Osaka Police Punish 35 Personnel over Assault during Site Search

Osaka, Jan. 23 (Jiji Press)–The Osaka prefectural police department punished a total of 35 personnel Friday over suspected assault on targets of investigation during a site search. The police of the western Japan prefecture took disciplinary measures, such as dismissals, against 12 investigators, including six who attacked the targets. Twenty-three officials who were in charge of supervising the 12 at the time of the incident, including the then chief of the criminal investigation bureau and the head of the fourth criminal investigation division, were slapped with internal punishments. The six officers, including a sergeant from the fourth investigation division, which handles organized crime, allegedly attacked three male members of Natural, one of the largest illegal pimp groups in Japan, during their search of a building in the city of Osaka, the capital of the prefecture, suspected to be related to the scout group on July 15-16 last year. All six were indicted, with four of them without detention. Sergeant Chikara Tokinaga, 51, who was in charge of controlling the site search, and senior police officer Yusuke Sakaguchi, 33, were fired. They are now on trial. The four officers indicted without detention received six-month suspensions. The six officers said they assaulted the Natural members partly in order to obtain personal identification numbers for their smartphones. More than 10 investigators were reprimanded as they helped the assault or did not stop it. The police department filed papers with public prosecutors on an inspector at the fourth criminal investigation division, who was given a six-month suspension, for allegedly harboring suspects. When asked by the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office whether there was a video of the assault scene, the inspector allegedly made a false report saying that no such video existed. As the cause of the assault, the prefectural police said that investigation policies adopted by executives at the department had not been shared with investigators on the ground and that the number of officers to control the search site was insufficient. The police department promised to take measures to prevent any recurrence, such as giving thorough instructions to make sure that investigations are conducted appropriately and expanding investigation meetings to share policies and objectives. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]