Nara officer gets slashed while responding to call

Are the police using bamboo sticks?? Kali sticks?

40 officers for 2 people?

/ Benny Hill theme.

any other place would of been a bullet in the head. Another I hate the world creep off the street. 40 cops. If you need any consulting on budget cuts I recommend 4 cops and stungun/tazers.

Being in Nara and a famous temple, a large tourist attraction I would expect there to be more police to be on call as it can be a public danger. If things went bad and the guy attacked other people I guess the same critics here would be saying why wasn't there enough police around.

I do agree in other countries this guy would been full of bullets already.

plain clothes cops? bamboo sticks? wat?

I applaud the police here. At least they confronted and fought this dude unlike what happened several years back when the police man ran away from a stick-wielding guy. I think it was in Odaiba.

any other place would of been a bullet in the head.

One of the reasons I prefer to live here than any other place.

40 officers? I would have thought that 10 would have been enough.

40 officers seem hilariously excessive. I guess they play the "strength in numbers" game as they do not use deadly force. But there are other non-lethal means of stopping a person, like tasers.

Just a couple of inflammatory remarks:

It would be interesting to know how many of the people bashing the police have actually been on the wrong end of a knife/shooting incident. My advice would be to zip it until you have experienced it first hand.

Forty officers seems to highlight a lack of aggression on the part of the cops. Instead of safety in numbers, it would have been a lot quicker if somebody had exercised some leadership.

Finally, I have to disagree with Cleo. Now I know that everybody loves the idea of nobody getting killed in such situations, however, once one of the officers was wounded, the cops should of had no second-thoughts about using deadly force. Why? Because the biggest mental barrier that people who are armed face is that first stab/shot, etc. After you have wounded/killed your first victim/target, it all becomes so much easier. The cops should have slotted this chap as soon as the first officer went down, because the felon has demonstrated that he has what it takes.

Do you think the hundreds of officers was excessive for the Akiba incident? Again think about it, reports of guy with knife near popular tourist destination, (heck you got tourists nearby taking photos of the incident), the police can't be too safe these days in public spaces especially after the Akiba incident.

40 Officers huh? It seems strange, but I only see two in the picture. Did the other 38 run away?

One guy with a taser probably would have been more effective.

After Hatanaka was subdued, he was found to be carrying three knives, including a kitchen knife and a fruit knife.

What was he carrying them for in a public place?

Why did the man slashed a Nara police officer with a knife?

40 officers for a one-on-one fight??? You have got to be sh!tting me! It says a lot for the police force knowing there were 40 cops sitting around doing nothing!

skipbeat - Obviously the cop was slashed at while trying fight his way through the other 39 cops to get a swing at him with a broom handle. Why do the J-cops carry guns? Just for suicide?

Gurkun: Exactly! LOL!

In cases of domestic violence, I doubt there is really a need to send so many officers. If anything, seeing all those police might have scared the guy and provoked him to use his knife. Sending a few cops to their home with tasers probably would have been just as effective or more so as they could have possibly even avoided the melee.

Despite all the videos online with seemingly inappropriate use of tasers, they'd have been just the ticket in this situation. Much safer than those big Edo-period sticks they are using in the pic.

and props to the citizen for snapping the photo and sending it to the press.

40 officers called out to a domestic disturbance ended in a stabbing... "armed and dangerous" call is fair enough in my opinion. Much better than tazers and what-not way too frequently used without a provocation in the western world.

Look at the cops one med length stick with adouble handed grip like it's a katana (lol), they should have used two short sticks, they could have gone to town on the guy !

With all these knife-carrying lunatics around, maybe I should get used to take a broomstick too when I go out.

Around 40 officers were dispatched to the home

... and peopled complained that our Cop-Cloner 2000 was a waste of tax-payers money!

I think this article is poorly written. It states that the guy with the knife was away from the scene of the crime. It does not say when or why, so I am assuming that is why 40 officers were dispatched; to search and locate the criminal. They probably split into pairs and that is why this picture is the way it is. If not, then I just wrote a great excuse for the cops.

timorborder: "It would be interesting to know how many of the people bashing the police have actually been on the wrong end of a knife/shooting incident."

The 40 officers were dispatched to the scene BEFORE the slashing, not after. Now, if an officer were slashed and then a bunch dispatched as backup after the fact, I can see it. As it is, forty officers going to a home to investigate a case of sibling rivalry is excessive, and reminds me of when the J-police launched some hundred or more squad cars to go after a driver in Osaka.

