Japanese police in August will begin testing a pilot scheme for compiling data on possibly dangerous persons to prevent future attacks by lone actors like that seen in the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the National Police Agency said Monday.
The trial follows a series of high-profile attacks against politicians, seemingly devised and carried out by "lone offenders," or people who commit crimes without links to known groups. In addition to Abe's assassination last July, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was also the target of an attack by a lone individual in April.
Given the difficulties in detecting such individuals before they carry out their attacks, the police aim to speed up their ability to respond by gathering and analyzing information on potential future threats to the public.
Under the pilot scheme, officers at some police headquarters will gather information on individuals deemed particularly dangerous during questioning or other investigative activities and pass the data on to public security officials, who will then assess their threat level.
Depending on the trial's results, the police will consider rolling out the scheme across other headquarters.
The new initiative is among a series of changes introduced in guidelines drawn up by the NPA ahead of the first anniversary of Abe's death. On July 8 last year, he was fatally shot while giving an election stump speech in western Japan's Nara Prefecture.
Kishida was also targeted but left unhurt in a separate incident when an explosive device was thrown at him as he was about to give a speech in Wakayama Prefecture.
An NPA probe of the Abe case said in August last year that the absence of adequate protection in an area behind the former leader had been a factor in the attack taking place.
In response to the incident, the police are continuing to make organizational changes and review their working processes, including through the new guidelines.
The changes include assigning more personnel to protect important persons and prevent cybercrimes, as well as increasing cooperation between departments. They will also crack down further on fraud and other crimes committed by groups that recruit people online, a practice that has been on the rise in recent years.
At a nationwide meeting of police chiefs in Tokyo on Monday, NPA Commissioner General Yasuhiro Tsuyuki said the new guidelines, including those on lone actors, are "aimed at making the police as effective an organization as possible by looking closely at changing circumstances and our present state" following Abe's attack.
