Few observers think Sekiguchi’s departure will end the turmoil that plagues Japanese law enforcement. Once famed for its ubiquitous neighborhood police boxes and credited with the lowest crime rate in the industrialized world, the force has been tarnished–perhaps indelibly–by a rash of bad behavior and cover-ups. In Kyoto, for example, two officers were arrested last summer for stealing amphetamines. In Osaka, a sergeant is currently on trial accused of providing a Japanese passport to an illegal immigrant. In all, 23 cops were arrested in Japan last year. “The police force has begun to rot,” says Yasunori Okadome, editor of the investigative magazine Truth of the Rumors. “Now the pus is oozing out.”
In Kanagawa prefecture, which encompasses the port city of Yokohama, the police department is an open sore. Officer Atsuhiko Uchibori, 43, has been indicted on charges that he used risque pictures of a young woman, which had been confiscated from a gangster, to blackmail her into having “intimate relations.” In June a trainer was accused of hazing rookies by brandishing a loaded gun. Last month another lawman was found guilty on charges that he had handcuffed three new recruits, pulled down their pants, applied electric shocks to their thighs and then took their photographs. Such scandals sap respect for the force. “Often, when prefecture police try to give tickets for parking or speeding, people say, ‘This is nothing compared to drug use,’ or ‘You cover up for your colleagues, why not for me?’ " lamented a recent article in the Asahi Shimbun.
Like lawmen the world over, Japanese police respect a “blue wall of silence” shielding fellow cops. In Kanagawa, a former police chief who once headed the national police academy and four senior officers were indicted in December, accused of destroying evidence of illegal drug use by a member of the force. Last year the Japanese media obtained a police manual, written in 1991, that offered this advice on scandals: “The utmost priority is to protect the organization.”
According to law-enforcement experts, the good reputation Japan’s cops once enjoyed now feeds the culture of silence. “There is a traditional belief among Japanese citizens that the police can do no wrong, but that’s an illusion,” says a respected police veteran. “It is important that we and the Japanese public admit that police make mistakes. And when they do, we have to make it public and punish them.” Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a criminal-law professor at Teikyo University, describes Japan’s police force as a “closed, class-based society” that zealously guards its clean image.
It’s a losing battle. Since the early 1990s, when sloppy investigators missed clues that might have helped them thwart a sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system by members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, Japanese police have faltered in several high-profile cases–from mass poisonings to grisly murders. In the latest crime to shock Japan, an assailant walked onto a Kyoto schoolyard on Dec. 21, grabbed a 7-year-old boy and, to the horror of numerous witnesses, stabbed him more than a dozen times. According to police, the attacker fled the scene, dumped bloody clothes in a nearby park and disappeared. By last weekend, police still had not found the killer. Perhaps the new police chief will have better luck.
