The Tokyo High Court on Thursday ordered the Tokyo Metropolitan Government to pay ¥660,000 ($4,390) to a South Asian woman in her 50s and her 8-year-old daughter over the Metropolitan Police Department’s handling of a park dispute.
Presiding Judge Osamu Hagimoto partially overturned a lower court decision that dismissed their original ¥4.4 million claim.
According to the ruling, in June 2021 at a park, an unfamiliar man confronted the woman, alleging that her daughter had kicked his son. After questioning those involved, police officers provided the man with the woman’s address, name and phone number on the condition they be used for civil litigation.
The man later posted numerous discriminatory messages on social media that included the woman’s personal information.
Judge Hagimoto found the man had repeatedly behaved aggressively, making repeated violent and abusive remarks out of discriminatory motives at the scene and pointed out that the officers could have recognized the risk he would engage in defamation if he learned the woman’s personal details.
The court held that, “even taking the woman’s consent into account,” the officers breached their duty of care and acted unlawfully.
The plaintiff had also claimed an officer told the daughter, “It was you who kicked him anyway,” but the court, as the lower court had, rejected this allegation, saying such conduct from a police officer was “hard to readily assume.”
After the ruling, an attorney for the plaintiffs told reporters in Tokyo that while the decision could be called a partial victory, it was “far from satisfactory in light of the purpose of the lawsuit.”
Hiroyuki Shoji, head of the Metropolitan Police Department’s litigation affairs division, said, “We will carefully examine the ruling and consider our next steps.”
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