When I read it, it sounds like that 25 year old lady was definitely disrepectful and made this mild infraction much worse after she broke the law, had a big attitude, tried to escape and slapped the police in the face. What does she expect? I have no sympathy for her and her disgusting attitude appears to expect the police to speak English in Japan. She is is living in Japan, she should learn Japanese or at least feel sorry for the fact that she doesn’t speak the language. If it was a Japanese guy in the same situation in her home country of New Zealand, I am sure they would have acted in a similar manner.
I know in the USA, if you don’t speak English the cops already have an attitude themselves, then if you give them attitude you are in big trouble. After this if you try to run away and when they try to stop you, you smack them twice in the face, you are in for some big trouble. Hell, if you were a guy and you did that, they might even try to sneak in a few kidney punches when no one was looking. She should be immediately deported and never allowed in Japan again.
I’m in total agreement with you Hobart, she should have been more respectful to the police.
I completely understand the owner’s anger, however, his actions are not completely acceptable and why did the police officer demand to see her passport? Is it a criminal offense in Japan to park in private space? They could have just towed her car… And if his women couldn’t speak Japanese why didn’t she call the friend she just visited to help her? Too many unknowns here. However, she had no right to slap the officer, as you said Hobart, this sort of thing in the US would surely land you in jail.
She tries to escape and then pimp slaps a police officer. I say she got off lightly and she should be thankful she only got a week in jail. Ugly Foreign Syndrome at its best.
Yeah, she definitely got off easy. At a VERY minimum she should have not only served the time in jail, but deported as well. Never being allowed to step foot in Japan again. You do NOT slap a police officer - PERIOD! No matter how rude, disrespectful, inept, corrupt, etc, they seem. It’s just not done.
This is just about a bunch of cops on a power trip. Notice the limp-wristed British Embassy official’s response. Pathetic. Clearly he has no interest in trying to ensure the Japanese obey their own laws. No-one is asking for gunboats. Simply that the law is applied. Her Japanese lawyer understands this.
Why should she speak Japanese ? Does the law only apply to people who speak Japanese ? Do you think this would have happened to Bill Gates ? He doesn’t speak Japanese. Is not speaking Japanese a criminal offence ? “F**k her, she doesn’t speak Japanese, throw her in the cells for a week. That’ll teach her.” Nice.
I think they should have cut off both her arms and made her eat them. Then they should have cut the rest of her into little pieces and deported each piece to a different country. Then they should have rounded up all her friends and… etc etc
The girl was clearly acting like an imbecile, at the least. Where I come from you don’t try to flee when you see a police officer and for heavens’ sake NEVER physically assualt a cop when he tries to detain you. Sheesh. Some people have no freakin’ common sense.
This is hardly unique to Japanese cops. Backup overkill like that isn’t uncommon in America as well. A suspect goes in peacefully, you only need one cop. But if the suspect starts getting violent - they call in practically the whole SWAT team.
[quote]John Jones, 43, a jeweller from London was held in solitary confinement for 20 days before being fined ?150,000 (US$1,280) for trying to sell a World Cup football ticket on behalf of a friend.
“He admitted to the offence [of touting] so should have been allowed to pay a fine and then be released within two days,” said his lawyer, Akira Takashima.
“At big events there are a lot of ticket touts, and Japanese people frequently do it in front of the police but are not arrested,” he said.
[/quote]
Did anybody else read the article all the way down? This guy, on the other hand, sounds like he got a raw deal. Japanese scalpers were all over the World Cup and none of them got arrested - nope, the only person the cops busted was a gaijin. Now there’s a classic case of racist “justice” if that’s what we’re talking about.
What exactly was being held for ? She was allowed free when she paid off the owner of the parking space, and she was never charged. Not even for slapping a policeman.
The ticket tout (for 1 ticket ?) was held in solitary for 20 days before he went to trial, hence still innocent.
If anyone got into trouble where I come from and they can’t speak English they would have interpreters at every step, and if anything happened to someone without them understanding what’s happening there would a big human rights stink. Or at least I hope that’s what happens, if it doesn’t then it’s wrong.
As for what this has to do with Taiwan, doesn’t this sort of thing happen here too ? Japan and Taiwan are both pretty racist places.
When I saw the title, I thought this was yet another topic about Boss Hogg
I think most of you are off based on this. This was overkill and if it had happened in the US the whole US bashing squad on forumosa would be all over this, but since it happened in “civilized” Japan. It is somehow ok for 15 cops to go at a woman?
Now none of us were there but look at the situation. She was illegally parked and willing to leave it. The cops and the parking spot’s owner made a big fuss. No translator was called from what can be referenced from the article. What exactly is the fine for parking in someone else’s private space? What happened and how are the 2 situations different? We also aren’t sure of her behavior.
Japan is a terribly corrupt place, they just hide it better than other countries. This incident in the Taipei times was resolved with a payoff to the parking spot’s owner. I don’t know about you, but that smells like hot wet shit in the sun to me. Japan is also very foreign unfriendly in circumstances. Back in the day, foreign professionals who went to Japan under contract would have there contract revoked and be deported after they had trained soemone else to do his job. Last year, only foreign borkerages were punished for short selling, when such selling was being done by both Japanese and foreign brokerages. This is the same Japan that has farm subsidies of up to 60% of the value of farm production. This means more money is spent supporting farming than is generated by farming on its own. This is the same Japan that had the Japanese nationalist trucks, that blare loud nationalistic anthems and extort shop owners, mysteriously disappear when the World Cup was in Japan. This is the same Japan that says it is illegal to discriminate agaianst foreigners, but if a shop or store does, they won’t do anything about it.
