Your feelings about the following video will probably depend on your own experiences with police on the road, but the officer in the clip has received huge praise here in Japan for handling a potential traffic violation.

In the video, we see the driver of a car about to make a left turn onto a one-way street going the wrong way. Meanwhile a police officer on a motorcycle just happens to be stopped at the red light on the very same street. This would be the urban jungle equivalent of a howler monkey taking a dip in a piranha infested river.

Obviously the person who recorded this incident as it happened was expecting some citation carnage to unfold and switched on their camera just as the car was making its fateful turn. However, in this case the unexpected happened.

The quick-thinking officer gestured to the motorist to stop and go back before committing the offense thus sparing them a fine or worse, a dangerous accident. It was a gesture that touched many who viewed the clip.

“We need more policemen like that.”
“What a nice cop.”
“That’s what they’re job is supposed to be, protecting people rather than handing out fines.”
“Good for him. Rather than trapping him for a violation, he avoided a potential accident.”
“Cops probably do that all the time. We’ve just built up this illusion to how they act.”
“Cool police! The ones around here wouldn’t do something like that.”

Despite the credit many have given the officer, there could have been any number of reasons for him to do what he did. Perhaps he was up on his quota of tickets to hand out and couldn’t be bothered to do that one, or maybe it happened so suddenly that he didn’t have time to consider trapping the driver.

The one comment was also probably on the money in assuming this happens a lot but people, especially those who have had bad experiences themselves, build up an image of all police to be opportunistic abusers of power. In some cases it gets to the point where small incidents like this are seen as remarkable.

The fact is that there are all kinds of police officers, each with unique personalities and moral values be they fat cops, skinny cops, or cops who climb on rocks. There are also tough cops, sissy cops, and even cops with chicken pox.

Now, who wants a hot dog?

Source: YouTube/comb318 via Grape (Japanese)