Was it unreasonable for the police to arrest Tsuyoshi Kusanagi for public indecency?
One journalist thinks so:
Shuntaro Torigoe, a former editor-in-chief of the Sunday Mainichi weekly magazine, said it was “unreasonable” of the police to arrest the 34-year-old member of the SMAP all-boy group for “public indecency for being naked in a deserted park at 3 a.m.”
When a drunken person is making a lot of noise, police usually offer protection to that person, he said, adding that the police arrested Kusanagi simply because he is a celebrity and that they probably suspected he might have been under the influence of narcotics.
“But this is wrong,” Torigoe said. “It’s pathetic when I see the mass media making such a brouhaha based on a misjudgment by the police” and corporations scrambling to cancel commercials featuring him, he said.
The Akasaka Police Station, which arrested Kusanagki and searched his home, said it continued to receive nonstop telephone calls from his fans, mostly women, in protest at the police actions.
A senior officer at the station said they arrested Kusanagi on the spot “because stripping naked was a clear-cut criminal act. It was not an act that left any room for doubt,” he said.
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