Japan Today: Reliably Shoddy, Caveat Lector

The title, and link: Policewoman forgets gun in restroom, continuing an odd trend in Japan - Japan Today https://share.google/Zxanb7KUEePFnElli Now, you might expect from the title that Japanese police routinely misplace or forget their weapons. A brief and shallow dig reveals that this is not so: only two other such incidents have been reported this year, and none in 2024. In fact, you have to go back several years to find more than two 🕝 incidents occurring in a single year. (For comparison, The Trace reports that it reviewed records of "100 law enforcement agencies [in the US] and found that they had collectively reported the loss or theft of at least 1,781 guns between 2008 and 2017.") A trend, in fact, and one that belies another problem with the story: the claim that this is "odd", with the suggestion that Japanese police are uniquely unprofessional. Typical of JT's occasional inhouse story (nearly all news per se comes via wire services- JT employs moderators, not journalists.) What does it matter? This kind of report reinforces the biases and soft racism about Japan shared by many foreigners, both here and abroad. Namely, that Japanese officialdomm is peopled with total incompetents.