Police throw out evidence in brother-sister murder case

[sublight]

It's long been a matter of common knowledge that cops here make Barney Fife look like Batman, but this is a low even for them.

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070209p2a00m0na024000c.html

Police investigating the murder and mutilation of 20-year-old junior college student Azumi Muto have lost four articles of evidence including the weapon used to attack the victim, Metropolitan Police Department officials said Friday.

...

The evidence had been placed in a paper bag and put in a cardboard box, which was then placed beside the desk of the person in charge of evidence. However, on the morning of Jan. 6, an officer apparently mistook the items for garbage and threw them out at the Yoyogi Police Station garbage collection point. Usually evidence is supposed to be stored in lockers.

Can't hack the fast-paced challenge of life as a salaryman? Staring at parts on an assembly line just too complex to handle? Don't have the leadership skills to man a cash register at Micky D's? There's a place for you in the NPA!

Commenting on why police waited a month before announcing that the evidence had been lost, the official said, "We were looking into the matter in line with the investigation." He added that police were discussing the legal implications of losing the evidence with public prosecutors.

Translation: we wanted to wait until the media attention died down so we wouldn't get crucified in the press.

[Doctor Stop]

It's going to get worse:

[floatl][/floatl][INDENT]The decline and fall of the Japanese cop

But in a broader context, they underscore something more disturbing, according to Weekly Playboy: The quality of the nation's police forces is in a steep, inevitable decline. Today's generation of police officers, compared to their predecessors, are often lazy, greedy and incompetent, a number of experts charge.

As to the reasons behind the supposed decline, a number of factors are cited, with demographics topping the list.

Right now, cops born during the baby boom are starting to retire, leaving a shrinking pool of young people to recruit from. Conversely, the rate of recruitment is rising to deal with the country's higher crime rates of late. The result: recruiters are lowering their standards to frightening levels.

As Noboru Iigawa, editor of Juken Journal, a periodical specializing in civil service recruitment, points out: "In fiscal 2005, about 142,100 candidates took the police qualifying exam. The number who passed was 15,700, about one in nine. Yet the rate for fiscal 2006 appears to be only about one in four or five."

What's more, a rising portion of the successful applicants are the kids of police officers, whose family ties assure them preferential treatment during the exam process, according to an unnamed source whom the magazine describes as being involved in a police force.[/INDENT]

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20070204t3.html

[Doctor Stop]

[floatr][/floatr][INDENT]Companies and cops lumbered with bubble-era buffoons

"During the bubble era, private companies would flash huge sums of cash at students to get them to join their company and there were very few people who wanted to work for the government. Police work was seen at the time as '3K job' (3K comes from work seen as kiken, kitsui, kitanai - dangerous, tough, dirty)," police journalist Akio Kuroki tells Shukan Post. "People who became police officers at the time tended to be lacking talent, ambition and only joined the force because they couldn't get a job in the private sector."

During the bubble, there was an average of 3.7 applicants for every available position on the police force. Now, the rate is 23.8 applicants per opening. But the bubble cops are getting more influence on the force.

"There was a sense when they were taken on that everybody was grateful for them 'deigning' to join the police force and they were spoiled," Kuroki says. "The result is that they tend to be a bit weak at their jobs now."

Shukan Post points out that recently a spate of bubble era hire police officers have been arrested for a variety of offenses, ranging from molesting schoolgirls to dangerous driving.[/INDENT]

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2007/02/20070205p2g00m0dm022000c.html

[dimwit]

It's long been a matter of common knowledge that cops here make Barney Fife look like Batman, but this is a low even for them.

I think there may be a little more than that going on here. The family is very wealthy and would see rather the entire story die -having a dismemberer in the family is not good for business. So just perhaps they might have asked the police to politely make the evidence disappear in exchange for a generous contribution to the police entertainment fund with the understanding that wacko disappears into private treatment for a few years.