Itongadol.- Program to be paid for out of added monthly cost on arnona for every city municipal tax payer; joins programs in 55 other cities.
Citing “special challenges” facing the city, Tel Aviv is set to launch a city-wide municipal policing force of 200 officers working day and night, joining over 50 other towns and cities that have launched similar programs in the past few years.
The program will be paid for by a municipal tax of 2 shekels per square meter per year on every city property, which will appear on municipal tax (“arnona”) bills beginning in January.
“Because of the variety of challenges in recent years, the city hall has decided to launch a new security patrol that will help keep the peace,“ the municipality said in an email to The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
The city hall said its part of their efforts “to increase the personal security of residents and keep the peace across the city, in particular in the southern Tel Aviv neighborhoods.”
The officers won’t have the same rights as police, but they will have the ability to detain suspects until police arrive, and carry out searches on people who they suspect of having a weapon, and enter any place that is not a private residence.
These rights lead to concerns about abuses of power and threats to civil rights, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).