The Daily Populous Friday April 18th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by cbsnews.com and submitted by Superbuddhapunk

Walking the beat in Japan, a "heaven for cops"

A Japanese bus driver with 29 years of service lost his retirement package worth $84,000 after being fired for stealing $7 from passengers' fares.

Kyoto City sacked the man, who was not named, after he was filmed by the security camera of his bus pilfering 1,000 yen ($7) in 2022.

After he was denied his retirement money of more than 12 million yen ($84,000), the driver sued the city but lost the case.

The verdict was overturned in his favor, with a court ruling that the punishment was excessive.

But on Thursday the Supreme Court delivered a final ruling in the city's favor, reinstating the original penalty.

It ruled that the man's conduct could undermine public trust in the system and the sound operation of the bus service.

In the original incident a group of five passengers entered the bus and paid him 1,150 yen, according to the ruling.

According to the Mainichi newspaper, in February 2022, the 58-year-old driver pocketed a 1,000-yen bill received from a passenger instead of putting it into the fare processing machine. The theft was uncovered when the Kyoto Municipal Transportation Bureau spotted the incident on the bus's dashcam footage, the outlet reported.

Despite being caught on camera, he tried to deny it during a meeting with his superior.

The driver had been reprimanded several times during his career over various incidents, according to the ruling.

This included repeatedly smoking an electronic cigarette while on duty, albeit when there were no passengers on board.

A city bus drives along a street in Kyoto, Japan, on Saturday, April 13, 2024. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

"Each one of the bus drivers works alone and handles public money. We took it very seriously that embezzlement related to this area of our work took place," Shinichi Hirai, an official at Kyoto's public transport bureau, told AFP.

"If our strict measures were not accepted, then our organization could become careless and it could result in eroding the public's trust," he said.

Maro1947 on April 18th, 2025 at 13:17 UTC »

Is it 84K in total or annually?

Seems very low for 30 years of work.

TheAlbrecht2418 on April 18th, 2025 at 13:02 UTC »

> The driver had been reprimanded several times during his career over various incidents, according to the ruling.

I think the $7 worth of fare stolen was what they could prove in court with evidence. There may have been far more discrepancies in terms of number of passengers versus fare collected but for some reason won’t disclose it, because otherwise this does seem extraordinarily excessive for someone that had been driving with them for that long, even for Japan.

_Koke_ on April 18th, 2025 at 12:45 UTC »

Imagine if they did this to cops