Episode 2 Caught Red Handed

Thieves will steal our cash, our cars, our valuables.

Just about anything they can get their hands on.

But now the police are using cutting-edge technology

to catch bad guys.

CCTV is gold dust.

Great evidence for the police.

Got to have him stopped.

Local councils, shops and businesses

are fighting crime with their own tricks and traps.

There's a eureka moment when you get that evidence.

And the public are using secret cameras to make sure crooks

get their comeuppance.

It makes me feel so angry.

He's paid the price, he's being dealt with.

Yes, we've got her!

So anyone who's up to no good had better think twice.

They might just get Caught Red Handed.

Today - while Sam is out at work in her car,

her 14-year-old daughter is home alone.

But, to her horror, she isn't alone for long.

She'd seen the man standing there, inches away from her face.

That far away from each other.

Sam gets a text from her terrified daughter

that there are men in the house, and races back.

I'm wondering if they've hurt her, done something,

everything goes through your head, doesn't it?

Also today - 76-year-old Norman's family depended on two people

they trusted to look after him.

But instead they stole his savings.

It's like a stab in the back.

You know, you feel like you've been groomed.

And a quiet Northumberland village

is suddenly the scene of a major crime -

an armed gang strikes in the middle of the night,

and the locals get a rude awakening.

I heard the police helicopter, it was really, really low

and then light lit up the whole bedroom.

Definitely didn't have any idea

that it was going to be something like this.

Impington is a quiet country village on the outskirts of Cambridge.

Local resident Sam, who works as a delivery driver,

has lived in the village longer than most.

She's very much at home here.

It's quite nice to live in Impington, actually.

It's a quiet area. We've lived in this house since I was...

eight or nine.

Sam took over the house from her parents

and now lives here with daughter Paige, who's 14 years old.

Paige has a hearing disability.

She's had hearing problems from birth and she's had an operation

and it didn't work, so in the end they gave her hearing aids.

Come this way, look. What's this?

They share the house with three Chihuahuas.

They're not the best guard dogs

so, as the house is surrounded by fields,

Sam decided to invest in some home security.

The reason that I got CCTV is because I'm on the end

and, you know, you just don't know.

So it's better to be safe than sorry, really.

And, one Thursday in late spring,

it turns out getting the cameras was a wise move.

First thing in the morning,

when Sam's about is set off on her delivery round,

Paige tells her she's feeling too poorly to go to school.

She wasn't feeling very well so I said to her,

"Well, you can stay at home and I'll call in on my way past

"to make sure you're OK."

Sam has to go to work to make an urgent delivery

before she'll be able to get back to the house.

I said, "I'll come and see you soon." And she said,

"Fine, I'm going to go to sleep." So she took her hearing aids out.

Paige doesn't want to talk on camera,

but she's told us the shocking sequence of events

that happens next.

After her mum leaves, Paige goes back to bed and falls asleep.

But her sleep is about to be disturbed in a terrifying manner.

The CCTV shows how, unknown to Paige,

two men run into the driveway,

one of them carrying a crowbar.

The first thing Paige knows about the men

is when, in a moment of pure horror,

she wakes up to see a shadow moving in her doorway.

She's seen the man standing there, inches away from her face.

That far away from each other.

Paige is scared stiff, she literally can't move.

I guess she didn't know what he was going to do,

whether he was going to harm her, you know,

he could've done anything to her.

The man is startled to find someone home.

He's as shocked as she is and he runs.

But, without her hearing aids, Paige doesn't know where they have gone.

She thinks they're still downstairs.

She manages to text her mum.

"Mum, there's people in the house, you need to come home."

So with that, I'm getting here as fast as I can,

constantly ringing her and then she's not answering.

And then obviously that's making me panic more.

I'm wondering if, you know, they've hurt her, done something,

just everything goes through your head, doesn't it?

On the way home, Sam calls her partner, Jamie,

who gets to the house first.

He checks to see if Paige is OK and makes sure the intruders have gone.

Moments later, Sam arrives and rushes to her daughter's side.

I find her in floods of tears

and Jamie was there, making sure she was OK.

Sam looks around to see if anything's been taken.

I came through from the living room to the kitchen,

and noticed that they'd prised the kitchen window open.

And I've got a glass jar of rice

which has obviously gone everywhere and glass everywhere.

Then I went upstairs and went into my room where I see my drawers

and my wardrobe that have been messed about with.

Surprisingly, Sam finds nothing's been stolen but she's badly shaken.

It's just degrading, isn't it, knowing that someone

has been in your house and gone through your private stuff.

It's horrible.

Sam phones the police

and PC Chris Daniel responds immediately.

We got in the car and we went straight there as quick as we can.

I was part of an impact team and we focus quite heavily on burglaries.

When Chris arrives, he finds Paige is inconsolable.

She was clearly upset and shocked by what had happened,

and it was obviously very distressing for her,

particularly in that she hadn't seen exactly who it was in the house.

She just knew it wasn't her parents.

Sam tells Chris about the security cameras.

When we find out there's CCTV, obviously for us, that is fantastic.

It can give us some real good leads at an early stage.

Chris views the CCTV recording and notices something suspicious

half an hour before the break-in.

