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Hyogo cops raid yakuza offices over heckling incident

Hyogo police raided the headquarters of the Yamaken-gumi on Thursday
Hyogo police raided the headquarters of the Yamaken-gumi on Thursday

HYOGO (TR) – Hyogo Prefectural Police on Thursday raided the headquarters of an organized crime group in Kobe over an incident in which its members heckled Shinobu Tsukasa, the head of the rival Yamaguchi-gumi, reports the Sankei Shimbun (Sept. 8).

In the morning and afternoon, 59 investigators entered the headquarters of the Yamaken-gumi, an affiliate gang of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, and eight other gang-affiliated locations on suspicion of trespassing.

The raids follow an incident that took place on Monday morning at Shin-Kobe Station in which about 20 members of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi heckled Tsukasa after he passed through a ticket gate. While holding white sheets of cardboard and pens, the gangsters screamed at the boss, “Give me your autograph!”

In August of last year, 13 affiliate gangs of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation’s biggest criminal syndicate, left the organization. The renegade gangs subsequently formed the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi with the Yamaken-gumi, led by Kunio Inoue, as its key affiliate gang. A turf war that has included shootings and car ramming incidents then developed between the clans.

The search of the locations was based on the claim by police that the gang members did not have a justifiable reason to be in the train station.