According to the police statement, police officers were called to a house in the Ramot neighborhood where a man was reported to be “on a rampage” | The man stabbed the policeman, a policewoman overpowered him and he was arrested The report of a committee convened by the President of the State, Robbie Rivlin, on the issue of the enforcement agencies’ dealings with mentally ill persons was not implemented
Last update: 10.03.2023 | 4:30 p.m
A police officer was seriously injured today (Friday) in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem by stabbing a man, apparently mentally injured, after he was called following the man’s rampage. The stabber stopped.
According to the police statement, about an hour ago a report was received about a man rampaging in a house in the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem. The officers of the Lev Ha-Bira station were called to the scene and at some point the same man, apparently mentally ill, stabbed one of the officers who was seriously injured. A policewoman overpowered the suspect and he was arrested. The circumstances of the case are being investigated.
If it is indeed a mentally challenged person, the case joins a series of cases in which police officers were called to treat mentally challenged people who are in extreme situations, even though they were not authorized to do so. Some of these cases ended in the death of a mentally challenged person, among others East Jerusalem resident Iyad El Gol, who dealt with autism and was shot by police officers in the Old City of Jerusalem after being suspected of being a terrorist; Yehuda Bayadega, an Ethiopian from Bat Yam, whose mother called the police after he ran amok in his house to calm him down and he was shot by them, and Munir Anbatavi from the Wadi Nisnas neighborhood in Haifa who was shot by police after he ran amok in the street.
This problem is well known to the authorities, and led to the convening of an inter-ministerial team in 2020 by the country’s then president, Robbie Rivlin, following the death of Iyad al-Halak. The team formulated proposals for an alternative way of dealing with extreme cases of mentally challenged people that would combine the police with various welfare agencies. The team’s recommendations have not been implemented to date.