officer working in Jerusalem said that he is constantly taking on extra work like securing soccer stadiums.
“All of the guys do it, sometimes we feel like we have to just to support our families,” he said.
Low wages?
Shabtai pointed out the main cause for not being able to enlist enough officers is the pay, as the police does not have enough funding to properly compensate officers.
Of the officers who left the force, 71% cited inadequate pay as their reason, with between 42-49% stating a high workload as a contributing factor.
“Since 2014 the Israeli government has been prioritizing the police in the state budget,” said Amir Reshef, Deputy Budget Commissioner in the Finance Ministry, at the meeting. “The police have grown, but they are unable to meet the standards for various reasons.”
Reshef stated that wages in the police are higher than the national average, even when compared to other countries with a similar average wage in the world.
Indeed, officers with three years of seniority are being paid NIS 12,000 a month on average in contrast to the national average of NIS 10,428.
Even new recruits for numerous lower-training roles are paid NIS 10,500 after they finish training.
“You are misleading the public,” Shabtai said in response.
Either way, the results are the same: There aren’t enough officers and it could very soon lead to a public safety crisis.