Japanese "police" fight more crime

I heard this from a Japanese acquaintance:

She knows a British guy who was moving recently and while moving he decided to put some of his bigger unneeded items in the garbage. Unfortunately, this hardened criminal foreigner put it out without calling for pickup, in other words, he violated the garbage rules.

The landlord saw it and decided to call the "police" on this thug. The cops, displaying more skill and daring than they did when they tried to arrest the murder suspect in the slaying of a young British woman last spring, responded immediately and took said crook into custody. The held him for 5 hours, getting detailed information about such things as his salary etc (very pertinent to this felony.) Ultimately, he was released. He was very lucky that they did not keep him prisoner for 21 days.

The woman who told me this was stunned by it, calling Kanagawa's finest "idiots." Interestingly, when she was imitating the landlord calling the cops, she was using the term gaijin in a way that she assumed the landlord would. (She was imitating the landlord as if the landlord hated foreigners.) Sort of like some Americans use the N-word, or "gook" or similar. But of course, we hear especially from foreign apologists that gaijin is a neutral term. I have, however, given up on expecting that to change.

It is interesting that most Japanese seem to be as surprised and disgusted at this sort of thing as non-Japanese are. At least the ones whom I know and speak with who may not represent the average person react that way. I suspect that if the Japanese media ever started picking up on this kind of thing consistently and thoroughly, there would be embarrassment and negative reactions on the part of people towards the clowns doing it. But, that will never happen. These issues are largely ignored, and even if they did, you'd find a lot of foreign apologists defending the abuses of power in order to make sure their own little boat wasn't rocked.

This happened in Kanagawa where I used to live. The garbage collection rules are routinely violated there. If they detained everyone who does this, most of Kanagawa would be in police custody. Including the cops, I suspect.