Police officier does some investigating

[dimwit]

From the Mainichi Daily News

Police investigator suspected of peeping into neighbor's home

FUKUOKA -- A police investigator arrested for sneaking onto the balcony of a neighboring apartment is suspected of peeping into the victim's home, investigators said.

Kozo Yanaga, 31, a senior officer at Fukuoka Prefectural Police's second investigation division, stands accused of trespassing. Prefectural police are grilling him over the motives for his crime.

Yanaga sneaked onto the balcony of a public servant's apartment next to his room in Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, on a number of occasions between the night of Feb. 24 and the morning of Feb. 26, local police said

The civil servant in his 30s and his wife reported to police that a beer can containing cigarette butts was abandoned on the balcony of their apartment. Prefectural police arrested Yanaga after matching his DNA with that on the cigarette butts.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080304p2a00m0na003000c.html

You'd think a police officier would at least know how to be a competent Peeping Tom.

[Choeki]

You'd think a police officier would at least know how to be a competent Peeping Tom.

It depends on the division's methodology. If he was responsible for forensics then his typical method would be to contaminate the crime scene as much as possible by walking all over the scene and handling everything before its documented properly, then use big sheets of sticky material to pick up all loose items left behind. If he was responsible for violent crimes and theft investigation then beating a suspect in a way that leaves no permanent marks to elicit a voluntary confession or just putting up a wanted poster so that a suspect can be delivered by a watchful citizen so that he can get the mentioned treatment would be SOP. Finally if it was financial crimes then I suppose he would do whatever the legislators/judiciary secretly tell him to do, which nine times out of ten would probably be to do nothing.

None of these require any undercover work, so it's not surprising he got caught doing something he wasn't trained to do...