crime

Man arrested for making 600 silent calls to police station in Hiroshima

17 Comments

A 57-year-old man has been arrested for making 600 silent phone calls in four hours to Hatsukaichi police station in Hiroshima Prefecture.

The suspect, Shunji Funakura, an office worker, was arrested on suspicion of fraudulent obstruction of business, Fuji TV reported.

Funakura is suspected of making 600 silent phone calls in four hours to the main phone number for the police station on from 9 p.m. on Wed Sept 1 to 1 a.m. Thursday.

Funakura made the calls from his mobile phone which led to his arrest.

Funakura was quoted by police as saying that “I don’t understand why I was arrested." However, police said he has been making similar calls to the police station since a few years ago.

© Japan Today

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17 Comments
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He should get a job as a telemarketer

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Using speed dial surely.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

The question I'm asking myself, is if they would have reacted so adequately had I called them once saying I had been receiving 600 silent calls over 400 hours, or would they have said: "turn of your phone"...

0 ( +2 / -2 )

I'm lost for words.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

He's done this kind of thing for years, and to the same station? Why do they always wait so long? A call every 24 seconds for four hours straight would drive me nuts.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Mugon denwa = silent call... That's new to me. I learned something today.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

LOL They know this bloke been doing this. like after 3 time I would sent the nearest office to his place to check if it was him and take is phone off him. Tell the bloke he has been a very very bad boy. And If I was the Judge I will kick their %%% for not dealing with this in a better way and for wasting the courts time.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Funakura was quoted by police as saying that “I don’t understand why I was arrested.”

I don't understand why someone would do something like this. Is it 2.5 calls per minute? He wouldn't have managed that with a classic rotary dial phone :-)

0 ( +0 / -0 )

butt dialing?

0 ( +1 / -1 )

2.5 calls per minute for 4 hours....this gut has too much time on his hands

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Get this guy some 1,000-piece puzzles to complete or something because he clearly has far too much free time.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

That's some serious OCD.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This is actually a pretty good improvement for the police. They stopped the guy after only four hours of non-stop dialing. Oh, wait. Never mind. He's done it before, apparently, and they only now decided to do something about it.

For some inexplicable reason, police have taken a lot longer in the past to do something about these nutters.

Back in April, it took the authorities nearly two months to arrest some guy who had made over 5000 silent calls to a Funabashi City fire station because he was irate that an ambulance had cut him off earlier in the year. It's very clear this Funakura guy has some issues going on in his noggin that need sorting out.

What baffles me is that the best charge the police can level against this guy is "suspicion of fraudulent obstruction of business." It seems conspicuously inappropriate to call police, fire, and rescue services "businesses." These are vital public safety entities that are paid for in whole by taxpayers. There's no business transaction involved whatsoever. These nuisance calls tie up valuable resources and could very well contribute to more serious injury or even death for those relying on unfettered access to emergency services.

So why isn't there a more pointed law in Japan that criminalizes intentional misuse of emergency services? Japanese legislators, particularly those in the LDP, need to spend more time on this issue and less on trying to create a homegrown military industrial complex in Japan's backyard.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Funakura was quoted by police as saying that “I don’t understand why I was arrested.”

Sounds like he carries no guilt. And if that is true, that'd explain a lot, though.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Why would the cops tolerate this nonsense for 4 hrs - they`d have logged his cell number immediately, which they would have used to ID him.

@LFRAgain: "So why isn't there a more pointed law in Japan that criminalizes intentional misuse of emergency services? "

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/11/20/reference/emergency-announcements/#.Ve5ab-nnLA4

Because elderly citizens regularly tie up the 119 emergency lines with non-emergency calls, use ambulance services (free) instead of taxis to get to hospital, etc. - and they vote. Long ago, my kids called 119 by mistake, or maybe it was the fire emergency number - we then got a very irate return call asking if we had kids and telling us to put the phone out of reach. Kids don`t vote.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Another clown? What was he thinking? Poor people manning the phones. Gets tiring saying moshi moshi over and over again.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

lol, 4 hours

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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