The Kanagawa Prefectural Police has apparently run amok. One day after nine senior current and former officers were referred to public prosecutors on suspicion of involvement in the coverup of a fellow officer's drug use, the prefectural police headquarters meekly announced that a current and a former police sergeant had been arrested on charges of attempting to extort money from a fellow officer. Over the past two months, the nation has been treated almost to a never-ending parade of police sins and vices in that prefecture -- everything from hazing among fellow officers to police violence, sexual harassment, whoring and shoplifting. What ever happened to our vaunted police system that prided itself for its efficiency in putting criminals to justice and making Japan one of the safest societies in the world?

Kanagawa, of course, is just one of the nation's 47 prefectures and the squalid affairs that have emerged from this 15,000-member police force hopefully are not illustrative of our entire law-enforcement institution. Of course, we should remember that every barrel contains a few bad apples. What is important is that we have a system where bad apples can be duly exposed and removed before they contaminate the rest. The uncovering of an alarming string of police wrongdoings in Kanagawa means the government and the National Police Agency must act promptly to overhaul the nation's police management system.

One obvious lesson from the systematic coverup and destruction of evidence of drug use by a police assistant inspector -- a case that involved the head of the prefectural police -- is that the police can no longer be entrusted to police themselves without an independent system of check and balance. The scandal shows that as an institution the police force is eager to do everything to protect its own. The rogue assistant inspector, who triggered the whole sordid affair in December 1996, told colleagues that he had been injected with amphetamines by his girlfriend, making the confession on the very day the Kanagawa police was to launch a prefectural antidrug abuse campaign.