shoplifting

“We came to Japan to shoplift” – Ring of foreign thieves arrested for stealing nearly 100 Uniqlo items

Arrest leads to connection with over 5,000 more stolen items.

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“Android” arrested for rice ball theft in Japan, Android Woman denies involvement

Android Woman says she wasn’t that android woman.

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Japanese police in Oita no longer banned from shopping at convenience stores while in uniform

Uniformed cops being able to make combini runs is meant to be a win-win for police and the communities they serve.

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Tokyo Police apprehend the “Lego Kid” and accomplices

Train photography may have been the motive for alleged Legomaniacs.

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Man in Fukuoka arrested for shoplifting a 49-inch TV weighing 12 kilos

A 27-inch would have been way easier, but he just got greedy.

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Every move you make, every step you take, this Japanese drug store will be watching you

This store either has a lot of faith in their security cameras or no faith at all.

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Foreign technical trainees accused of shoplifting 12.58 million yen of drugstore goods in Japan

Vietnamese nationals accused of swiping thousands of cosmetic items and medicines.

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Fukuoka senior arrested for stealing a single grape, denies charges

He probably would have gotten away with it too if he didn’t insist on peeling the darn thing.

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Tochigi man arrested for shoplifting animals from hardware store to feed to his cat

Suspect’s pet must have been a finicky feline to need to eat exotic prey like parakeets and hamsters.

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AI security cameras coming to stores in Japan, reduce shoplifting by 40 percent

Now, if a clerk asks to help you, it probably means you’ve been acting shady.

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Shoplifter drags drug store clerk 130 meters by car in Hyogo Prefecture

Tenacious clerk simply refused to let some vitamin-deficient bandits get away.

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Unemployed man and teen schoolgirl team up to steal manga, get arrested in Japan

It sounds like the set-up for a silly anime, but the end of the story is soberingly real.

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Compassionate supermarket manager offers shoplifter a job instead of pressing charges

Instead of resorting to punishment, this supermarket manager tries to solve the root of the problem in this heartwarming tale of second chances.

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Gifu police chase shoplifter with 20 patrol cars and helicopter, fail to catch him

He must have really wanted that make-up…

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Aichi man arrested for shoplifing, throwing own feces at security to escape

On the afternoon of 3 September, a 59-year-old man walked into a shopping mall in Higashi Ward, Nagoya. He then grabbed two packs of roast pork from a supermarket and concealed them as he began to leave the premises without paying. A security guard had noticed the act of petty shoplifting, however, and a chase quickly ensued.

The perpetrator was no match for the younger and more agile guard, who managed to catch the man before escaping out the parking garage. However, just as the security guard grabbed the man’s shoulder to turn him around, he was struck by an unexpected counter-attack of the most smelly kind.

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College students “go shoplifting,” document the act with Twitpics

Someone believed to be a college student recently posted an image of another college girl shoplifting food on Twitter. According to the photos, she girls stole some onigiri and what appear to be two cups of instant noodles.

This is just the latest installment in the recently growing fad of posting obnoxious or illegal behavior on Twitter with the apparent aim of receiving hate posts from other netizens. This tweet was no different, receiving scorn and speculation for scores of watchers.

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Elderly these days: older Tokyoites are getting very sticky fingers

Tokyo police announced this week that, for the first time since they started keeping detailed statistics, the number of elderly shoplifters has exceeded the number of juveniles. So much for the “you kids these days” rant, Oba-chan.

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Shoplifting becomes an increasingly difficult problem for Japanese officers

According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the number of shoplifting cases on record has been at a steady high for the past 10 years or so. In 2012 there were a total of 135,000 documented cases nation-wide. Granted, Japan’s crime rate is less than one-fourth that of the United States according to some sources, but it still ranks in as having the sixth highest crime rate in the world. For shoplifting in particular, the problem appears to lie less with the will of the law enforcement and more with the attitudes of society. Many individuals will become angry and defensive on behalf of the thieving criminals, as though having beat the shop’s security system makes it acceptable to have stolen something in the first place! This has caused quite a few problems for security officials.

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