Notorious Shinjuku train groper was a cop

While train groper (chikan) stories are two a penny, a somewhat more sensational one grabbed the headlines recently: someone accused of groping a passenger and caught at Shinjuku Station fled across the tracks, causing delays to four major JR lines for 50 minutes, including the Yamanote Line. Far from escaping, though, the man seriously injured himself and is currently hospitalized.

The incident took place on October 28 at around 11:15 p.m.

Well, it now turns out that the suspect was none other than a police officer!

It doesn’t bode well for your police force, already under fire for how it treats rape and sexual assault allegations (see the high-profile Shiori Ito case), when your own officers are the ones doing the groping.

It seems that the suspect is a cop in his forties working in the organized crime division. He was on his way home after drinking with colleagues when he is alleged to have groped a woman on the train.

No doubt embarrassed by the incident, it took the police several days to inform the media about the suspect’s job. They have promised to “conduct an investigation and deal with it severely.”

This isn’t the first time that a groper has tried to evade justice by jumping onto the train tracks — and injuring themselves. We reported on a similar case last December where the fleeing groper broke his hip.