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Cate’s take on this is very nice and reminds me of a sailor that got big time into trouble in Japan.

He was a gunners mate missle petty officer. Had Temp duty for some training on base while the ship was out. One day while at class he didn’t lock his footlocker in the barracks/BEQ. Master at arms was doing his walk through and procedure required he set a watch, get another person, and inventory the footlocker. 1) to protect the sailor from missing gear and 2) because it was against standing orders to leave your footlocker unlocked.

While they were inventorying the footlocker they found a few rounds of ammo, some drugs, and a bunch of locker keys. They halted the inventory and notified the command. Command then requested a search warrant of all other spaces and took Petty officer into custody. More paraphanalia was found in the room. The locker keys were for lockers out in the Japanese economy off base at the train stations.

Command requested assistance of Japanese police in investigating further. Opening the lockers at the local station revealed more drugs, money, weapons, ammo, and .... more locker keys. He’d been receiving all this stuff in the US mail on the ship and then walking it out onto the economy.

They continued to open lockers throughout the country. After a few months the Japanese prosecutor said...I think we have enough. We’ll prosecute with what we have and if we find anything else we’ll just take possession of it. He was tried and convicted and put into the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement) Prison. (Attempted a hunger strike - quicly put to bed by Japanese leaving him in a locked room with a steak in front of him.) Last I heard (and this was some years ago) they were still opening lockers...always the same: drugs, money, weapons, ammo, and .... more locker keys.

Point being that once they figured out they weren’t going to be able to take anyone else into custody they finally decided to prosecute, but they held off months longer than they had to in order to prosecute him so they could make sure they couldn’t pull more people if possible.