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Police reprimand over 20 officers for paid work on study guides

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100 million dividee by 467 divided by 7:

About 31000 yen per year...

Of course they failed to their duty.

Pay a fine or bow ?

5 ( +5 / -0 )

According to media reports in January, EDU-COM Inc. paid a total of more than 100 million yen ($923,000) to 467 police officers belonging to the NPA and 17 prefectural police departments over the course of seven years beginning in 2010 in exchange for their contributions to the workbooks.

And only 20 are going to take the fall?

After hearing from the officers in question, the police agency and prefectural police departments confirmed some 20 officers should be punished, the sources said.

I wonder who these guys pissed off, or failed to give a kick-back to?

5 ( +6 / -1 )

And only 20 are going to take the fall?

It could be these guys were the ringleaders or brokers. Reading the Japanese news, it seems that each PD is handling the matter internally and that some of the PDs have yet to decide the punishments and who will receive them. The punishments being mentioned range from being fired to a 10% pay cut for three months. It looks like they will be dished out according to the amount of money received.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

This has been going on for seven years and involved more then 450 cops, but they only just now have decided to stop it? Something seems very fishy. Obviously, somebody stopped getting their cut and has dobbed everybody in.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

The root issue here is that there is a publisher selling study materials for promotion exams. I understand that certain promotions require some kind of examination, but why this requires a 'textbook' made by an outside company is baffling. Indeed, why a 'textbook' is required at all to someone already working within the industry is baffling. The police could easily produce an internal 'Guide to promotion X/Y/Z', and partner up PCs with Sergeants (or whichever promotion is being targeted).

By supporting these textbooks, and/or requiring their use, companies and institutions are fueling these problems. The textbook industry is cutthroat and often have exclusive contracts. In order to keep the contract (i.e. to produce the 'official test guide') publishing companies often start looking to sweeten the deal with payments to people involved.

This has been reported before with publishers of school and university textbooks paying off head teachers and university faculty heads. I work in a university and this absolutely happens to this day. The same crappy, uninspiring textbooks have been used for certain classes on our curriculum for at least the last 10 years only because they are provided by a certain publisher. When questioned as to why these textbooks were being used over much much better alternatives, the official response was that the textbook publisher had a 5 year contract to supply to the school (which had always been renewed as a matter of course). The unofficial response I got from other teachers 'in the know' was that the certain people in positions of power were basically on the payroll of the publishing company in that they received a small cut of the order value, as well as a nice juicy 'gift' once the contract was renewed.

Corruption is rife in Japan, even in places you wouldn't necessarily expect it.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Are these going to be 20 bigwigs with fat paychecks behind the whole scheme or a few token Officer Taro's who got a few thousand yen for their time and train fare?

3 ( +3 / -0 )

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How petty!

Like Govm't officials don't get pay-back !!!

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0 ( +0 / -0 )

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