How the police have earned my respect

[dimwit]

Last Friday morning I was busy preparing for my trip to Tokyo and out of the blue I get a call for the police to inform me that they have found my bicycle. This was weird because I have for the last few years have owned two bicycles, which althought they have on occasion been stolen they are presently in my possession. My immediate fear was that they had fished some old bike frame out of the sewer and it had my ID number and wanted me to claim it so I would have to pay to dispose of it. Fear number two was that they had found some old piece of crap that I had abandoned because it didn't work and wasn't worth repairing. So when they told me that I had reported the bicycle stolen in 2000, it seemed to confirm my worst fears. So I told them I was off to Tokyo and that I would be able to claim the bike until Tuesday afternoon.

Getting to the Koban where the bicycle was supposed to be was a bit of a pain since if it were an actual working bike I would have to take two bikes back to my apartment which is a few kilometers away. So I decided to ditch my working bike at the nearby supermarket and walk the short distance to the Koban.

At the Koban, the polie asked for some ID and took me around to the side and showed me the bike. It was a woman's bike with baby seats on the front and back and didn't look anything like any bike I have ever possessed. I pointed out the fact that the bike was obviously not mine. Sucking his teeth the officier went into the backroom and pulled out a report and showed it to me.

The name of the person who reported the stolen bike was either Vietnamese or Cambodian, I would guess. It would have taken so daring mental gymnastics to come up with a name that vaguely resembled mine. But hammer those circles into the square pegs they did.

So after closely examining my gaijin card and looking at the name on the report they somehow concluded they were not the same and apologized for wasting my time.

This should have been the end of the story except I got called up again on Friday asking me why I hadn't claimed my bicycle. When I explained what happened it didn't seem to click and it took another twenty minutes for Mr. Cognitive Disorder to understand that the bicycle wasn't mine and belonged to some Chinese person (I didn't say Cambodian because that would likely confuse him).

My guess is that in the next few days I will be arrested for possesion of a bicycle I have never owned or claimed.

[Doctor Stop]

Matsuyama's finest.

[TFG]

So, eh...Like, how did they get your phone number if the slip was for some Cambodian guy?

[dimwit]

So, eh...Like, how did they get your phone number if the slip was for some Cambodian guy?

No idea. My assumption is that because I have had bicycles stolen from me in the past and they have been recovered by the police that I my name was on file as a known victim.

[Captain Japan]

A seven-year old bicycle had to have been in lousy shape. Was it in any condition to where this was at all necessary? So when you say you are impressed with the police are you saying you are impressed with them seemingly having absolutely nothing better to do?

[dimwit]

A seven-year old bicycle had to have been in lousy shape. Was it in any condition to where this was at all necessary? So when you say you are impressed with the police are you saying you are impressed with them seemingly having absolutely nothing better to do?

The bicycle they showed me was definitely been used in the not too distant past as the tires were not flat and it was not particularly dusty.

Where is my spectulation as to what happened. The person who filed the missing bicycle report couldn't remember the serial number of the bike so that all the police had was a name, bike description and a phone number to go on. An unidentified bike was later found by police from headquarters and they looked at the name on the report which was probably written in Katakana couldn't make heads or tails of it but they did remember that I filed a missing bike report seven years ago so maybe this was the same bike. The obvious difference in the names was due to the difficulty Japanese have in pronouncing non-Japanese names.

[TennoChinko]

Sounds like we all look alike to Jap cops.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20071120zg.html

----

Getting more personal, if law enforcement desires to read my e-mail, monitor my Internet surfing, telephone communications, or credit-card purchases, or simply haul me off for weeks of questioning, the "just cause" that is required often appears to be translated in Japan as "just because," as in "just because that foreigner lives in an area where a crime recently occurred."

This is exactly what happened not too long ago to a Canadian residing in Tokyo, when at 7:40 in the evening near the end of a pleasant summer weekend in 2002, five to eight policemen burst through his front door while he was watching TV. After conducting a complete search of him and his apartment, not to mention his neighbor's flat, the police hauled off our Canadian friend on suspicion of being a drug dealer and kept him in lockup for 19 days before deciding that no charges were warranted.

