Are Japanese police really as incompetent as readers on Japan Today make them out to be?

Monday 02nd June, 09:18 AM JST

Latest 15 of 116 Total Comments Show All

westurn at 02:47 PM JST - 6th June

Nice try Cleo... you have singlehandidly flooded this thread with every attempt to put a positive spin on a wayward duck ! Fact is, this poster remains unconvinced. I too have had extensive experience working with Japan's police force. Varios domestic training sessions, international conferences, Riot control, Embassy postings, the "KOAN"... etc ! In every single case I have left the training thinking, what a complete group of idiots and boobs ! Not a leader in the mix ! More interested in getting drunk and surfing the net for porn than going the extra mile to become a true professional. You would be surprised Cleo at the looks on the Japanese faces when they are first introduced to real men and women of the other nations police forces. They stand there slack jawed mumbling "dekaii" and "sugoii" ! After a few hours of intense drilling on crowd control and room searches... well the Japanese look like a bunch of whipped pups, they wanna go home and rethink their lives. But you can rest be assured, a day or two later and it's back to beers and porn ! Buncha losers ! I am truly embarrassed to admit I work with the lot !
Nessie at 03:02 PM JST - 6th June

I should also point out that working long hours is no excuse for ineptitude.
asdfghjkl at 04:52 PM JST - 6th June

yes they are
cleo at 05:56 PM JST - 6th June

Nice try yerself, westurn....You remain unconvinced, so do I.

mumbling "dekaii" and "sugoii" !

You mean it's size that makes 'real men and women'? If that were true, Manuel Uribe would be king of the world and Carol Yager his queen.

So tell me, how many innocent people have the Japanese cops shot by mistake in the past, say, ten years? How many disabled or elderly people have been tasered by Japanese police because they didn't move quickly enough? How many loved and loving family pets have been shot dead by Japanese police because the big tough flat out bad ass officer was scared of a pup with a waggly tail?

What are the numbers for the L-sized 'brave individuals' of the police forces you want us to turn to for inspiration?

Incompetence isn't about size.
Starviking at 06:11 PM JST - 6th June

Cleo,

how many innocent people have the Japanese Police sent down the river in the past ten years? In Japanese society you might as well kill such people - as their lives are virtually over.
westurn at 10:50 PM JST - 6th June

"So tell me, how many innocent people have the Japanese cops shot by mistake in the past, say, ten years?"

Not sure about innocent but I know of one cop in Koku that stalked a young lady for weeks before firing on her... does that count ?

Better yet Cleo, how many criminals remain free today because the J cops don't have the guts to haul them in. I can think of thousands of Yakuzas, bozuzokus, prostitutes, robbers, rapers, and all manner of thugs that just laugh at your brave police force ! Starviking brought up the video a while back of the J cops running from a pipe weilding nutjob ! And Ichihashi actually eluded the nations finest in barefeet... while being surrounded at every corner ! Give it up Cleo, J cops are pathetic. The results speak for themselves as J citizens no longer even contact them for help. As for size ? Not my words... those were the words of your fine officers in uniform... and gee Cleo, I thought they were talking about the size of the courage and moral integrity of the person in the uniform... not the size of the uni !
Blue_Tiger at 11:51 PM JST - 6th June

I cannot say either way, as I've never been directly nvolved with them, save about 9 years ago when I parked my bike at a station McDonald's. The cop that eyesd me there gave me a verbal warning. Per the stories I've read about how they investigate, though, I have to agree that they seem rather inept.....
westurn at 01:26 AM JST - 7th June

And lest we forget...

"Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher homicide rate in their jurisdiction, and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure, the group alleges. Odds are, it says, that people are getting away with murder in Japan, a country that officially claims one of the lowest per capita homicide rates in the world.

“You can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined,” says Hiromasa Saikawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police security and intelligence division. He says senior police officers are “obsessed with statistics because that’s how you get promotions,” and strive to reduce the number of criminal cases as much as possible to keep their almost perfect solution rate."

Buffoons, the whole bunch !
cleo at 11:20 AM JST - 7th June

Japanese police 'incompetence' cannot be measured by a handful of admittedly stupid gaffs that are committed on an almost daily basis by 'real men and women' on police forces outside Japan. And Japanese police 'incompetence' does not run to routinely (so often that it rarely makes the national news, it's just 'one of those things') shooting down innocent, unarmed civilians. And their dogs.

Moderator: Comparisons to police in other countries are not relevant to this discussion.
saintseiya at 06:55 PM JST - 7th June

I wouldn't go too far either.

The attacked Gaijin , the J-Police victimes, forget sometimes how it is back home as well. I remember the gaijin wanting a coke from the drink machine at night. The machine eats his 1000Yen and no drink comes out. First thing you do back in europe at night in this situation is hit the carp out of the bloody machine, that's what he did! One minute after the J-Cops from the local Koban turn up and arrest him in the same manner as the they arrest terrorists in Iraq. Accusing the gaijin to rob the machine . . .lol Now we can bash the Koban monks for that, but what would any french, german or luxembourgish cop do if he gets called by locals that some polish, yugoslavian, turqish or algerian guy tries to rob the drink machine at night??? Certainly not kiss him, if the guy doesn't speak a bit of the local language.

Crimes happen every where and in such crowded cities as japan it wonders me that the J-Police hasn't turned into the same sort of dudes you find in the mexican or columbian police . . .! So I think they are doing the crap job , they are doing it bad, but japan and the gainjin minorities won't die because of it. Bad luck is maybe the thing you don't need with the J-Cops!
GW at 11:36 PM JST - 7th June

That's BS, that's like saying the Italian mafia is an integral part of Italy. It's not a culture it is a CRIME RING!

gogogo

you obviously have never been to Jpn then have you, if you have it must have been a short stay or yr not paying attn, Yakuza hide in PLAIN SIGHT in Jpn & pretty do as they pls, they are very well integrated into the regular economy, they own businesses, stock, dine with politicians, attend many social functions, they are ABSOLUTELY part of J-culture,
knucklerap at 06:51 AM JST - 8th June

i also got into a fender bender once

Me too. I was the guy running away. I saw the cops racing to the scene. I thought for sure they were going to catch me, but they just waved back.
PuffinMuffin at 03:07 PM JST - 8th June

Are Japanese police really as incompetent as readers on Japan Today make them out to be?

Huh?

whats all this then
jewel at 11:03 AM JST - 14th June

Western, do you really want the Japanese police to turn into western police who are brutal, controlling, and rude? I`ll take the Japanese police any day. Compare the crime rates of Western countries with Japan and see which is working more effectively. Sometimes overbearing police can drive volatile ppl to crime. No country his a 100% rate at solving crimes, and as I mentioned before there was a murder near my house and it was solved very quickly. I have no complaints about the Japanese police at all.
taikomama72 at 01:24 AM JST - 20th August

Same here jewel! My husband just had to deal with a buttheaded Phoenix police this morning. He accused him of speeding and refused to show my husband the reading on the radar gun. Here, you can't even ask for directions from a Phoenix police without rudeness.