Japan police officer tells visitor reporting lost passport to 'go back to China'
June 20, 2023 (Mainichi Japan)
FUKUOKA -- A sergeant at a police station here told a visitor believed to be a foreigner reporting a lost passport to "go back to China" during an argument on June 15, the Mainichi Shimbun has learned from the police.
Fukuoka Prefectural Police's Higashi Police Station acknowledged the remark as fact and said, "If it is determined as an inappropriate statement during a future investigation we will report the matter to the prefectural police headquarters and take action, including punitive measures."
According to the police, the woman came to the station at around 4 p.m. on June 15 and reported at the lost and found section on the first floor that she had lost her passport at home. A staff member of the accounting division who responded to her inquiry judged that it was unlikely that her passport would be submitted as found property, and urged her to search her home again. The woman, who had initially spoken in Japanese, became agitated and started shouting in a foreign language, then tore up someone else's lost property report that was nearby.
A sergeant at the general affairs division, who was watching the situation, intervened, and the Japanese conversation turned into a foreign language again. She tried to persuade the visitor to speak in Japanese, but the argument escalated. The sergeant, without confirming the woman's place of origin, reportedly told her, "Go back to China." About two hours after the woman arrived at the police station, she left with her family who came to pick her up.
When Naoki Ishiuchi, deputy chief of the police station, noticed the commotion and asked the sergeant, she apparently admitted to making the comment, explaining, "I got a little emotional because I thought she intentionally responded to me in a foreign language when she understands Japanese." Meanwhile, the police station plans to investigate the woman's tearing up of another person's lost property report on suspicion of obstruction of public duties and destruction of official documents.
(Japanese original by Hyelim Ha, Kyushu News Department)
