While it is somewhat difficult to comprehend, it has been learned that on the night of the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva attack on March 6, 2008, police received many calls, not 50 or 100, but 1,200 calls. Nevertheless, the emergency dispatcher saw fit to send one patrol car! The officer responsible for the decision has recently been removed from his post.

It has been learned that after the first gunshots were heard in Yerushalayim’s Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, where the yeshiva is located, hundreds upon hundreds of concerned citizens phoned the emergency ‘100’ number. Nevertheless, and only after several minutes, a lone police car was dispatched, a car with inexperienced personnel on board.

Since it was a day before Purim, an officer made the bold assumption that the “gunshots” were caps or fireworks, brazenly discarding the alarmed tone of hundreds of telephone callers. Superintendent Yechiel Amsalem has been removed from his post by Jerusalem Police Chief Ilan Franco after learning of his unprofessional performance.

Family members responded, explaining Amsalem was not in the dispatch center that night and not even on duty. An official police statement cited “personal reasons that we do not care to explain” for his dismissal.

Associates of the officer insist the reason he was pulled from the dispatch center is an inability to see eye-to-eye with Franco, explaining he is being transferred to a new post, most likely in another district. He has been serving in the Yerushalayim district for 18 years.

During the period of the 2005 Disengagement Plan, Amsalem was charged with using unjustifiable force against unarmed protestors, fracturing the jaw of one person and choking a girl. He was eventually found not guilty in his trial.

In the meantime, police do not seem to have to explain the lack of response to the calls for assistance upon hearing gunfire on that night.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)