Like I said, Japan is a corrupt place. It’s percentage of crime as GDP is higher than Italy’s. Don’t believe the fluff. This is worse than when they said the sex trade in Japan was suffering because not enough foreigners as before were using their services.
F$&% them and F#^$ their version of that Asian racist discriminatory crap.
[quote=“hexuan”]This is just about a bunch of cops on a power trip. Notice the limp-wristed British Embassy official’s response. Pathetic. Clearly he has no interest in trying to ensure the Japanese obey their own laws. No-one is asking for gunboats. Simply that the law is applied. Her Japanese lawyer understands this.
Why should she speak Japanese ? Does the law only apply to people who speak Japanese ? Do you think this would have happened to Bill Gates ? He doesn’t speak Japanese. Is not speaking Japanese a criminal offence ? “F**k her, she doesn’t speak Japanese, throw her in the cells for a week. That’ll teach her.” Nice.
Deported ? What planet are you on ?[/quote]
Cmon Hexuan, read this from the article:
[quote]“They could not speak English, I could not speak Japanese, we weren’t getting anywhere and I started to get annoyed,” admitted the young woman.
After a heated exchange, Kalia said she jumped into her car to escape, but the policeman forcefully grabbed her arm “so I slapped him two times across the face.”
[/quote]
Oh, yeah, maybe, but as a foreigner getting in some kind of “situation” here, you will be disadvantaged as well. That happened to me once, basically because some jerk didn’t look back when backing out of a parking space. He tried to get the police after me, more or less claiming that I somehow managed to drive sideways into him. It took my father in law to get some money for the repairs out of that prick.
I posted it in here because there are a lot of arrogant foreigners “Living in Taiwan” that remind me of the lady in this article.
They do something stupid, or run around Taiwan with an attitude like the own the place and call the police or the people racist when in fact many times they got it all backwards.
Ugly foreigners? I know a few. Jeez, I am getting fat and losing my hair, but then, my missus doesn’t seem to mind. I know a few foreigners who’s unable to pick up even the cornermonsters in Poxy.
…Hobart winds up, swings… and the nail is hit firmly on the head… couldn’t agree more… the huge number of arrogant, ignorant, and completely disrespectful foreigners living in Taiwan has on many an occasion made me truly embarassed to be a foreigner… :!:
The photo caption made it sound like she was innocent of anything beyond a parking violation; I didn’t see the story until this thread came up here.
I can see assaulting a cop if he’s trying to rape a female motorist in a dark area (that’s happened at least twice in the last six months in Washington), but this woman was clearly the one at fault for getting frustrated with the language barrier and slapping the cop.
This is hardly unique to Japanese cops. Backup overkill like that isn’t uncommon in America as well. A suspect goes in peacefully, you only need one cop. But if the suspect starts getting violent - they call in practically the whole SWAT team.[/quote]
Yeah, they called in three cops (two patrol cars) to chase me down for riding my bicycle at night in Park Ridge, Illinois. That’s pretty much the entire night-time police force. No, I’m not joking.
No question the woman was at fault. She lost control and acted stupidly. But people do that for christssake. I’ve run away from the police in Taiwn myself, because I wasn;t thinking. It’s no excuse to lock them up for weeks without charges or access to someone who speaks your own language. Basically, doing something wrong does not deprivce you of your human rights.
And at least some people noticed the other story. The guy who sold his friend’s ticket to game (or was it a show). Did he deserve it too?
I think there are two important points in this article:
(1) The woman behaved in a totally inappropriate way. She was totally out of line and obviously sadly ignorant of the most basic aspects of Japanese culture. All she really needed to do was bow her head and mumble “sumi masen” a hundred times and she probably could have driven away.
(2) The way she seems to have been treated by the Japanese police after her arrest seems inexcusable. Yes, she had committed a crime (assaulting a police officer) but it seems once she was in custody she was not given access to an interpreter or able to contact her embassy. Even the Taiwanese police could do better than that.
[quote=“wix”]I think there are two important points in this article:
(1) The woman behaved in a totally inappropriate way. She was totally out of line and obviously sadly ignorant of the most basic aspects of Japanese culture. All she really needed to do was bow her head and mumble “sumi masen” a hundred times and she probably could have driven away.
(2) The way she seems to have been treated by the Japanese police after her arrest seems inexcusable. Yes, she had committed a crime (assaulting a police officer) but it seems once she was in custody she was not given access to an interpreter or able to contact her embassy. Even the Taiwanese police could do better than that.[/quote]
Good points, Wix … and I’ll add a third to that. Her embassy should have been more proactive, especially after the event to force some change. It’s not like the UK is somewhere like Guinea-Bissau with no international power. Enough pressure from major international powers like the UK can effect some change in situations like this, if it’s applied properly. Just like the US could effect some positive changes in terms of “human rights” if they really tried. But then again, they’ve put a lot of pressure on Israel lately and they’re still firing missles at the cars of Hamas leaders whether or not the US tells them not to … so maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about!
