Last update - 02:23 21/02/2005
No one wants to talk
Serving justice becomes complicated when policemen are asked to investigate other policemen, or to testify against their comrades in arms, says police investigation unit head Herzl Shabiro
By Gideon Alon
The "conspiracy of silence" is a very problematic phenomenon that makes it difficult for the investigators of the Police Investigation Unit (PIU) at the Justice Ministry to get their work done. This conspiracy involves police or Border Police personnel who are unwilling to provide essential information to those investigating their colleagues, who acted with excessive violence while dispersing demonstrations.
"Police and Border Police think that if their colleagues have deviated from their orders, this is not something that obligates them to report to their superiors. Therefore, we are not getting the cooperation of police personnel [in speaking out] against their colleagues, especially with respect to complaints concerning violations in the use of force when fulfilling their duties," says the head of the unit for investigating police, attorney Herzl Shabiro, in his first interview since he assumed his position about two years ago. "I'll give you an example. About a year ago we received a complaint from a citizen to the effect that a police officer had hit him. The officer denied this vehemently. The two police volunteers who were questioned confirmed the officer's version. In a case like that I have no way out, but to close the case against the police officer for want of evidence. But that officer was out of luck: On the balcony next to the place where the incident occurred was a person who documented it with a camera, and the pictures show clearly how he hit the civilian."
The officer in question has since been dismissed from the police. Later he was caught in quite a severe sexual offense, notes Shabiro. "Fortunately for us, he is now outside the police ranks."
Baser instincts let loose
Shabiro admits that "my problem is how to break the `conspiracy of silence.' I expect that police commanders who know that policemen kept silent during an investigation, and did not cooperate with us to protect their colleagues, will draw the appropriate conclusions about them. A similar problem exists in the Border Police. We have had several incidents there in which we encountered a total conspiracy of silence, for example in Nataf, when Border Police took two Palestinians, abused them severely, beat them with batons, put stones in their mouths and left bruises on their bodies. In Abu Dis, too, there was a bad case of abuse when Border Police poured urine into the mouths of a number of Palestinians. In both of those cases, because of their colleagues' conspiracy of silence, it was difficult for us to identify the offenders and bring them to trial." Ultimately, in both cases the police personnel were tried and severely punished.
The first head of the PIU, current State Prosecutor Eran Shendar, told Haaretz in the past that violent behavior toward Palestinians is the result of a feeling that Arabs are fair game. Is this your sense as well?
Shabiro: "No, I don't agree with that statement. The work of the Border Police is important. It must be remembered that this is a matter of friction with the Palestinian population. We have to put a mirror in front of society and say: You should know that this friction has engendered these phenomena of abuse or cruelty. These young policemen are facing a population with which we are in constant conflict. It is no secret that after a terror incident a larger number of Border Police who were cruel to Palestinians claimed that they had done so because their colleagues had been hurt and they wanted to take revenge, and in this way they let loose with their baser instincts. Our role is to identify the offenders and put them on trial."
Four-and-a-half years after the events of October 2000, in which 13 Arab citizens of Israel and one Palestinian were killed during the course of the massive demonstrations in the Galilee, the police who opened fire on the demonstrators and caused their deaths have not yet been identified. A few months ago retired Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or (who headed the official investigation commission) complained that even though the committee had asked that 10 different investigations be conducted on the incidents in which civilians were killed by police gunfire, not a single recommendation has yet been formulated.
Shabiro explains the difficulty: "The events of October 2000 were very unusual in their complexity. These were incidents in which thousands of demonstrators and hundreds of police participated, and it was semi-warfare. At the time it was decided that the PIU would not conduct an investigation parallel to the Or commission because it could interfere with the commission's work. When the Or commission published its recommendations, it delegated to us the task of exhaustively investigating all of the incidents in which civilians were killed. There was not even any distinction made between incidents for which there was an evidentiary infrastructure and other cases. Since then we have been working very intensively and we have investigated and questioned hundreds of police, but we have a problem of cooperation with the complainants. At the end of this month, a court hearing is scheduled on our request to exhume the bodies of some of those who were killed in the demonstrations, because the families are not consenting. The investigation of some of the cases has been completed. I hope that in the near future we will be able to sum up the investigations."
Are you not afraid that you will be accused of whitewashing the investigation? Is it possible that 13 people were killed at demonstrations and none of the police who fired will be identified and tried?
