A Tokyo police officer was arrested Friday on suspicion of paying for sex with a 16-year-old girl he met through an Internet dating service for mobile phone users, police said.
On Aug. 10, Takahito Sakai, 29, a senior officer at the Azabu Police Station, paid the girl, a junior high school student from Saitama Prefecture, 40,000 yen for sex at a hotel in Ikebukuro, knowing she was a minor, they said.
Sakai reportedly told investigators he also paid for sex with two to three other underage girls.
"I wanted to pick up girls," Sakai was quoted as saying. "But I regret having done an act that is unbecoming of a police officer."
Sakai, a Tokyo resident, posed as a 27-year-old company employee when he met the girl through the dating service in late July, according to police.
Sakai first confessed in mid-September to one of his bosses that he had paid for sex with underage girls, which is a violation of the Anti-Juvenile Prostitution Law. The confession came after he received an e-mail from another girl, 15, whom he met through the dating service that said she had been taken into police custody on suspicion of soliciting sex.
The girl's claim, however, turned out to be false, according to police.