This typically bungled case involved police harassment of a non-Japanese resident just because he was a Canadian who lived in a neighborhood where a crime by a foreigner of Middle Eastern descent was suspected. Did I mention that our Canadian is a balding blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned gentleman? The arrest reached comic proportions when a translator was brought in to translate from Japanese to Farsi, a language the accused doesn't speak. In the end, he was released as he neared the 23-day limit that the police could legally detain him without officially charging him with an offense, but the police never released the "plenty of evidence" they claimed they had against him as they pressed him to confess. And there was never an apology for the near three-week disruption to his life.

----

[james]

that'll teach him for being canadian in japan.

[yanpa]

Probably running a maple leaf syrup ring.

[Greji]

Probably running a maple leaf syrup ring.

May well have been in to that or something. Although false arrest is not treated the same way in Japan as in other countries like the USA, this guy could have had cause for redress.

Assuming he was not on notice for his clandestine syrup operations, with proper legal support, I think he has a good case for illegal detention and the serious breech of civil rights and affronts to his person, his work career reputation (assuming he didn't work for Nova), etc.

Japan for all its other faults, will fork up when wrong, but you must be willing to spend the time with the court system to do them on it. I would think that it would be well worth the effort in this instance if the merits of the case are as stated.

I think if it were me, I would have to do it just for the principle involved, knowing that you are not going to get a ton of money out of them.

[maraboutslim]

On the topic of cops being anxious to return recovered property, cops everywhere can be weird. A friend's 20 year old toyota celica was stolen from san francisco and the cops called him weeks later at 2 am to tell him they'd recovered the car some 200 miles to the north. his reponse, "uh, you think i've been missing that car so badly that i'm up all night worrying about it or something? call me back in the morning." It was his car though, and he drove it back to SF.

[Tsuru]

Hehehe

[Charles]

On the topic of cops being anxious to return recovered property, cops everywhere can be weird. A friend's 20 year old toyota celica was stolen from san francisco and the cops called him weeks later at 2 am to tell him they'd recovered the car some 200 miles to the north. his reponse, "uh, you think i've been missing that car so badly that i'm up all night worrying about it or something? call me back in the morning." It was his car though, and he drove it back to SF.

Yeah, that happens everywhere. I remember back when I lived in Downtown LA in the mid 80s, my piece-of-crap '65 Cuda got stolen. Why anyone would want to steal it is beyond me, I got the car because I lived in a high crime area and it screamed out to everyone "not worth stealing." I got a call from the LAPD the next day, my car had been recovered, the only thing they stole from it was the battery, so it was towed. So I call the impound yard, give them my Iowa plate number, they ask "Ohio?" Yeah, Ohio is spelled exactly like Iowa, right. They say they don't have the car. It takes me several days to get the cops to correct their computer records, it was entered as an Ohio license plate instead of Iowa. Only THEN can they release the car. Meanwhile, it racked up almost $300 in storage fees. Oh and just to add extra grief, when they towed the car, they dented my gas tank, putting a pinhole leak into it, so the tank could never hold more than 5 gallons without it all leaking out. It cost me another $250 to get the gas tank replaced. It took months to find a replacement tank, during which time I ran out of gas constantly. I had to change my daily commute to go past the most gas stations, and I constantly had to calculate gas milage on the fly (they busted the gas gauge too). I spent many mornings and evenings with my car abandoned on the side of the road, walking to the nearest gas station, gas can in hand.

[yanpa]

May well have been in to that or something. Although false arrest is not treated the same way in Japan as in other countries like the USA, this guy could have had cause for redress.

Assuming he was not on notice for his clandestine syrup operations, with proper legal support, I think he has a good case for illegal detention and the serious breech of civil rights and affronts to his person, his work career reputation (assuming he didn't work for Nova), etc.

Japan for all its other faults, will fork up when wrong, but you must be willing to spend the time with the court system to do them on it. I would think that it would be well worth the effort in this instance if the merits of the case are as stated.

I think if it were me, I would have to do it just for the principle involved, knowing that you are not going to get a ton of money out of them.

Definitely a circumstance where you'd want to call 1-800-DEBITO for maximum effect.