COVID led to 800% increase in domestic violence complaints

Comptroller: Misallocation of resources by class, bureaucracy have plagued efforts

There have been eight times as many domestic violence complaints during the coronavirus era, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman said on Wednesday in a report about local municipal authorities.

The complaints were based on serious concerns, with 13 women being killed by their partners in 2020, an increase of 160% from 2019.

The report also said there had been a 26% increase in requests for help from domestic violence victims to social and victims’ welfare centers and shelters.

According to the report, 110 centers and shelters affiliated with local municipal authorities were involved with assisting domestic violence victims in 2020.

According to Englman, police had opened 22% more domestic violence cases than during comparable periods in the past.

“These notable increases highlight how crucial it is to increase the activities of social welfare services for preventing the phenomenon, locating families which are trapped in a cycle of violence and providing support and assistance both to victims of violence and toward rehabilitating violent men,” the comptroller said.

in which they lived,” he said.

Miami they went straight to the site and have been there ever since.

“Time is everything in order to save lives,” Edri said.

He said that while in Israel, the delegation studied the building and built 3D models of the complex before they replicated the way the tower fell. The building collapsed into four parts, from the center to the sides and then onto itself.

Describing the collapse as “very complicated,” Edri said “usually when a building collapses, like during an earthquake, it doesn’t usually collapse onto itself. Sometimes they fall backwards, like during the Mexican earthquake [last year]. Because this building collapsed onto itself... it just fell floor onto floor onto floor, and inside there are people.”

In Miami, the troops also spoke with the families of the missing to understand where in their apartments they could have been when the building collapsed. Family members were also asked to describe what the missing could be wearing, what color hair they have and if they had any tattoos.

In one apartment, Edri said, he was told of a family with two daughters who were missing.

“They told me the father slept in the living room because he used to fall asleep next to the TV. The mother would be sleeping in the master bedroom with one daughter while another daughter slept in her room,” he said.

According to Edri, the hundreds of rescuers at the sites know where apartments used to be and where exactly to look thanks to the 3D modeling that was done by IDF troops, even if they ran in an attempt to escape when the building started to collapse.

“You need to know where to look,” he said, adding that now the Americans know exactly where apartments used to be and where exactly to look for those who may have been inside.

The families are updated twice a day about the rescue operation and as the days pass with no survivors being pulled from the rubble, the families of the missing are not giving up hope that the rescue workers will find their loved ones.

“Families went to see the site two days ago and they had a really hard experience,” Edri said. “What the families are going through is hell, nothing less than that.”

Another four bodies were found in the shattered ruins of a collapsed Miami-area condominium tower, the mayor of MiamiDade County said on Wednesday, bringing the confirmed death toll to 16 nearly a week after the building fell.

County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told a news conference there were 147 people still unaccounted for. Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said in an interview he had promised families that rescue crews were “not leaving anyone

behind.”

US President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, planned to pay a visit on Thursday to the scene of the tragedy in the oceanfront town of Surfside, adjacent to Miami Beach.

Burkett said every day the rubble pile is visibly shrinking, indicating progress.