It is a sad commentary on the times when the nation's police forces, which must rely on the public's trust to be effective, find themselves under a cloud of suspicion over repeated incidents of questionable, even criminal, behavior by their members. Yet that is the situation confronting Japan's law-enforcement officials, as scandals involving illegal acts by police officers seem to erupt day after day. No wonder the National Police Agency is belatedly seeking to calm the mounting public uproar by proposing the first changes in the Police Law since it came into force in 1954.

The NPA says the revision bill it has drafted would go far to end the rash of scandals by requiring prefectural public-safety commissions to investigate suspected illegal acts by local police officers. The bill, to be submitted to the next regular session of the Diet in January, also seeks to limit the number of times that national and prefectural public-safety commission members can be reappointed. It is doubtless true, as the NPA says, that commission members risk losing their presumed objectivity concerning the police if they remain in their posts for extended periods. It is equally true, however, that commission members should be rigorously selected from the start and that the posts should not be postretirement sinecures.

The proposed revision comes in the wake of a series of major scandals stemming from repeated cases of improper behavior, and subsequent official coverups, involving the Kanagawa Prefectural Police. The NPA announced its plans only days after prosecutors indicted a former chief of the Kanagawa police and four other senior officers there for concealing the admitted habitual use of stimulant drugs by one of their fellow officers. The coverup dates back to 1996, when the officer who confessed to the drug use was instead dismissed for conducting an extramarital affair. He and his former girlfriend were indicted last month for suspected possession and use of amphetamines.