Municipal Police
Police Law
The reform of the police system had already become essential when the General Headquarters ordered the abolition of the Special Higher Police system on October 4, 1945, immediately after the occupation, and declared the five major reform policies on October 11, advocating the liberation of the Japanese people from despotic politics, and as measures for the dissolution of the Ministry of Home Affairs were taken one by one. (Omitted) The new Constitution and the new Local Autonomy Law were enforced on May 3, 1947. On September 16, 1947, General MacArthur sent a letter to the then Prime Minister Katayama, clarifying his intentions regarding the new police system. (Omitted)
Cities and towns shall have municipal police, and their chiefs shall be appointed and dismissed by the Public Safety Commission. The National Rural Police shall be established in prefectures and shall be directed by the Public Safety Commission. A National Public Safety Commission shall be established at the center. There is no command relationship between the municipal police and the national rural police, but they shall maintain contact regarding communications and other technical matters. This is done with the intention of preventing the national police from seizing actual power. However, in times of emergency, the Prime Minister may direct the prefectural police at the request of the National Public Safety Commission. However, even in this case, the approval of the National Diet must be obtained within 20 days.
The Katayama Cabinet immediately began drafting the Police Law and submitted it to the Diet, and the bill passed the Diet on December 7, 1947.
The Police Law inherited the contents of the MacArthur letter as they were, establishing both the National Rural Police and the municipal police, and established prefectural and municipal public safety commissions for the operation and management of the police, and it was decided to be implemented from March 7, 1947. (*This is as written in the original text, but it may be 1948.)
According to Wikipedia
Pre-war Japanese police were operated under a centralized system by the Police Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs and acted based on old laws such as the Peace Preservation Law. However, after Japan was defeated in the Pacific War (World War II) and placed under the control of the Allied Forces, the GHQ Civil Information and Education Section condemned the Japanese police organization as a non-democratic police system aimed at maintaining and defending the imperial system, and demanded a comprehensive review, including the abolition of the Ministry of Home Affairs.
On September 3, 1947, the 46th Prime Minister Tetsu Katayama submitted a "Police System Reorganization Plan" centered on the "Public Safety Agency Establishment Bill" to GHQ Commander-in-Chief Douglas MacArthur. In response, MacArthur sent a letter dated the 16th of the same month, instructing the drafting of the Police Law. The Police Law bill, drafted based on the contents of the letter, was passed and enacted at the 1st Special Diet session and promulgated in the Official Gazette on December 17 of the same year. The Ministry of Home Affairs ended its operations at the end of that year and was reorganized into the Ministry of Home Affairs, and on March 6, 1948, the Ministry of Home Affairs was also dissolved along with the enforcement of this law.
As a form of decentralization of the police, the municipal police placed a heavy financial burden on local governments, and excessive fragmentation of the police organization led to excessive turf wars, making wide-area investigations difficult. In addition, problems arose such as the responsibility for national public safety becoming unclear because the National Rural Police and the municipal police were independent and equal. Furthermore, due to the founding of the People's Republic of China and the intensification of the Cold War between East and West, the occupation policy of GHQ, the parent of the municipal police, also began to turn rapidly to the right, and movements to revive the centralization of the police system began to emerge (see Reverse Course).
Public Safety Commission
It is the Public Safety Commission that operates and manages the new police system. The police chief is appointed by the Public Safety Commission. Therefore, in order to implement the new police system, public safety commissioners must first be appointed.
The first public safety commissioners in Toyohashi City were appointed on February 13, 1948, upon the recommendation of the mayor and with the approval of the city council. (Omitted)
Thus, the Public Safety Commission appointed Sacho Ono as the Toyohashi City Police Chief. The appointment ceremony and oath ceremony were held on March 7, the day the Police Law was enforced, and the Toyohashi City Police was officially launched.
The Police Law is also based on the MacArthur letter. Since it is a letter issued in the name of MacArthur as an individual, not in the name of the General Headquarters, I think it is a good point that his way of thinking is clearly understood. This may be because the General Headquarters itself could not go that far because it would cause a complete conflict of authority with the Ministry of Home Affairs, so it became a letter from MacArthur as an individual.
On April 28, 1952, when the San Francisco Peace Treaty came into effect and Japan regained its independence and sovereignty, police system reform began to fundamentally solve the problems inherent in the old Police Law, and on June 8, 1954, the new Police Law, which completely revised the old Police Law, was promulgated and enforced from July 1 of the same year. The new Police Law abolished the dual system of the National Rural Police and the municipal police, established the National Police Agency and prefectural police, introduced a local police officer system in which police superintendents and above in prefectural police are national public servants, and re-centralized the Japanese police organization. In addition, to clarify the responsibility of the Cabinet, a Minister of State was appointed as the Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission.
In the end, the idealistic division of labor between the municipal police and the national police came to an end as the municipal police were swallowed up by the National Rural Police due to the reverse course.
I think the system where the city's Public Safety Commission appoints the police chief is not a bad mechanism. However, I have doubts about whether crime prevention can be achieved in that way in modern times when the scale of crime is increasing. However, because the scale of crime is increasing, it is a problem that public safety maintenance and criminal investigation are carried out by the patience of each local government regarding the contradictions in the overall composition. Therefore, a framework such as a municipal police as a point of contact (personnel authority lies with the basic municipal public safety commission), a national rural police that conducts wide-area police (personnel authority lies with the prefectural public safety commission), and a national public safety commission that handles federal police-like parts might be good.
Toyohashi City Police
Since a democratic police must be a police for the citizens, the police station took great pains to cultivate the attitude of police officers who are close to the citizens.
In order to create a police force that is close to the citizens, the police also adopted female police officers as a new project for the first time since the beginning of the police. (Omitted)
A democratic attitude toward citizens is two sides of the same coin as democratic operation within the station. For the democratization of the station, (omitted) they made efforts to let a friendly and bright atmosphere drift through the stern station. However, in order to create a democratic police for the citizens, it is not enough to democratize the organization or create democratic service regulations. The police must constantly seek criticism from citizens and be operated based on that criticism. In April 1948, the police station installed "Civil Police Boxes" at 25 locations within its jurisdiction and sought letters from citizens. (Omitted)
Why Sacho Ono, a former Toyohashi Police Station Chief who came from elsewhere, was chosen as the Mayor of Toyohashi was one question, but if it is said that such efforts to democratize the police were evaluated, that seems to explain it. And it may be that they were tired of the repeated political struggles and preferred a police chief who seemed to have more leadership than a politician. However, the wave of the reverse course also surged into the police, and the municipal police were also absorbed and merged into the Aichi Prefectural Police. In the end, the decentralized ideal police system lasted only about 6 years. For a decentralized system, it may be necessary to focus on this period from the post-war period to before the reverse course and aim for it.
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