The Metropolitan Police Department’s Seriousness in Arresting Members of Organizations Covered by the “Special Task Force” to Destroy Tokuryo

Extortion with a survival knife

A man with hair dyed romance gray from the top to the back of his head, a beard, and a straight back was walking straight as a police officer urged him to do so.

At first glance, he appeared to be the president of a company, a dignified man who was arrested on April 2 at the Totsuka Police Station of the Metropolitan Police Department on suspicion of attempted extortion and sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office on April 3 for prosecution.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, Kurihara is a member of the Kouhei Family, the central organization of the Sumiyoshikai, a designated organized crime syndicate. Kurihara and another gang member are suspected of demanding money from a man in his 50s on a street in Shinjuku Ward while showing him a weapon resembling a survival knife. They threatened the victim, saying, “What about the 3 million yen you gave him earlier? He is suspected of threatening the victim and demanding money from him. The man fled to a nearby convenience store, asked for help from the clerk, and called 110. Kurihara and two other suspects left the scene, but were found and arrested in Tokyo on the 1st.

In fact, on March 31, three days earlier, the Metropolitan Police Department announced that five members of the “Kouhei Family” were arrested on suspicion of confinement, robbery, and assault. From late at night on February 22 to the morning of February 23, the gang members confined a man in his 40s, who was a member of the same organization at the time, to a room in a building in Toshima Ward, Tokyo, and assaulted him. They are suspected of robbing him of 900,000 yen worth of jewelry, including a necklace he was wearing, and seriously injuring him for one month. The victim left the organization after the incident.

In January of this year, the Metropolitan Police Department set up a special task force on the grounds that the “Kouhei Family” was involved in a variety of crimes and had ties to Tokyu (anonymous, mobile crime group), which engages in special fraud and black market robbery, etc. As of April 1, the organization was upgraded from the command of the chief of criminal division to that of deputy commissioner.

In the three days before and after that, there were two cases in which members of the Kouhei family were arrested. We interviewed underworld journalist Yukio Ishihara.

An organization that excels at Tokyu crimes.”

I have the impression that the Metropolitan Police Department is doing a good job of publicizing a case that wouldn’t make the news if it weren’t so far. The Metropolitan Police Department pinpointed the Kouhei family by name, not in the broad category of the Sumiyoshi-kai. I strongly feel that they are determined to be thorough. In January 2011, there was a robbery and murder case in Komae City, Tokyo, involving the Tokuryu family, which has since become a major social issue. One of Tokuryu’s strongholds is said to be Kabukicho in Shinjuku, and in the same year, the police commissioner made rounds of Kabukicho and other intensive investigations have been conducted. Kabukicho is also one of the “Kouhei Family’s” territory, and is known to have a thick pipeline with the former Kanto Rengo family connections. In other words, it is an organization that excels at Tokuryu crime.

Being a major source of special fraud and human trafficking by Kabukicho scouts are their thick source of income. I think it is a very big deal to investigate and arrest those involved after naming the Kohei family in order to strike there first.

There have been cases in the past where a clan leader was subsequently arrested for employer’s liability and his house was raided, but these cases were never traced back to the organization of Tokuryu’s head boss. However, this case is very different, he said.

In the past, in cases like this, there have been cases where a rival gang would leak the information to the police and have them take the case down for them,” he said. But this time, it was completely different. They are appealing to all of Japan to ‘take on the Kouhei family,’ and they are steadily carrying it out. This is not a firestorm on the other side of the river for the other groups. There is no doubt that they now have a strong sense of crisis: ‘We may be next. …… The police must be feeling a sense of regret for having neglected the blackout cases for so many years, so I get the impression that they are finally getting serious about it,” said Ishihara.

Will the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department be able to round up Tokuryu? Kurihara and two other suspects are said to deny the charges. …… We await the outcome of the investigation.