Taking the gloves off: Top COVID cop says police ramping up lockdown enforcement
Sigal Bar-Tzvi tells ToI officers will enforce virus restrictions in all communities, amid criticism that many ultra-Orthodox are flouting the rules
Nathan Jeffay is The Times of Israel's health and science correspondent
The police officer in charge of enforcing Israel’s coronavirus restrictions said officers are now in the process of switching gears, moving from educating the public on the various rules introduced over the last week as part of the tightened national lockdown, to strict enforcement.
“We have now completed the stage of explaining the rules to the public, and we are now working on the assumption that everyone understands the rules, and therefore enforcement will now become strict,” Sigal Bar-Tzvi, head of community policing, told The Times of Israel on Thursday.
She said officers will be out in force over the Sukkot holiday, which begins Friday evening, despite the force being depleted due to the pandemic.
According to Bar-Tzvi, some 3,000 out of the Israel Police’s 29,000 officers are currently in quarantine.
Bar-Tzvi stated that around 400 officers are infected with the coronavirus, including two who just returned from Uman, Ukraine, where they were policing a Hasidic pilgrimage that went ahead despite the government urging Israelis to abandon travel plans because of the virus.
Thousands of pilgrims went anyway and coronavirus cases were reportedly confirmed on 17 different return flights to Tel Aviv from Ukraine and Belarus.
Asked for clarification on the impact of quarantining and infections among officers on operations, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the force “continues to fully function despite so many officers being in quarantine.”
Police are being reinforced by the military. The Israel Defense Forces announced on Thursday that 1,000 soldiers are assisting police “in the task of supervising the observance of instructions in the civilian sector.” Thousands of soldiers have been deployed for other pandemic-related tasks.
Bar-Tzvi said the infection and quarantine levels among police are, in part, impacted by encounters with infected people, some of who intentionally disregard rules requiring them to stay home.
She said dozens of people every month are found traveling around the country when they are sick and have symptoms, adding that this continues to happen even during lockdown.
“Just yesterday, we had a person aged 52 in a car with two other people in Tel Aviv, and he was coughing and coughing as he gave the policeman his identity card,” she recounted. “Our database showed that he had tested positive.”
Bar-Tzvi said the stricter enforcement, which started Thursday night, will be felt across the board, including in ultra-Orthodox communities, some of which have been criticized for violating the restrictions. “The whole population including the Haredi population knows this is serious,” she stated. “If people in the Haredi community hold prayers and education in violation of rules, we’ll be there to protect those in their community who need protecting.”
On Thursday, as police began stepping up enforcement, officers closed down three synagogues where large congregations had gathered in Bnei Brak.
Bar-Tzvi expressed optimism that the phenomenon of ultra-Orthodox disobedience will be reined in over the coming holiday and that predictions of widespread violations won’t prove accurate. “We can’t go to the Haredi population like we go to the secular population and just publicize through media that now you can’t host in Sukkot. We need to turn to rabbis, which we have done, and we’ve found them receptive.
“I believe that there won’t be large gatherings for Simchat Beit Hashoeva [a Sukkot celebration] or for [the October 10 festival of] Simchat Torah.”
Bar-Tzvi acknowledged that rules barring people from hosting visitors at home or in their sukkah are hard for the population, but said this won’t prevent officers from enforcing them. “We know it’s a holiday of hosting and being hosted, but these rules and regulations are critical and absolutely necessary,” she said.
Officers will exercise a degree of discretion in policing domestic settings, but some violations will be shown close to zero tolerance she said, citing the breaking of quarantine regulations by people placed in precautionary isolation and by people who are sick.
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