Japan Goes High-Tech to Catch Gropers

[Thom Little]

Stumped for years by blatant suspects, Japanese police are using forensic analysis in hunting down gropers on crowded trains by matching tiny fabric fibers from the suspect's palm with the victim's clothes.

The technique used by Osaka Prefectural Police in western Japan helped nab 16 suspects in the first ten months of this year, up from four cases proved the whole of last year, said Hirotsugu Sanuki of the Osaka Police's Science Research Institute.

.......

Groping has long been a problem on crowded subways and other commuter trains in big Japanese cities like Osaka and Tokyo. Passengers are often tightly pressed against each other, an inviting environment for potential offenders.

Under the technique, a special film is pressed on the suspect's palm to collect microfibers about a few hundredths of a millimeter. The samples taken are compared with fiber samples from the suspect's clothes on a powerful microscope, Sanuki said.


http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-japan-police,0,2206864.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Oh oh..... Ahnold may want to cancel that vacay in Japan... I'm just

sayin....

[pinniped]

3. You beat me to the Gropenfuhrer joke.

China could have used something like that last month.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Sorry... I am feeling pretty good tonight.... must be the milk thistle,

coenzyme q10, pycnogenol, lipoic acid, etc. I haven't even started on my glass of wine yet... and that's the truth.

[Wilms]

2. I wondered why Schwarzenegger skipped Japan when he went to Asia. n/t