The long arm of the paw - part II

A couple of days ago, I was (perhaps unfairly) lampooning cops in Thailand for using images of Hello Kitty to shame officers of the law who failed to meet the high standards expected in the crack Crime  Suppression Division.

Now, to my unabashed joy, I find myself fully justified in ragging the Thai cops. You see, when the story broke about the Kitty armbands, the Japanese media (having little else to do these days) placed hundreds of calls to the Thai police to confirm that this odd plan was genuine. Somewhere among those calls, it seems, someone asked Bangkok's finest whether they had actually paid Sanrio for the copyright to use Kitty's delicious little face as part of their loony scheme.

The Crime Suppression Division, while it may be very good at suppressing some crimes (like being a tourist, or being the democratically elected president), is evidently not terribly good at spotting MASSIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT when it is carried out by its own senior officers. The plan, I understand, has been abandoned, presumably while the CSD comes up with some equally cute character to perform the same embarrassment function when applied to errant officers' uniforms.

May I suggest another theft from Japan? Of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's curious mascot. The more you look at this little fellow, the more he actually is quite like so many of Tokyo's finest...poorly equipped for crime-fighting and, er, constantly caught with his pants down.