Yisraeli Police
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| Royal Yisraeli Police משטרת ישראל | |
|---|---|
| Common name | Shotrim Rageilim (lit. "foot officers," sociologically "regular/ordinary police") |
| Abbreviation | RYP |
| Motto | מגן ולא יראהפנים של חוק וסדר "The face of law and order" |
| Agency overview | |
| Formed | 1715 (as Shomrim) 1919 (reorganized into modern form) 1952 (reorganized into contemporary form) |
| Employees | ~44,780 |
| Volunteers | ~3,217 |
| Jurisdictional structure | |
| National agency (Operations jurisdiction) | Yisrael |
| Operations jurisdiction | Yisrael |
| Legal jurisdiction | Yisrael |
| Operational structure | |
| Headquarters | Yerushalayim, Yisrael |
| Agency executive |
|
The Royal Yisraeli Police (Modern Hebrew: משטרת ישראל), also referred to as the Shotrim Rageilim or RYP (colloquially), is the general secular police force of Yisrael. Its duties include crime fighting, traffic control, maintaining public safety, and law and order.
Although it has the prefix moniker "Royal," the Yisraeli Police are not a "national police," but a series of independent municipal and district police forces under the nominal oversight of the Ministry of the Interior. In addition, because of the religious-based constitutional order, the Shotrim Rageilim only handle specific secular, 'general societal' crimes, with specialized royal police forces who handle religious and political crime-fighting.
It works closely with its specialized sister agencies, the Civil Guard and the Special Political Police, on cases that transverse the secular-religious or general-political criminality spectrum.
Role and mandate
The Shotrim Rageilim are one of the official successors of the early Kingdom-era royal police force, the Shomrim. It handles most general and frequent crimes that occur in Yisrael, including murder and theft, although these crimes would in theory fall under the Civil Guard's jurisdiction.
In total, the RYP's duties include but are not limited to:
- Engaging in general crime-fighting, law enforcement, and detective work;
- Engaging in traffic control, riot control, and crowd control;
- Protecting public order, law, peace, and security;
- Combatting local criminal organizations and enterprises;
- Combatting illegal drug use, sale, trafficking, and production;
- And other related duties.
History
The RYP is the primary successor of the Shomrim, which was formed in 1715 by the newly-crowned King Moshe I, who sought to centralize royal power from local elites. In 1718, he quickly established a separate special religious police (the Mash'az).
Under the absolute monarchy era (1715-1919), the Shomrim acted more as a gendarmerie force rather than a strictly civilian police force. After the 1919 Revolution, the new political leadership reformed the Shomrim, renaming it the Royal Yisraeli Police, decentralizing it to the localities and newly formed districts, and removing all but a shred of national oversight over the police form. It was professionalized in the 1920s as a purely civilian law enforcement agency.
In the 1940s under the Autocracy regime, the police's decentralized form was left alone on paper but in practice was overseen by Autocracy appointees who closely obeyed the capital rather than local executives, forming a de facto national police service. In 1952, after the Royal Reform Acts, the Shotrim Rageilim were reformed into its current form.
Organization
Every municipal and district has a separate police force, using stylized officially as "[Town] Police Department" or "[X] District Police" (e.g. the Yerushalayim Police Department, Yarden Valley District Police).
Each police force is typically headed by the senior police official named the "chief of police." While smaller forces have most or all of its officers trained and generalized for "at large" police functions, larger urban police forces have dedicated specialized units of officers focusing on various areas, such as special weapons and assault teams, riot control officers, traffic division, etc.
Each officer is issued a standard-issue handgun for use on- and off-duty, and seasonal uniforms depending on the locale. More specialized equipment and heavier weapons are issued as needed, although a semi-automatic rifle is kept in the trunk of each police cruiser.
Relationships with sister agencies
The Shotrim Rageilim often cooperate and liaise with their sister police agencies, the royal special police forces the Special Political Police and the Civil Guard. The Political Police handle political/ideological crimes and corruption, while the Civil Guard handles religious and high moral crimes. Each police force has command of the law enforcement domain under its mandate, but will usually cooperate on cases that straddle the jurisdictional divide (e.g. a murder case whose top suspect is a political activist suspected of anti-constitutional political advocacy).
Unlike the royal police forces, the Shotrim Rageilim are typically made up of a broader cross-section of Yisraeli society, while the special police are usually composed of more hardline religious nationalists. These sociological differences sometimes interfere in interagency cooperation, as officers from different services may disagree over the tactics or focus of their liaisons on the shared case.
Under the 1952 Police Reform Act, each police force must transfer cases outside of its mandate that come into its hands to the appropriate sister agency (e.g. if a regular police detective is given a case that revolves primarily around allegations of corruption, he must transfer to the Special Political Police, and vice versa).
Gallery
The AP Motors Jaguar Sedan II, a ubiquitous police cruiser.
A policeman in the standard summer uniform on the beat in Ashkelon, c. 2018.
Shotrim Rageilim officers (left) at an incident at the Sydalon border next to border guards (right).
Members of the Yericho Police special weapons and assault team prepare for expected violence during the 2011 Yericho riots.
