The Ombudsman for Public Complaints against State Representatives in Courts, Judge (Retired) David Rosen, rejected a complaint filed by Advocate Pini Fischler, who approached the Police Investigations Department after the Kfar Saba Municipality allocated public space for a private parking space to the Central District Police Chief Amichai Eshed. Fischler complained to the Ombudsman after the DIP decided to close the case and refrained from passing on all the investigation materials regarding his complaint.
The commissioner criticized the picture that emerged from the facts, according to which Eshed’s driver, through the commander of the municipal police station, approached officials in the municipality to handle the allocation of public space in favor of private parking. City employees complied with the station commander’s request, allocating public space in a quick regulatory procedure. Despite the criticism, retired Judge Rosen dismissed the attorney’s complaint, ruling that the transfer of materials would not have affected the outcome of the appeal he wanted to file.
“Regulating the operation by operating municipal officials on the basis of local regulation does not take the sting out of the act itself,” the commissioner wrote. “Municipal officials and employees, senior as they may be, are often required to assist and assist the police station commander in their work. Their desire to better and facilitate a senior police officer is not a matter for answering. The question is, how did the police officer allocate space at public expense, compared to many other police officers? Central and sometimes operational, or compared to senior military officers who hold positions that are not important to them for national security, around the clock, or hold similar positions belonging to the security services, senior medical personnel, etc.
The commissioner noted that after learning of the complaint, the police command decided to cancel the allocation of parking space to the waterfall. DIP also transferred the handling of the matter to the police discipline department.