Photo/Illutration Akiteru Nogawa, Kagoshima prefectural police chief, testifies before a prefectural assembly committee on June 11. (Etsuo Tomita)

KAGOSHIMA–The prefectural police chief here, accused by a whistleblower of covering up his officers’ criminal acts, reiterated his denial of the allegations on June 11 before an investigatory committee. 

“I have taken necessary actions and never given any instructions to cover up anything,” Akiteru Nogawa told a prefectural assembly committee investigating the allegations.

The 10-member committee questioned Nogawa after his former subordinate, Takashi Honda, was arrested last month on suspicion of leaking internal documents to a journalist.

Honda, a former head of the prefectural police’s community safety department, is accusing Nogawa of failing to investigate police officers suspected of secretly filming a woman in a toilet and stalking another woman.

At a court session on June 5, Honda, 60, said he leaked the information because he was “disappointed with the prefectural police covering up inconvenient truths.”

According to Honda, Nogawa was reluctant to open investigations on the officers, offering weak justifications such as “giving them one last chance” and “letting them off the hook for now.”

Honda sent the internal documents to a journalist in Sapporo in late March, shortly after he retired from the police force.

The documents included the name and other personal information of the victim of the stalking case who did not want her identity made public.

Nogawa pledged to the committee to restore trust in the prefectural police as soon as possible.

However, in the face of growing public outrage over the allegations, the committee made a rare decision to hold a follow-up session at a later date to further investigate the case.

(This article was written by Hayato Kaji and Kenta Iijima.)

Related News