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Japanes
PoliceFurther Details on Japanese
PoliceJapanese Police Paranoia
FactorJapanese Police Uniforms and Style
From: "David Farnell"
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 23:22:05
+0900
Agent Yuda wrote:
>But, in order to save some bandwidth here, I have my another question
to ask:
>how do police (U.S.) ranks work?
Well, I'm gonna respond with something completely different, as I know there's folks out there who know a lot more than I on this subject. ;-) But some time back, there was a thread going on about police forces around the world. I wrote up a bit about the Japanese police, and I've recently come into possession of some more info. I said then that if I got more info, I'd post it, so here it is:
What I've got is a PR brochure: "Police of Fukuoka '98," with a subheading: "The Fukuoka Prefectural Police have been always actively operating in your neighborhood aiming at materializing 'Town of Peace and Safety'." (Which goes to show that they still don't hire native speakers to translate their copy.) I'll assume the Fukuoka police are typical of police in Japan.
Anyway, to get to the useful bits. In addition to the stuff from long ago (check the Ice Cave), this brochure divides the Japanese Police forces into 5 main groups:
Community Safety Police: Very general duties.
Regional Police: The guys in the koban (police boxes). They maintain the police presence throughout the city and stay very close to the public, even visiting each home once a year to give advice on crime prevention, get to know everyone in the neighborhood, and check out the suspicious characters.
Criminal Police: The detectives.
They investigate crimes.
Traffic Police: Beyond the obvious, these include the meter readers (who always seem to be young women paired with old men, don't know why), and they have 2 big campaigns going here in Fukuoka: the "Manners-Up Campaign" to promote good driving, and the "Anti-Hot-Rodders Activities" campaign, which aims to "eradicate" the bosozoku (literally "speed tribes," the incredibly loud and annoying motorcycle gangs).
Security Police: These are the ones DG might be dealing with.
"Security police are to crack down terrorists and guerrillas who are seeking to disturb the peace of Japan with violence." There's a picture of two guys rappelling down from a helicoptor, so I guess they have paramilitary training, and may be roughly equivalent to SWAT. They also do Secret Service work for visiting dignitaries and do rescue work and restoration of order in disaster situations. They've got a lot on their plates, obviously, but they're so flexible that they might be up for a little monster hunting. They'll also be in charge of the post-Azathoth-summoning cleanup, and the ones you'll be up against when trying to take out that Shan-possessed UK foreign minister.
Eradication seems to be a big theme with the Fukuoka police. Their 4 main concerns are "Eradication of Organized Crime Groups" (yakuza and Chinese "snake heads"), "Eradication of Guns" (there were 22 gunshots reported in Fukuoka last year, and 1 death from guns, the highest since 1994!), "Eradication of Juvenile Delinquency" (big closeup shot of high-school girls' rather pretty legs--no boys to be seen, so I guess only girls are juvenile delinquents), and the aforementioned "Eradication of Hot Rodders" (this must be what the boys have been doing). It ends off with a full-page ad about the evils of carrying knives.
I know nobody's calling out for this info just now, but it can be filed in the Ice Cave for future reference.
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 10:14:57 +0900
From:
Jay and Mikiko Noyes
>Community Safety Police: Very general duties.
>Regional Police: The guys in the koban (police boxes). They maintain
the
>police presence throughout the city and stay very close to the
public, even
Very, very close to the public. No matter where you are in Tokyo, you are unlikely to be more than a 10-15 minute walk from the nearest Koban. These guys are very approachable, and are routinely used as a source for area information. The importance of this job cannot be overstated in Tokyo, which is incredibly maze-like. Newcomers to Tokyo should not be able to find _anything_, including their own ass, without stopping by two or three different kobans. As near as I can tell, these fellows routinely carry a nightstick and a .32 revolver. Sometimes they stand out front, leaning on a short staff.
>Criminal Police: The detectives. They investigate crimes.
True story: On my first day in Japan, our unpacking was interrupted by a knock on the door. When we answered, a couple of fellows in neat suits pulled out Tokyo detective I.D.s. It seemed that our next door neighbor had been stabbed to death the night before, and they wanted to know if we knew anything about it.
These fellows were very polite and professional. No rubber hoses or anything. And finished up their questions in about 15-20 minutes.
