The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (警視庁 Keishichō) serves as the police force for Tokyo metropolis. Founded in 1874, it is headed by a superintendent general, who is appointed by the National Public Safety Commission and approved by the prime minister.
The Metropolitan Police, with a staff of more than 40,000 police officers and over 2,500 civilian personnel, manages 101 stations in the prefecture. It is the largest urban police force in the world. The number of inhabitants per police officer is 290:1.
The main building of the Keishicho is located in the Kasumigaseki part of central Tokyo. Built in 1980, it is 18 stories tall, a large wedge-shaped building with a cylindrical tower, it is easily seen from the street and a well-known landmark.
Read more about Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department: Organization, Ranks and Insignia, Personnel and Equipment, Stations, Gallery, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words tokyo, metropolitan, police and/or department:
“Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession of a police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“All his works might well enough be embraced under the title of one of them, a good specimen brick, “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.” Of this department he is the Chief Professor in the World’s University, and even leaves Plutarch behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)