A gang leader who sat on his knees and bowed down to a narcotics officer “ended up in the street”.
Case Files of Narcotics G-men (3) [Part 1
Ryoji Takahama, 77, a former narcotics control officer with the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, has been at the forefront of drug case investigations from the Showa period to the Heisei period in response to the ever-changing drug crimes. Mr. Takahama writes about the drug situation of the time and the actual state of drug trafficking, as well as the real scene of the crime.
A “methamphetamine trafficking house” was supposed to be raided…
The case I am going to introduce here was aired in June 2004 in “Narcotics G-men Gekito 24 Hour” (NTV’s “Super TV Joho Saizensen”). At the time, I was the Chief of the Investigation Section of the Kinki District Narcotics Control Office.
It was November 2003. The case was originally set in Osaka City’s Nishinari Ward, but later moved to Minami Ward (now Chuo Ward), which is home to Minami, a major entertainment district. It was said that a big methamphetamine trafficker, 55 years old like myself, who had been based in Nishinari for nearly 30 years, had maintained his power by going back and forth between this side of the wall (prison) and the other side. At that time, methamphetamine was mostly sold on the street in Nishinari, and it was a rare case for a trafficker to set up his own place of business.
Two policemen watched the comings and goings of the house, which could be seen from a car parked along the national highway, and waited for customers to arrive. The guests who entered the room usually came out within 4 to 5 minutes. We waited at our respective locations, waiting for the moment of the raid, with the strategy of holding them at the entrance when they came out, and stepping in while pushing them into the room.
After two hours had passed, a man, who we assumed to be a guest, stood at the entrance and pressed the doorbell. However, something unexpected happened here. There seemed to be no response from inside the room, and the man who was supposed to be the customer had no choice but to leave.
Was the trafficker out of town? However, based on previous investigations, it should have been confirmed that the trafficker was home at the time the stakeout began. Therefore, it was somewhat odd that he did not answer the doorbell.
We remained in position for 8 hours, but after that, there was no change in the situation, and it was assumed that something had happened to the trafficker, or that he had noticed our stakeout and fled.
We waited for the trafficker to return home and raided the house.
We then gathered information on the trafficker’s movements and located another hiding place. The trafficker had fled from the Nishinari trafficking office, after all. The new hiding place was a hotel along Sakaisuji Street, at the north end of the Dotonbori River. The trafficking location was a room in a love hotel near Tanimachi 9-chome station on the Tanimachi subway line, several kilometers east of there, and it emerged that the trafficker was using that location as a base for trafficking methamphetamine.
We decided to take custody of the trafficker not at the love hotel, but in the hotel room where he had his base of operations, and waited for him to return home in the vicinity of the hotel. I hid myself at the landing of the fire escape, where I would be able to see if the door of the room was opened or closed, and waited for a call from my friends who were watching the entrance and exit of the hotel.
Around 1:00 a.m., the trafficker returned and we stepped in as soon as he entered the room. The trafficker stormed out, shouting, “What the hell? I held the trafficker down and made him sit on the bed beside me. I told him the name of the DEA office and showed him the warrant. At the mention of “Chikamariju,” the trafficker’s resistance immediately subsided, and a search was immediately initiated.
The search began immediately. How much do you have? However, the search revealed a total of 82 grams of methamphetamine, the synthetic drug MDMA, marijuana, and an electronic scale for sorting them into numerous smaller packages. In addition, several million yen in sales money was also found and seized. Subsequent interrogation revealed that the trafficker was making a profit of 4 million yen per month.
During the search, eight new types of red-colored, pill-type stimulants were also found. These pills were “Yabar,” a methamphetamine that is prevalent in Thailand and was originally named after “Ya Maa,” which means “running like a horse. I was aware of the danger of further spread of drug contamination with this drug, but it did not seem to spread explosively.
During the search of the room, the trafficker was asleep. I asked him, “Are you sleepy? The trafficker wanted to go wash his face, but I told him to be patient because we were still in the middle of the search. The sudden onset of drowsiness was assumed to be a withdrawal symptom of methamphetamine.
Unexpected behavior of the arrested trafficker
This was the ninth arrest for this trafficker. The next time he will be able to appear in jail, he will be at least a year past his 60th birthday. At the end of the search, the trafficker let out a sigh of despondency or despair, as if he was thinking about the life in prison that was to follow.
Then he suddenly sat up straight on the bed and bowed deeply to us, saying, “I look forward to working with you. I was so surprised and puzzled that I was at a loss for words for a moment.
However, this act caused a big stir afterwards. The traffickers involved, as well as our enforcement officers, had no way of knowing this at the time.
The trafficker bowed his head as a courtesy to the police for the trouble they would have to go through in the subsequent interrogation, and nothing more and nothing less. However, after the trafficker was released from prison, he was blamed by the gang for his behavior at that time, which was considered “disgraceful to the yakuza,” and he apparently received a heavy “excommunication” punishment in the world of yakuza. When I heard this from my informant, I felt pity for him, even though I did not force him to do so.
The case seemed to have ended with the arrest of the trafficker. However, the mystery of why the trafficker left Nishinari and moved his base of operations to “Minami” was later solved.
The “Reason” Why the First “Raid” Failed
At the time of the raid in Nishinari, we were in the vicinity of the trafficking center with a NTV crew to cover the case. While we were breathlessly waiting for the stakeout team to contact us, the TV crew was waiting on the street overlooking the entrance to the building where the trafficker’s house was located, with a camera rolling to capture the trafficker’s movements from inside a rented cab. Such a scene was very unusual in Nishinari, and it seemed strange to those around them, partly because it did not fit the atmosphere of the area. The TV crew did not seem to notice, but residents in the neighborhood gathered around to watch the TV crew from afar.
Then, a trafficker from somewhere seemed to watch the scene with the same curious body as everyone else at first. However, when he looked in the direction where the camera was pointed, he realized from his keen sense peculiar to criminals that an investigative hand was reaching out to him, and he suddenly disappeared from the scene.
However, the trafficker must have been in the room at the time of the stakeout, so why did he not notice the scene of his departure? What was the stakeout team doing at that time? Such questions remain. But I would like to leave that to the reader’s imagination.
