What's the first thing that comes to mind when you read this? Apparently police in central Japan are fed up with numerous mugging cases that have propped up all over the city. In these instances, the culprits are targeting young women and appear to be running off with their bags.

Alright, so what solution do they come up with? Sure, catching them is foremost in their minds but what is the exact plan? For some weird, and inexplicable reason, the cops were told/or decided that undercover operation would be the best option. Okay, so that is not strange in itself. But here's the real kicker. They decided to dress as women themselves, posing as potential victims to bait the bad guys. I don't mean that folks are just getting out of their uniforms and dabbing casual wear. Oh no, they got together a bunch of male police officers and dolled them up as women. 

First things first. I am not pointing out that cross-dressing itself is the weird idea here. Sure, it seems a tad excessive to get any police officer, male or female, dressed up in really fancy attire (surely that costs a bit of money?). But the fact that they cross-dress? Meh.

What I found utterly strange was the fact that no female police officers were assigned for such duties. I mean there are female police officers in those stations so surely it made more sense? When you think about it, if the mugger realized that the would-be victim was a slim yet sturdy male who happened to have donned a fancy top and skirt, he wouldn't exactly be thinking 'It will be a breeze to snatch that bag. No way he will punch me in the face'.

Well, it's not all cupcakes for the cross-dressing cops. Apparently folks haven't been that bothered by the end-result of their dressing up. In fact, they might have had a few 'nudge nudge wink wink' type of invitations. More than once. Bet they didn't see that coming!

While on the topic of female officers, I did read a while back that they might be protected from harsher assignments. Some folks have also pointed out that these officers don't get tough projects, are required to wear skirts and that they didn't carry any weapons. In fact, until recently female cops were not located in police boxes (kobans) in Tokyo until earlier this year. In these cases, the powers that be decided that it was too risky for a woman. Well, that seems to be the underlying thought since the reasoning was that these boxes were more exposed to different types of crime. I was also surprised when I learnt that women in the Tokyo police force made up a mere 5% of the entire force.

I shouldn't be too surprised since a lot of countries are chauvinistic about who can best perform in a certain job. However, whilst fields like science and IT are trying hard to reel in women (and admitting that there is an imbalance), it is surprising to find such discrepancies in such an old profession.