>Traffic Police: Beyond the obvious, these include the meter readers
(who
>always seem to be young women paired with old men, don't know
why), and they
Concerning female Japanese police: They are required to wear pumps and a short skirt, with a kawaii (cute, oh so cute) hat to finish the ensemble. I have yet to see one given any responsibility greater than reading meters and probably fetching coffee. They may even be issued bullets.
>Security Police: These are the ones DG might be dealing with.
"Security
>police are to crack down terrorists and guerrillas who are
seeking to
These guys are the only cops in Japan that seem to be more than 5' tall. They actually have something of an intimidation factor.
Cuteness factor: Remember when you present Japan police, especially local "koban" police, you are dealing with people who rarely deal with any kind of serious violence. Tokyo is pretty quiet and so overcrowded that it is impossible to commit any kind of crime without 150 witnesses (of which five may be willing to testify, but still). However, when you do get violent crime, it is often _extemely_ weird. The Tokyo subway gassings were a fine example. See also the Kobe killer and the recent spate of random poisonings. When I first came here, there was an odd kidnapping in which a girl was turned in to a sex slave for several months. The kidnapper, however, lived with his mother, who constantly tried to get the girl to escape, but never called the police.
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 17:03:24 -0400 (EDT)
From:
The Man in Black
On Sat, 17 Oct 1998, Jay and Mikiko Noyes WASN'T PARANOID ENOUGH!:
> True story: On my first day in Japan, our unpacking was
interrupted
> by a knock on the door. When we answered, a couple of
fellows in neat suits
> pulled out Tokyo detective I.D.s. It seemed
that our next door neighbor had
> been stabbed to death the night before,
and they wanted to know if we knew
> anything about it.
>
These fellows were very polite and professional. No rubber hoses
or
> anything. And finished up their questions in about 15-20 minutes.
PARANOIA ALERT: It could also be that they made up the whole murder investigation out of whole cloth in order to watch the Gaijin and his wife unpack. Very sneaky and very Japanese.
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 22:49:00 +0900
On an entirely different note, something quick tacked on to reduce mail hits, a last note on Japanese cops. That brochure/guide/whateverthehell you call it has a cover photo of 5 cops in various uniforms, standing bravely at attention in front of Hakata Bay, the Fukuoka skyline behind them (most of which was gloriously destroyed by Gamera, giant radioactive turtle and friend to children everywhere, in his first modern movie about 3 years ago).
The Standard Male Cop Uniform is pretty normal, about what you'd expect from the movies. The men's gun, from what I've seen, is a rather large-framed revolver, but I have no reason to doubt Jay's assertion that it's a .32--it just looks big. The Female Uniform is as Jay described it: skirt, pumps, cute hat. I don't know if the ladies carry guns now--they were issued .25 autos a few years back after one of them was kidnapped and raped.
Behind them are 2 chase-car guys, wearing jump-suits, helmets, and leather boots, with white gunbelts. Looks like they might be packing automatics, but it's hard to be sure. Don't see those guys around much. I wonder if they really wear the helmets all the time when they're driving around.
And next to them is a motorcycle cop, who looks to probably be a rather cute woman, but who might just be a babyfaced guy. Anyway, she's dressed up in something you might get if Michael Jackson designed the new uniforms for the Canadian RCMP. Bright red double-breasted tunic (everybody else's uniforms are navy blue) with gold epaulets and buttons, white piping, black leather gloves with oversized white cuffs, white helmet, white toreador pants, knee-high black boots, on a motorcycle out of an Ultraman episode.
I've never seen anybody looking like that riding around, nor any female motorcycle cops. Standard motorcycle-cop-wear is out of an SM catalog: tons of intimidating black leather with a fully-enclosed black helmet. Regular cops here look helpful and friendly; motorcycle cops look pretty darn scary.
And as regards the weirdness factor in Japanese crime: Well, I guess 13-year-olds gunning down their schoolmates with assault rifles must seem pretty darned weird, too. But, yeah, there are some little quirks to Japanese crimes. Murders are often crimes of passion, and the murderer (often a family member), as often as not walks to the nearest koban and turns him/herself in, handing over the bloody murder weapon quite calmly. Then there's the current insurance-poisoning case, but you can read all about that in the papers... Anyway, the weird thing about it was, the papers were reporting for weeks facts that the cops were turning up about this couple (never named but the couple HAD to know the stories were referring to them!), long before the couple was finally arrested. They never tried to run...
