Detective dramas and the Metropolitan Police Department

I watch a lot of Japanese detective/mystery dramas on TV and dvd, and have informally been compiling tidbits of information about the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, thinking they might come in handy someday for a fic. (In my fanon Haru universe, Kikuchi's dad is a retired detective, and it's canon that Sawa used to be a detective.) All this information should be taken with a grain of salt, of course, considering that they come from TV shows with varying degrees of realism--just as one shouldn't assume that everything you see on Law & Order or Hawaii Five-0 (especially the latter!) is an accurate depiction of how the US police works. So with that caveat...

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