Photo Credit: Hillel Maeir / TPS
Police Chief Roni Alsheich.

An unprecedented wave of resignations is plaguing the high command of the Israeli police, as Commander of the Tel Aviv central investigation unit Gadi Eshed announced Tuesday that he intends to leave the service, at the same time as his colleagues Yiftakh District Commander David Gez, and deputy commander of the Tel Aviv District Brigadier General Yoram Okhayon have announced their planned retirement — only one day after Tel Aviv District Commander Benzi Sau had resigned, and police training dept. head Brigadier General Avi Neuman announced his decision to leave as well, Walla reported.

Eshed is considered one of the more professional police investigators, and an old ally of Neuman, his long-time partner in fighting organized crime in Israel.

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The wave of early retirements is taking place as a result of the new Police General Commissioner Roni Alsheikh, the former deputy head of the Shabak (Israel’s FBI) to skip the current generation of veteran commanders in his upcoming promotions.

According to Walla, as many as eight senior officers with the ranks of commander and brigadier general have recently announced their plans to retire from the police, some because of the denial of promotion, others because of questionnaires Alsheikh has introduced requiring all police officers to respond to inquiries about their past romantic relations with policewomen. One officer said, “I have no intention of risking my family’s future and my marriage because of a stupid questionnaire that tries to get into my intestines about things I did twenty or thirty years ago.”

Every police officer received the questionnaire by email in early January; it is lengthy, complex and includes hundreds of questions regarding sex violations and relations with underlings, participation in brawls, gambling and, most crucially, questions regarding leaks to the media.

Police officers across the board resented the questionnaires, which no former chief had ever submitted to them before. Apparently, Alsheikh is using a new app he borrowed from the Shabak, to evaluate which officers required special disciplinary treatment, polygraph interrogation, and dismissal.

According to Walla, besides the eight top police commanders who have announced their retirement, several others have been on unscheduled hiatus, having failed to pass the chief’s questionnaire.

Roni Alsheikh has been in office since early December 2015. He had served in the Shabak since 1988, rising to deputy director in 2014. His first trial by fire at the helm of the national police began on New Year’s Day, when an Israeli Arab shot and killed three Jews in Tel Aviv. The police was slow to capture the runaway gunman, even after two women reported seeing him, wearing a bloodied shirt, on a bus going up north. This week it was also discovered that the gunman was wearing a GPS watch, which didn’t seem to speed up the manhunt.

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David writes news at JewishPress.com.