This just reinforces my impression after years of observing Japanese police behavior: dumb, ineffective, and all too often useless. More worried about statistics and quotas than public safety. Not documenting cases they don’t think they can solve so their numbers look better. Ignoring real threats and nuisances to the public. And traffic cops can be the worst. Setting up speed traps along lonely stretches of country road that have absurdly low speed limits, while forever ignoring and leaving unchecked streets with blind corners, speeding traffic, and endangered pedestrians. Never coming out in darkness or poor weather when they are needed most. Spewing out tickets for the most piddling offenses just because it’s ticketing season. Almost never ticketing taxis or trucks even when they are doing incredibly dangerous, stupid stuff right in front of the cops. And so on and so forth.

If I am surprised by anything in this video, it’s that the police actually kept going after the guy and eventually caught him (I figure he must have run out of gas or something). I have seen motorcycle traffic cops at an intersection doing “gotcha” duty just let a bozo motorcyclist run off after they stopped him for trying to run a red light. The bozo started off in spurts and one cop protested while the other just stood there; when the bozo eventually sped off, neither of the two cops mounted their cycles to go after him. The idiots didn’t even write down his plate number. They just went back to work, handing out tickets to scooter drivers with 50cc bikes who committed the grievously dangerous crime of making a right turn in a 3-lane street.

Hrmm… can you tell I regard these clowns with contempt?