A police officer in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, has been arrested after confessing to installing a miniature video camera in a public toilet at a convenience store in an attempt to video shoppers. According to TBS, the accused --identified as 36-year-old Ryo Tanigawa, a head patrol officer of the traffic division -- finished his shift at 2 p.m. on Monday, before entering the unisex bathroom of a convenience store in Miki and affixing the camera to the floor at around 3 p.m.
The camera was discovered on Tuesday by the store manager during a routine inspection and reported to the police, TBS reported. An examination of the store's CCTV camera footage led investigators back to Tanigawa.
© Japan Today
43 Comments
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mitoguitarman
Hahaha. J-finest on the job.
paulinusa
Particularly daring or dumb, however way you want to look at it..
sillygirl
also incredibly creepy. to protect and serve......so they even have a motto here?
my2sense
There is a whole market for this stuff and larger than you think. I often check toilets for a split second for them but they are mostly rigged in lady toilets. A lot of Japanese men have a fetish for toilet stuff (worse teenage girls) and they caught a few guys over the years with pinhole cams on JAL or ANA flights. Flight attendants were the target and attractive women. There is even a club in Tokyo that has a glass ceiling and the girls go potty (1 and 2) and they drink beers, look and watch. And you thought you knew the Japanese... They might have issues with large teenage girl bands but that is the light stuff...
Disillusioned
A few years ago I confiscated three spy-cam pens from senior high students. Their intentions were clear and not honorable. This cop needs to see a psychiatrist, but will only get a slap on the wrist and a three-month pay cut.
Apsara
Not only Japanese men, they found recording equipment in a (unisex) toilet in a Starbucks in NZ a few years back.
nath
At this rate, JT could comprise of nothing but stories about errant police officers, teachers, and government officials.
my2sense
2 more cents... I have noticed with my own lad at the school (near 4 )....boys and girls go the toilet together until about four and change out of formal into their day wear in front of each other. I figured it will have something psychologically 'wrong' in the future. Very against this and they should learn to respect each other's privacy as toddlers.
Asagao
Before we all just to conclusions, how do we know he wasn't using high tech method to catch shoplifters?
ExportExpert
What a shitty crime.
Christina O'Neill
If the camera had been installed to catch shoplifters it would have been at the managers request.It was the manager who blew the wistle
Asagao
It could of been his own initiative. Maybe he suspected the manager/staff could be taking food from the shelves and consuming it in the toilets, away from the store cameras? We need good officers like this one who can think outside the box.
Yubaru
And you wrote this with a straight face too?!?! Seriously now why would a traffic cop be anywhere even closely concerned about a manager or staff consuming food from a toilet when the stores very own cameras would show the employees taking the food in the first place. Thinking outside the box? I think not.
ADK99
Do you think, just perhaps, he might be being sarcastic??
yokomoc
Or he could simply have been monitoring for illegal dumping.
BoratLikeBarry
Japan's finest at their best.
TakahiroDomingo
yeah yeah, the camera was on the floor, perfect for a "face" shot of possible shoplifters. what a toilet-sicko.
hatsoff
Yeah, that cop was really taking the piss.
johninnaha
I understand the desire to see young ladies' naughty bits.
In surroundings that show them off to their best advantage.
And in a situation where she is aware that her beauty is being appreciated and where she is able and willing to respond to such.
What I cannot understand is the desire to see the kind of activities that a lady gets up to in privacy in a toilet.
We know that everybody does these things, but personally, I'd rather not think about them too much.
CrazyJoe
I'd give the cop a "swirlie" for punishment.
Maitake
Thank you Japan and JT. My reading entertainment for the day! You never disapoint me with lack of a story of a J-cop committing a crime! I'm looking forward to tomorrow's!
Badge213
That's a pretty good routine inspection by the stores. In other places of the world I've traveled to, I don't think toilets were ever inspected!
iceshoecream
Ahahaha! JT you made my day.
TokyoTanuki
This reminds me of a similar crime where they caught the perpetrator because his face had been recorded by the camera when he installed it :)
warnerbro
Sure, they have got a police motto in Japan: "To Molest and Pervert". Had a strange experience on the Shinkansen yesterday and seeing this article makes me wonder about it all the more. I stepped into the Western style loo after a young woman had just left. Suddenly somebody was pounding on the door. I thought maybe there's a handicapped person, somebody with a bum knee or something who has urgent business and needs the Western facility. So I finished as soon as I could. I stepped out and into the wash basin and some bloke who was standing around the corner darted in and out of the loo. He was out before he could have had time to unzip let alone perform some necessary function. Did he think he left his mobile in there? Now I wonder if he didn't plant a camera on the girl who went before me, and me for that matter.
Oracle
my2senseAug. 18, 2011 - 08:35AM JST
Did you ever think it could be precisely the opposite? I seriously doubt that this cop's little hobby has anything to do with that. I think the problem is not what boys have seen. The problem is what they haven't seen and are burning with curiosity to finally witness. If that goes unsatisfied it can become an obsession.
I had more freedom as a kid and saw plenty. My teenage years were terrible though and girls suddenly became unwilling to do anything and that was psychologically twisting. But then I came to Japan and the women here straightened me out through generosity, not stinginess.
I would sooner bet that this guy's problem had a lot more to do with what he did not see in his youth than what he did see.
my2sense
hmmm. No kidding. My near 4 yr old picked up a XXX mag in Family Mart last weekend... good thing it is taped shut... little dude actually said... Why are they doing this daddy? It was divided up into sections: cougars, teens and this stuff. You may want to investigate as I stated- there is a huge market for this stuff on the shelves waist high at your local conbini, whole sections in Donki. Got a mean phone bill at 18? Take a **** for an ad or sell the panties. Cheers.
