In what has regrettably become a matter of routine recently, a senior regional police official has again publicly apologized for the ineffective handling by local police of a major case of alleged criminal activity. The latest instance involves the slowness of the Aichi Prefectural Police to begin investigating the alleged extortion from a 15-year-old Nagoya junior high school boy by some of his classmates, or former classmates, of more than 50 million yen over a nine-month period. Mr. Ken Nakajima, chief of the prefectural force's safety-affairs department, acknowledged the failure to act even though the boy and his desperate mother sought assistance from the Midori Police Station last July.

The police earlier had insisted they did not follow up on the case because the boy refused to provide necessary pertinent details, and thus no official complaint had been filed. That begs the question of why at least a rudimentary investigation was not begun since the boy did give the names of three of the classmates involved. His fearful explanation that he had just been "lending" the money should have raised suspicions.

This is especially true since it is known that the Midori Police Station also failed to take action on three other reported incidents involving the same three 15-year-old boys, who along with a fourth youth have now been arrested and are said to have confessed. Earlier the police said in their own defense that they had been busy with other cases at the time. How busy could they have been that they failed to begin looking into this case for nine months, after the terrified boy and his mother had handed over such an immense amount of money?