Instances are increasing of crimes involving the breaking up of stolen cars in yards with facilities for breaking up cars in places such as Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa Prefectures. Police departments in prefectures in the Kanto area are carrying out more investigations, especially in view of the upcoming Tokyo Olympics of 2020 and also to thwart possible terrorist activity.

Oxygen and acetylene cylinders are used in yards like these. Prefectural police departments are therefore calling upon the high pressure industrial gas industry to assist them in their investigations. They are also exhorting suppliers of gas to be on their guard. Numerous high pressure gas cylinders were found scattered around in the yards where violations had been detected. Fires broke out in some of these yards last year. Flames engulfed stolen cars and some cylinders and which caused quite a commotion with firefighter rushing to the scene.

Throughout last year of the approximately 250 yards in the prefecture, the Saitama Prefectural Police Department charged 8 with being engaged in illegal activities. In addition, from October to the end of the year the police confiscated 100 cylinders involved in the crimes. Also in those yards involved in criminal activities where police conducted investigations there were acetylene cylinders here and there of which the bottoms had been cut with gas into cross sections. Oxygen cylinders and torches had been used in dismantling the stolen vehicles. On November 8 of last year police from the Chiba Prefectural Police Department found stolen cars when they searched a yard in the city of Shirai and arrested 8 Algerian nationals. When they investigated the supplier of the high pressure gas cylinders found in the yard they found that the cylinders had been obtained from proper sales channels and were not stolen goods.

A member of the Saitama Police Department involved in the investigations stated, “Yards heavily involved in criminal activities were found densely scattered among the mountains along the boarders of Saitama, Tochigi, and Chiba Prefectures. Recently there have been instances of dismantling in garages with roofs, located in places well out of sight. Stolen vehicles are carried off in the midnight, and brought into the yards in the morning. They are dismantled into small sections in an hour or two. Cutting with oxygen and nitrogen is fast, with the cuts being quite clean. As the stolen vehicles and the foreigners working in the yards, as well as the high pressure gas cylinders all cross over the prefectural boarders, it is important for the investigative organizations of the various prefectures to work together.” He went on to says, “The yards where criminal activity had been detected were located on gravel covered grounds surrounded by high steel plates, making them invisible from the outside. Not only stolen vehicles, but a wide range of other items were found such as major household appliances, motor bikes, and farm machinery.”

There are thought to be 473 yards In Chiba prefecture. In February, a proposal of prefectural ordinance was composed which would allow onsite inspection of the yards. The number of yards has now doubled compared to the 180 tabulated by the Prefectural Police Department as of 2010. As a spokesperson from the Chiba Prefectural Police Department put it, “This figure is a result of the reinvestigation we conducted because of the good possibility of yards involved in crime.”