Israel Police

Official internet site of Tel Aviv district is: WWW.TELAVIV.POLICE.GOV.IL

Tel Aviv District, located in the very centre of the country, is almost entirely urban, covering Israel's largest and densest metropolis and the territories. It encompasses 18 Local Government Authorities. Its borders are: in the north -- Moshav Rishpon, in the south -- the southern borders of the towns of Holon, Bat Yam, Yehud, and Or - Yehuda, in the west -- 25 km. of Mediterranean coastline, and in the east -- the Geha Highway and the town of Petah- Tikva.

Its police force of 2,900 (a third are women) polices a population of 1.2 million. An additional million people come into the District each day to work, shop and find entertainment.

To help meet the variety of problems and tasks it must deal with and the great demand on police time and services, the District is organized into 3 Sub-Districts (Ayalon, Yarkon, and Dan), 8 main police stations, and 15 sub-stations. It has also set up a wide range of specialist operational units, each of which is briefly described below.

The metropolis is home to government ministries and offices, to thousands of commercial and manufacturing concerns, and to a round-the-clock entertainment and leisure-activities industry. One feature of this industry is large-scale concerts and sporting events. These, together with frequent mass demonstrations and political gatherings, oblige the District to maintain units with specialist skills in mass-event security and crowd dispersal, like the Special Patrol Unit and the Special Border Guard Unit, which move from event to event.

Over recent years, as the population of people and cars gets denser and denser, the District has been making innovative efforts to maintain officers' mobility. One of these is the Bicycle Unit, whose patrolmen are mounted on bicycles to enable them to keep up incident-response times in heavily traffic-congested areas. The bicycles also have the advantage of making the officers more accessible to the public. The motorcycles of the Motorcycle Unit also permit rapid and effective police deployment in reaction to serious crimes and security and public order incidents.

OTHER SPECIALIST UNITS

The Foreign Workers Unit was set up to gather intelligence on and deal with the problem of a large number of foreign workers, many without permits, living largely in the area around the city's old bus-station and giving rise to a great deal of property crime and violent crime - including murder.

Special Traffic Units: There are some half a million registered vehicles in the District and hundreds of thousands more come in every day. The result is slow traffic flow and a shortage of parking spots. Also, 35% of all Israel's traffic accidents occur in Tel Aviv District. These facts compelled the District to set up Special Traffic Units, which work round the clock to keep the traffic flowing, investigate accidents, and bring culprits to justice.

The Central (Serious Crimes) Unit is the I.P.'s largest. Its job is to detect and deal with the most serious forms of crime, such as drug smuggling, serial crime, vice, and trade in stolen goods.

Marine Patrol Unit: This unit has policing responsibility for 25 km. of coastline and 3 marinas (Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Herzlia). Operating a small fleet of fast light patrol boats, its job is inshore security, enforcing the sea-traffic laws, and the rescue of sailors in difficulties.

Court Order Unit: Implements court orders in the matter of non-payment of debts, fines or alimony-payments.

Regional Detention Center: The Center, with beds for 400 men, women and adolescents, is undergoing a thorough renovation to bring it up to the latest standards. The Center's Detainee Escort Unit moves about 200 detainees each day, between the Center and the local courts.

Criminal Prosecutions Bureau: The Bureau's lawyers draw up criminal indictments and present them in court. In 1998 they submitted some 9,500 such indictments.

Fraud Squad: This unit specializes in cases of fraud, forgery and embezzlement, which in recent years have been both multiplying and becoming more complex and professional expert. As a result, the Unit's workload has doubled.

Emergency ("100") Telephone Hot-Line Center: This is the main interface between the police and the individual citizen. Some of the calls require a patrol car response, others are recorded as reported information on criminal activity and transferred to the appropriate branch. In 1998 the Center had to deal with about 5,000 calls in each 24-hour period and some 2.1 million over the year -- an increase of 10% over the previous year. The two causes of this increase, are the unceasing general rise in the demand for police services and the prevalence of mobile phones, which enable people to report in real time from the scene of an incident.

The Tel-Aviv District's key operational priorities in recent years have been traffic control, serious crime, property theft, and supervision of the population of foreign workers. This effort has gone hand in hand with a drive to improve the service given to the general public: for instance, by setting up Citizen Service Centers; small Community Policing Centers in neighborhoods distant from a police station; by maintaining closer supervision over the population of foreign workers, and carrying out special `quality of life' operations against sources of public nuisance.