"We have a problem, because we don't have a [crime] arena. We don't have bullets or cartridges. At the demonstrations in Umm al-Fahm, for example, there were hundreds of police facing thousands of demonstrators. How can you isolate, with all the danger to the policemen's lives and the throwing of stones at them, the specific policeman who opened fire and decide that he did so illegally, when we don't know who fired rubber bullets and who fired live ammunition?"
The PIU police
Many accusations have been cast at the PIU in recent months. Deputy Minister of the Interior Yaakov Edri demanded that the justice minister reexamine the unit's activity. Knesset Interior and Environment Committee chairman MK Yuri Stern (National Union) convened two special meetings to discuss the functioning of the PIU, during the course of which it was severely criticized for the attitudes of police personnel toward new immigrants.
Representatives of the Masawa Center for the rights of Arab citizens of Israel also complained about violent behavior by police and Border Police personnel.
One of the problems of the PIU is that of the 80 investigators in the unit, about 50 of them have come from police ranks. Shabiro admits that this is one of the reasons that led him to initiate the proposal to "civilianize" the PIU. "The unit was established in 1992 because they thought that it was not right for police to investigate violations by police personnel. But because there wasn't a sufficient stock of investigators in Israel, most of the investigators who were brought into the PIU, on loan, were police investigators because the experience they had accumulated over the years was invaluable," says Shabiro.
"At first they thought that this model would be temporary, since it is not free of problems, because from the public's point of view, even today police are still investigating police and we are dependent on the police for the manpower we take in, and this is definitely a problematic dependency. This is not an ideal state of affairs, but it is very difficult to recruit 50 investigators all at once from the civilian market."
The great complexity in the activity of the PIU derives from the fact that a large proportion of the complaints against police come from offenders who want in this way to interfere with the investigation against themselves. "I don't rule it out that the complainants, including the offenders, are exploiting us by submitting the complaints. Even after they evacuated the Jewish settlers from Yitzhar Farm (in the West Bank), we were inundated with complaints against police on the grounds that they hit them (the settlers) during the evacuation. Spouses, one of whom is in the police force, can also make use of us. We have to neutralize the misuse that is being made of us in order to investigate thoroughly the cases that are worthy of investigation. With every case we have to use common sense and see whether we are being unnecessarily exploited.
"In cases in which it is clear to me that the investigation of a policeman suspected of the use of force against an offender could interfere with bringing the offender to trial, I will try to complete the investigation within a few weeks. In every investigation I have to find the balance between carrying out my public duty in the investigation of complaints against police who have strayed in order for us to have a fairer police force, and the attempts to use us in order to castrate an investigation.
"We don't have a corrupt police force, but we do have phenomena of localized offenses, with which we deal. With respect to the use of force, there is no doubt that this phenomenon is much more extensive than I would want it to be and it must be combated, because our aim is for us to have a better police force and to see to it that it will enforce the law more correctly."
PIU: The rate of indictment has risen
Of 1,356 complaints filed last year against police and Border Police personnel, only about 11 percent (1,444 individuals) faced criminal trial and about 16 percent (215 individuals) faced disciplinary trials.
Herzl Shabiro of the Police Investigation Unit says that these figures show an improvement over 2003, when in the wake of 1,785 complaints only about 9 percent (154 individuals) faced criminal proceedings and about 10 percent (170 individuals) faced disciplinary proceedings. The PIU does not have figures about the number of those indicted who were later convicted, nor does it have data about the number of "blue" police and the number of Border Police personnel who were tried.
The large gap between the number of complaints and the number of indictments stems, according to Shabiro and his deputy attorney Shlomo (Momi) Lemberger, from the fact that a large number of the complaints are not under the jurisdiction of the PIU, which by law is authorized to deal only with complaints about serious offenses, from the use of force in sex offenses and bribery, to murder. Shabiro noted that "a large portion of the cases are closed due to `lack of charges.' That is: No solid evidence against the policeman was found upon which an indictment could be based. In 87 percent of the cases in which we have decided to file an indictment, the court was convinced that an offense had been committed, but not in all cases did it convict the policeman because it did not want to add a blot to his record."
Shabiro rejects the criticism that investigations at the PIU often take two or three years. "In the past, because cases got held up at the Prosecutors' Office, there was a delay in dealing with them, but ever since we have been working independently, both as investigators and as prosecutors in the courts, our work on most of the cases, apart from certain exceptions, is completed within three months. It is true that afterward the trial itself can sometimes take several years, but this is no longer dependent on us."