Niigata police sergeant leaves handgun in toilet

whoops-a-daisy

Ooops, is right!! (I am very forgetful myself, so I have naught but sympathy for the guy, but holy crap that's a bad bag to forget!)

We will endeavor to ensure it does not occur again.

last year an off-duty officer left his gun in the toilet of a conveny store in another prefecture (at 3AM) found sometime later by the store employee (much longer than three minutes). Good luck with that "does not occur again." Safest bet: don't give cops guns, they never use them anyway.

When he stood up to open the door, wouldn`t the bag have been in his face?

Ah, J-Cops strike again!

In the toilet hahaha! Perhaps you should say in the bathroom :)

You can always count on the J-stone cops for comic relief!

This silly old goat should be strictly disciplined, get his pay check CUT! What kind of an idiot forget his GUN with LIVE ROUNDS! IDIOT!

Who enters a toilet with a gun in a bag and forgets it, a good investigator has powers of observation....sorry it's a J-cop my mistake hope he never has to investigate a theft.

Maybe he was drunk?

There's no reason for a railway police officer to need a gun. I mean seriously can you imagine what would happen if one fired a gun in even a reasonably full train? At close range a standard non-frangible slug would punch through the bad guy and emerge at an unpredictable angle and possibly hit someone else. Not to mention the problems with firing stability in a moving train, the sound in what amounts to a large metal box, etc.

Giving these guys guns is simply irresponsible. Tazers or similar weaponary would be more than sufficient to accomplish their duties and wouldn't endanger the general public.

I guess it just goes to show though that none of these cops have ever fired their weapons on a train or they'd know just how insanely impractical a gun is on a train.

@Frungy

Just like a normal cop wouldn't fire a gun in a crowded shopping mall, I'm sure a railway cop wouldn't fire one on a crowded train. Not all the activities of the railway police take place on trains.

In the toilet hahaha! Perhaps you should say in the bathroom :)

No. Because it's the same thing. Everything in the world doesn't have to be said in Merkin-English.

keystone cops ...its all they are

@lucabrasi -

Just like a normal cop wouldn't fire a gun in a crowded shopping mall, I'm sure a railway cop wouldn't fire one on a crowded train. Not all the activities of the railway police take place on trains.

How often is a regular cop likely to be in a crowded shopping mall? Sometimes, but it's probably to buy lunch.

How often is a railway cop likely to be in a crowded train? Very often.

Why give someone who's going to be spending a lot of time on a crowded train or crowded station a weapon that: i) Is overkill... in a very literal sense it may well kill more than just the intended target ii) Offers more risk than advantage. A holstered firearm can easily be taken from a police officer while the officer is distracted, now turning a regular criminal into an armed criminal. In a crowded train or crowded station this isn't only possible it's likely.

Face it Lucabrasi, it's stupid to arm someone who's going to be on a crowded train or crowded station with a gun. Yes, there maybe "Walker Texas Ranger" railways cops out there walking the train tracks and protecting us from the great squirrel consipiracy to derail trains with piles of nuts, but the vast majority of these armed railways cops are in environments where guns are an active liability rather than an advantage.

Furthermore it takes a LOT of training to get someone to reliably pull a gun and shoot. It takes a lot less training to get someone to pull a tazer and shock someone. Chances are if armed terrorists attacked Tokyo station tomorrow these railway cops would be disarmed and dead in record time because most of them would be reluctant to draw their weapons and fire. This example just shows how lax discipline is, and their training is probably just as rusty.

No. These railways cops being armed is unacceptable and is more of a hazard to the public than a protection.

What is the job of a Railway police officer? Is it an officer posted at a koban at a railway station or do they patrol the trains?

I am with cricky, I suspect, wud BET alchohol was involved!!! Hahaha

Left his gun in the toilet stall? Worthy of a reprimand. But if you think that is not enough, you must have a paranoid delusion that some murderous nut would stumble on it. Very, very unlikely. We want cops to be careful, but they are only human. This is going to happen sometimes.

However, the conspiracy to cover up the fact? The four officers involved ought to be doing jail time and looking for new jobs when they get out! Getting away with something like that is a gateway drug to corruption!

These Niigata station toilets must be super clean - the station employee entered the stall just 3 minutes after the cop vacated it! Well, he may not have gone in there to clean it, he may have gone in there to do his business...

And I approve of gogogo's new avatar!

Maybe he wanted to star in his own version of Kurosawa's "Stray Dog", 'tho I somehow don't think this J-cop would measure up in any way to the movie's protagonist.

Iwitness,

cops are civil servants, so that means they are ALREADY on or more likely through the gateway to corruption, & their behavior wud CERTAINLY confirm that, in Japan corruption is institutionalized!

Sounds like USA air marshals leaving their guns in the toilet too. Seems to be a common theme amounts law enforcers who work in the transportation industry.

I empathize with this sergeant since it could easily happen to me. I can only advise him to keep his police implements in a shoulder bag so that he can do his business without putting it on a baggage hook or laying it down somewhere. I'm sure he remembered to take his things hundreds and thousands of times in the past, but he'll always be remembered for the one time he forgot.

A tiny lapse of memory, but all that end's well - END'S WELL!

iwitness@

But if you think that is not enough, you must have a paranoid delusion that some murderous nut would stumble on it.

What narrow-minded thinking--a murderous nut. God forbid a young boy stumble into a public toilet and find ... never mind we don't need "what if(s)... Hit this cop with a "wake-up" fine and put him behind a desk where he belongs before his "forgetfulness" harms someone.

God forbid a young boy stumble into a public toilet and find ...

Also possible, but just as unlikely. Stuff happens. Its worthy of a reprimand like I said. But conspiracies don't just happen. These cops should get nailed hard for that.

gogogo

"In the toilet hahaha! Perhaps you should say in the bathroom :)"

Was he taking a bath? In case you didn't know, most of the English speaking world does not speak American English. To them a bathroom is where you take a bath. "Toilet" is the correct term for most of the English speaking world although in my country, it is "lavatory", the use of toilet being considered non-u.

Perhaps, you would prefer the rather strange American usage of half a bathroom to let readers know that there was no bath there.

@gaijintraveller

And where exactly is your country? 1930's Bloomsbury, perhaps? ;)

Once you gotta go you gotta go. Guess he was concentrating too hard on his "duty" in the bathroom and forgot about the bad:D

I think it was more to this. They tried covering this up and why? Maybe he left those there for someone else to pick up and use in some form or another. Dirty cop?

Japan is in the top 10 for unreported crimes and so on. People are very scared of being embarrassed, even for the smallest things. And this dude is like 5 years from retirement, I'm sure he didnt want any marks like this on his record. With this, in japan, they may question is mental condition and force him to retire early.

Obligatory J-cops bonehead story of the week

Its amazing how you can forget things. I remember once, I walked out of my house, forgetting my keys (fortunately I hadn't locked the door) realizing this, I went back into the house to get em. The moment I went back into my house, I realized, I couldn't remember why I had come back in. I knew it was important, but simply couldn't remember. Walked out again before realizing I had forgotten my keys. Yeah, I felt really stupid. Point being, people forget things all the time. Admittedly that bag was a particularly bad thing to forget. But still, it happens. What is not acceptable, was the lack of reporting by the police on the subject. I don't care how foolish it makes you seem, that is something that by law they are required to report.

Hey, it could happen to anybody. How many people on this list have never accidentally left something in the toilet? Too bad they tried to gloss over it by not reporting the incident, though. Now they will ALL be in ... deep doo doo.