Two high-ranking police officials resigned Tuesday as an expression of responsibility for their misconduct amid a public outcry that they deserved even heavier punishment. In fact, such was the degree of public disgust that the resignations of the disgraced officials, Mr. Yoshiyuki Nakada, head of the National Police Agency's Kanto Regional Police Bureau, and Mr. Koji Kobayashi, Niigata prefectural police chief, have prompted no sympathy.

It was disclosed last month that the pair and two other prefectural police officials had been wining, dining and playing mah-jongg at a Niigata hotel on the day a girl held captive for more than nine years was found. Mr. Nakada was visiting Niigata Prefecture under orders to conduct an inspection and to bolster morale among local police following a series of scandals over the past year. But he inspected only one police station for about an hour and went to the hotel without visiting the prefectural police headquarters.

This entire scandal began with the failure of the Niigata police's failure to take appropriate action soon after the girl was reported missing -- a fact that only recently became known. In compiling a list of suspects in the early stages of her captivity, the police overlooked the actual abductor, who had been convicted of a similar crime in the past. If the Niigata police had followed basic procedures during their initial investigation into the case, the girl would never have had to undergo such an inhuman ordeal.