According to police, officials received a call Monday morning that two siblings were having a fight and one had gotten stabbed.

No the cops turned up after one of the participants was stabbed (1st victim). Then one of the police was stabbed (2nd) victim.

Japanese police only need to remember the sarin attacks a few years back to know and understand that in the worst case scenario there could be bulk people armed with knives looking to do damage.

40 officers called out to a domestic disturbance ended in a stabbing... "armed and dangerous" call is fair enough in my opinion. Much better than tazers and what-not way too frequently used without a provocation in the western world.

Tasers are almost never used without provocation. They pretty much clamped down on that after the first reported deaths from them occurred. Now its like using a gun, in terms of the restrictions on when you can use it, and how. Basically, if a taser is used, its in place of a gun. So your alternative is the person definitely being dead, or possibly living. So, in this case I completely agree. A taser would have been a much better choice.

lol @ the photo! What is this, kendo practice? The officer looks like he is trying to do some Bruce Lee style work on that stick. Must have watched a few Kung-fu movies in his day!

Man, do they have any type of self defense or subduction training there? Even security guards in the US are pretty much taught how to subdue a criminal with non lethal force. Tasers, rubber bullets, etc... Jeez with the sticks.

One should be distracting him and the other should be forcing the perp to their knees. That photo is a very sorry sight, but they did arrest him in the end with too many people.

I dont understand your problem, guys. 40 officer dont necessarily mean 40 SWAT guy running after a single person on a street, like in a zombie movie. It can be just an alert to all the police officers around in the neighborhood, that "there is a guy with knife around, try to find him!" without any specific info where the guy went. He was already 400m away from the scene... Do you really expect the police to keep everything silent, and send out 1 or 2 guys with an order that "shoot some guy with a nife in this area if you see any!"?

The fact that 40 cops were sent out says that Japan isn't as crazy or dangerous as some people think.

bicultural: Maybe. But there are hundreds of reports of domestic violence in each prefecture every year and probably many more if you count child abuse. Perhaps there aren't a lot of random violent crimes but there sure seems to be quite a bit of family violence. Do people(men) have to be slashing at each other in the streets for police to take action? That's what I find a little disconcerting.

Buy them taser guns already...

Another example of a close-call.... Only by luck and the grace of god, was he saved from being seriously injured or killed...

When reality meets piss-poor training and ill-equipped police... Just hope and pray for the safety of these police, that they will never have to deal with any REAL situations, which don't involve doing anything other than giving directions, or standing around looking important..

What's with the sticks? Just shoot him!!

Shoot him? The guy was defeated and apprehended by police wielding the equivilent of a practice sword. As a result, nobody died. That's a win all around in my book.

"The guy was defeated and apprehended by police wielding the equivilent of a practice sword. As a result, nobody died. That's a win all around in my book."

Unless of course you are the officer that got "slashed" ! Gotta concur- "tasers" are the way to go !

I prefer beanbag guns hurt like heck, look like their pointing a canon at you, it make someone think twice about their next move.

Unless of course you are the officer that got "slashed" ! Gotta concur- "tasers" are the way to go !

The officer received minor injuries so I don't think it will be a life-changing event for him.

So I guess now we know why police officers are training in Kendo, huh?

Poor officer! I hope they give this knife wielding idiot a good beating behind bars!

It is shame that cops are so much behind with the rest6 of the world. Why not using 'TASER' gun instead of sticks like children in the back yard.

@limboinjapan exactly, those things may not kill but it will certainly subdue a person with some pain and extreme discomfort.

@Mayhem, look up non-lethal weapons. The only time an officer should shoot to kill is if the criminal has a gun or is in the process of attempting to kill someone with a weapon.

I really do love the way the local PD handles business where I live. Always 2 officers per patrol, and when they do even a minor traffic stop both officers know their positions in case someone tries something funny. The picture above is kinda messed up. The officers shouldn't be on the same side so the perp can see both of them...one should have been behind him to take advantage to bring him down.

Still photos are terrible at conveying tactics as they only represent things as they were in one moment of time. The officer in the center appears "set" and the one on the right appears to be moving to his left, providing the separation you suggest, but we can't know for sure just from this photo.