Japanese police officer falsely accused of stealing bullets

A Nara-Nishi police station where an officer is on leave due to depression, he was falsely accused of stealing bullets. I felt terrified every day, the officer said. Nanami Watanabe NARA -- A police officer here was harangued and was pressured by an interrogator to confess after he was falsely accused of theft, according to the interrogation recordings.

The police believed that five bullets had gone missing, but it was later determined that the live rounds were never delivered to the Nara-Nishi Police Station in question.

An interrogator tells the officer, We know you did it. It has already been confirmed. The officer is considering submitting the audio recordings as evidence in a civil suit against the police in his 20 s. He is on leave due to depression after being accused for days of being a criminal.

I was terrified every day, the officer said.

In January, the Nara prefectural police reported that the Nara-Nishi Police Station had lost five rounds of life ammunition.

The officer was voluntarily interrogated over a number of days because he was conducting a check on a gun safe on the morning of the loss, according to the prefectural police.

The police later determined that live rounds were not supplied to the police station due to a mistake by the prefectural police.

The recordings released by the officer's side showed that he denied the allegation of theft, saying, I really don't remember having the live ammunition I don't remember taking them. But the interrogator continued, saying, At any rate, you did it. We already confirmed that you did it. I did it. Just say, I did it. The interrogator pressured the officer, and that is all you need to say. That is the only thing. If you want to save your family, you have to confess. The police officer told reporters while being interrogated that they wanted to say I did it just to get out of there as soon as possible, but I couldn't say it because I really didn't remember. Sumio Hamada, a professor emeritus of legal psychology at Nara Women's University, criticized the interrogation as inappropriate.

No matter how many times the officer said he didn't do it, the interrogator wouldn't listen to him. He felt so helpless that he was on the verge of making a false confession, Hamada said.