The shocking crime in which a man attacked a police box in the city of Toyama, stabbed an officer to death and stole his handgun, and went on to use the weapon to kill a construction company security guard in front of a nearby elementary school is only the latest in a series of incidents in which uniformed police officers have been assaulted by perpetrators who wanted their gun.
Just this April, the National Police Agency gave instructions to police organizations across the country to be on the alert against such attacks — with a sense of crisis that officers' guns are constantly being targeted — and to perform drills to guard against officers being assaulted on the street or in police boxes. Steps must be taken to prevent such incidents from ever happening again.
The nation's police box system, which has also become known overseas by its Japanese name — koban — functions as a pivot of neighborhood security and safety. While serving on the local front line during emergencies, officers stationed in police boxes serve multiple roles, from dealing with petty crimes to handling everyday complaints from neighborhood residents. That one such koban in Toyama was attacked Tuesday by a suspect armed with multiple knives, who killed the 46-year-old officer on duty and took his gun to shoot a security guard, was disturbing. Before he was shot and subdued by police on the elementary school's premises, the suspect reportedly fired two shots into the school building. Thankfully, none of the school staff or roughly 400 children there at the time were harmed.