Ari94
Just by an act of a one Police man why would you think the entire nation is to be blamed as some used the term Japan or Japanese? I guess this reflect your education and experience.
Why not compare with your country's and Japan's crime rate and get it straight? Oh sorry you can't it hurt I can understand that.
On websites a place called Comment does not mean you empty your anger or hatred please use your mind think and talk so other readers can also benefit.
lucabrasi
@my2sense
Of course you must bring up your own child as you see fit, but a lot of psychologists would disagree with you here. Kindergarten is the perfect setting for kids to satisfy their natural, innocent curiosity about their own and other people's bodies, particularly those of the opposite sex. It's when you try and surpress this intense curiosity that you get psychological problems later in life...look at the guilt-ridden weirdness that went on in Victorian Britain....
FireyRei
Ari94,
One police officer, or one member of staff in a shop does indeed represent their peers.
When you get bad service from someone, do you immediately assume it to be only that one person? Or do you get angry with the company? I'll bet the latter.
BoratLikeBarry
Ari94,
For the record, J cops are a total joke. This website is full of stories about their endless mishaps on a daily basis.
Oracle
lucabrasiAug. 18, 2011 - 01:46PM JST
Thank you lucabrasi. My2sense seems so desperate to get out of the frying pan, he or she wants to jump into the fire!
No telling what happend to this guy to make him so desperate to do this illegal act, but I doubt it had anything to do with magazines sold at Family Mart either.
Its funny to me how people fail to appreciate just how hidden sex is, even in Japan. Still at least 90 percent is hidden (magazines taped shut, mosaic inside for example). Hide something so much, and people will get weird about it. In fact, if women went around suggesting guys like this put a camera in their toilet, he would have probably lost all interest within a month.
BurakuminDes
What this cop did really stinks.
my2sense
I am talking about the scat biz. There are millions of perverts in this country and its a problem. Someone throw me a bone on this one or come out when the panty crook strikes again on JT or up the skirt with a mini cam/phone by a teacher or cop. Christ they have TV shows on this spying pervert biz... Women only cars and chikan... Nuts in a frying pan baby! This article is about a cop and perversion and perhaps its for him or sells it online. Wake up but then again these guys don't want to see a gaijin taking a dump.
Oracle
my2senseAug. 18, 2011 - 03:02PM JST
Yeah. Millions. And this guy is their leader and he takes orders from the Tooth Fairy. And these types only exist in Japan. I don't know where you get your information, but I would love to know.
smithinjapan
Ah, the J-cops! At it again, I see. Anyway, what was this guy thinking? Most of the people I see using those toilets are kids and oyajis who look like they are to blow. Not only is what this officer vile and disgusting, but all we would have gotten out of it was crappy footage. Serves him right, as well as hopefully being fired and maybe given a major fine.
TakahiroDomingo
google 'australian pervert' and you get 12.8 million hits
google 'japanese pervert' and you get 7.5 million hits
google 'my2sense pervert' and you get 921 hits
do the math...
Fadamor
@Ari94,
I'm guessing by your response that you are relatively new to Japan Today. If this had been the only article in a while about a misbehaving police officer you could be understandibly upset, but on average there is at LEAST one article describing a law-breaking police officer every week. After about a month, you'll realize that the comments here regarding the J-Cops are not based on one "act of a one Police man", but a cumulative venting of how the police are just as criminal as the general populace.
Elbuda Mexicano
This is one idiot, bad apple fool, who just happens to be Japanese and just happens to be a cop. How many idiotic pervert Japanese men get turned on by this shitty, strange perversion? I have know idea, but if you go to Google, their is plenty of this shitty perverted crap from Germany in German and many homepages with this kind of porn with many languages available so SCAT?? Not too sure what the official term is for this fetish with looking at women pee and shit etc..but I guess it is originally from Germany but I digress, I am sure there are sick bastards all over Japan and the rest of the world, geez for all we know, our asses, etc..could be on some of these homepages!! Scary thought isn't it??
Dennis Bauer
Why did he get arrested? the camera was surely put there for shoplifting prevention :p
Oracle
FadamorAug. 18, 2011 - 09:19PM JST
Its obvious that Ari94 was not defending the police but rather the Japanese people, whom the police do not represent. Your tirade about the police had nothing to do with Ari94's post as you completely missed his point.
Fadamor
@Oracle,
It's always possible that I missed a point. Ari's English isn't as clear as it could be. I usually don't try to comment on people's English here because I know if I tried to write in Japanese, most native speakers of Japanese would scratch their heads and say "What did he say?" So I took the topic of the article into account (a police officer being arrested for a crime), the comments prior to Ari's (generally criticizing the J-Cops as a whole), and my attempt at deciphering Ari's comment (going on about the entire Japanese nation, though how that entered into the picture I can't say). If I missed Ari's point I apologize.
But I certainly wouldn't characterize my previous post as a "tirade". When I first started reading JT, I couldn't believe how many people were so negative about the Japanese Police forces. I simply couldn't understand their anger and disgust. After having been here for over two years, however, I can understand why the police get mocked. The number of incidents involving police getting caught in crimes is impossible to ignore and make the police a prime target for ridicule.
yasukuni
There really is something about cops and teachers in this country.
Chikan and this kind of crime should be easy to solve. Go after cops and teachers, then saitama people. That should narrow it down. I wonder what the sex crime rate is for Saitama cops?