Chief of a police station

The head of a police station (警察署). The Police Act (警察法) divides each prefecture's area into districts, each served by a police station, and places a chief in every station (Police Act, Article 53, paragraphs (1) and (2)). Under the direction and supervision of the officers above the station in the prefectural police — the Superintendent General (警視総監) of Tokyo's police, the chief of a prefectural police headquarters (警察本部長), or, in Hokkaido, a district headquarters chief (方面本部長), among others — the chief handles police work within the station's district and directs and supervises the station's police officials (Article 53, paragraph (3); Articles 48 and 51). Under the Road Traffic Act, a person who means to work on a road, put up a structure or a fixed stall on it, or use it in another way the prefectural public safety commission (公安委員会) has listed as greatly affecting traffic, needs the permission of the chief of the police station for that place (Road Traffic Act, Article 77, paragraph (1)). Under the Lost Property Act, a finder must promptly return a found item to its owner or hand it in to a police station chief, and must hand in items that are illegal to possess or appear to have been held by a criminal (Lost Property Act, Article 4, paragraph (1)); something found inside a facility such as a station or shop goes to the facility's operator instead (Article 4, paragraph (2)).