Saitama man arrested for calling police 2,060 times in 9 days to yell at them

The Japanese language tends to have a lot of labels for different forms of harassment from the well-known “sexual harassment” and “power harassment” to more obscure forms of abuse like “maternity harassment” and “customer harassment.”

And now it seems that even the police in Japan aren’t safe from harassment. Only a few days ago a businessperson rode his motorbike into the lobby of a police station to complain to them about bad drivers, and now an even more bizarre incident has come to light.

According to the Saitama Prefectural Police, their headquarters received repeated abusive calls from a man telling them they should be fired and calling them “big stupid a-holes” and “tax thieves.”

▼ Having been nearly arrested themselves, our reporters would consider the police rather hardworking

Even more brazen than the verbal abuse hurled at law enforcement was the fact that between 30 September and 8 October a total of 2,060 calls were made. That worked out to an average of one call for every six minutes and resulted in over 27 hours spent on the line with them.

That last number is the most important as this would constitute the crime of obstructing police business. On 28 November, the 67-year-old resident of Kawaguchi City was arrested and admitted to the charges, adding: “I knew the police would come for me someday.”

A motive is still unclear but during the investigation police found, from the suspect’s phone records, that he had probably been doing this for years, though only ramped up his efforts in recent months.

He doesn’t seem overly cooperative with the police, so they may have their work cut out for them to get to the bottom of this. Online commenters about the news could only sit in wonder at what he could have possibly been thinking.

“Sounds like an old man with too much time and no hobbies.”

“There are many different types of people out there.”

“Well, now he can shout at them all day long. It’s perfect for him!”

“He seems to have a marketable job skill as a telephone operator.”

“Think of what you could do with the time and energy it takes to make 2,060 abusive calls.”

Of course, this is an awful act that ties up police resources which may be needed to save lives, but it’s hard not to be in awe at the sheer effort and time management in what the suspect did.

For comparison, similar incidents occurred in 2019 when a 71-year-old Saitama man made about 24,000 abusive calls to his telecom provider and earlier this year when a 48-year-old Saitama man made about 9,000 train seat reservations and canceled them at the last minute. However, while their numbers are huge, both of those cases took place on longer timeframes of over a year or two.

Perhaps some company needs to tap into all this powerful but misguided telephony going on in Saitama recently and set up the most powerful telemarketing firm in the world while giving customer service centers and the police there a much-needed break.

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