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Does Israel's police have a problem with women?

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Erella Shadmi, an academic researcher and retired policewoman, says she was unsurprised by revelations of sexual harassment within the police: ''This phenomenon has been well known for more than 20 years.''
Israeli police officers stand guard on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City November 5, 2014. As Jordan joins a military campaign against Islamic State militants in Syria, tensions in Jerusalem pose a potentially bigger risk to a nation only slightly scathed by the turmoil sweeping the Middle East. Picture taken November 5, 2014.
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REUTERS/Ammar Awad (JERUSALEM - Tags: MILITARY POLITICS RELIGION C

Erella Shadmi has been studying the complex relationship among the police, society and women for more than 40 years. She spent the first 20 years of her career as an officer in the Israeli police, and the next 20 years as a sociologist, an activist and a leading feminist researcher. Shadmi dedicated her doctoral dissertation to public oversight of the police in a free society — the first dissertation about the police to be written in Israel.

A Tel Aviv native, Shadmi participated in leftist protests while still in high school. As a student of communications she joined the police, and was the first woman in the command and headquarters course. Among her many posts there, she also served as police head of the human resources planning division, and established the newsletter of Israeli policemen titled Sights of the Police.

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