Instants of Insanity

Osaka PD puts all it has into a car chase. And we mean everything

Toward the end of The Professional, Detective Stansfield is about to go after hitman Leon, and Stansfield tells his second in command “Get me everyone.” When his second asks what he means, he screams “I… mean… EVERYONE.” Something like that must have happened in Osaka, Japan, when the police department got a bead on a man wanted for assaulting police officers.

Twenty-seven-year-old Hirofumi Fukuda, driving a white Lexus sedan, was approached by a patrol car for running red lights. When he saw the police, he did what any self-respecting lawbreaker would do: he took off. That’s the easy part. The double-take comes when it took 2,240 police officers, 460 police cars, and one helicopter two hours to catch the man. The city of Osaka is just 85.4 square miles — about the size of Baltimore. Which is a lot of police in a little space looking for one single guy. And in fact, they didn’t catch him: he crashed into a bridge support and sustained minor injuries. If he ever gets out of prison, he’ll be a great guy to play Grand Theft Auto IV with.

Click to view the video report (Japanese)

Tags: cars

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 27th, 2008 at 10:24 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.