First time I see it, I'm just like...gobsmacked.

A silver car slows down near the house.

Then a woman enters the driveway.

I think she's there solely to see if anybody's home,

to see what the set-up of the house is.

My daughter, being deaf, wouldn't have heard the knock on the door

so, yeah, she obviously thought it was all clear.

The woman goes round the back of the house...then she leaves.

30 minutes later, the silver car returns and the two men jump out.

She dropped them off,

now they're coming in and they're going round the back of the house.

They first head for a caravan in Sam's back garden.

I don't know why they've gone into the caravan,

there's nothing in there.

The burglars spend several minutes looking for valuables,

but there's nothing there.

Then they turn their attention

to the rest of what they believe is an empty house.

The man in the bottom of the screen there appears to be acting

as some sort of lookout whilst the other male is entering

via the kitchen window.

A few minutes later, the cameras pick them up running away.

Chris and a colleague decide to focus on the silver car -

it could be the key to tracking down the culprits.

We worked out after a bit of googling that potentially

it was a Vauxhall Signum. It was at this point that we remembered

that there was a call earlier on in the day.

That morning, one of Sam's neighbours spotted a man

drinking alcohol at the wheel of a car.

It was a silver Vauxhall Signum.

The witness noted the car's numberplate and phoned the police.

It could be Chris's lucky day.

There was nothing to be lost by us checking this out,

Vauxhall Signums are not a rare car but you don't see them everywhere.

Chris sets off for the address where the vehicle's registered

and has another extraordinary piece of luck.

When he's close to the house, the silver car drives straight past him.

He flags the driver down.

Once it was stopped, a female driver got out.

We've seen immediately that she's wearing the clothes

exactly matching that of the female seen in the CCTV footage.

Chris arrests the woman.

He then drives to her house where, as soon as he walks in,

he finds a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the burglars.

Chris promptly arrests him, too.

He has found two of the three suspects within hours of the crime.

I think luck was definitely on our side. We've searched the premises

and we found a jacket matching that seen on the CCTV.

He seizes the man's shoes

and they match footprints found at Sam's house.

This obviously puts him inside the house and it's very difficult

for him to argue why his shoe print was in the kitchen.

The other man was spotted by officers in Cambridge

three days later. The police solved the entire case in 72 hours.

They were bang on it, they were helpful and got them, basically.

So, yeah, they were... They were great.

In Crown Court, the woman and her partner admitted to the burglary.

She was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment,

suspended for 18 months.

Her partner was sent to prison for a year and eight months.

Their accomplice pleaded not guilty but the jury disagreed,

and he was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison.

Break-ins like this are rare,

and Sam's security cameras certainly paid dividends.

But, for her, the most important thing about that day

was that she came home to find Paige safe.

To see that she was obviously not OK but not harmed but, yeah,

it was such a relief to see that she was all right.

Fortunately, criminals are often not the brightest of the bunch...

and get caught because they make a slip up, sometimes quite literally.

Ouch!

Here's three who take the phrase "impact of crime"

to a whole new level.

This man's trying to steal a bike...

unsuccessfully.

He doesn't spot the barrier.

Durr!

The bike was unlocked because it's broken and worthless,

so a lot of pain but no gain.

Next, an attempted shoplifter tries to flee...

Whoops!

The revolving door revolves the other way.

Schoolgirl error.

Just when she does seem to work out the revolving door,

she abandons that particular exit strategy

and goes for an open-door policy instead.

And this man brings the house down.

Or, more accurately, the Jobcentre.

He's upset his unemployment benefit hasn't gone into his account

and decides the best way to complain is to crash through the front doors.

Later, the judge gives him a 15-month jail sentence

and 12-month driving ban.

Now, that won't look good on his CV!

There are now over ten million pensioners in the UK

and that number is growing,

which means the number of carers is growing, too.

Now, the vast majority of those carers are very honest

and hard-working people but, sadly, a small minority are not.

Norman is a pensioner

who fell victim to thieves calling themselves carers...

She shoved it in her bra.

..rescued by a camera disguised as a clock.

That were brilliant, really.

It were a good bit of thinking from my uncle, to be fair.

But the family is left in shock.

It knocked me up a bit, you know - it's like a stab in the back.

It made me so angry, it really did.

Rochdale in Greater Manchester used to be a busy mill town.

Most of the mills are now long gone

but a lot of the workers' pubs are still around.

76-year-old Norman is Rochdale born and bred.

He's been a pub landlord for nearly 50 years.

I think the '70s were the best time for local pubs.

At that time, your pub was like your local community centre, you know?

You would call in and have a couple of pints on the way home from work

and then come back in the evening, you know?

Norman lives in a flat above his pub, the Tanners Arms,

which he renovated in 1991.

Norman's granddaughter, Jodie,

has been a regular at his pub since she was four years old.

I am really, really close with my grandad.

He is my rock. He has been there for me through so much.

He really has.

He's amazing.

Sadly, 13 years ago,

Norman had a major health scare

which has left him with limited mobility.

He struggles and, in the last three years, he's gradually got worse.

He doesn't really come down to the pub that much any more.

Norman's family became increasingly worried about him

looking after himself,

so they paid for some people to help with cleaning.

But they soon became carers, too.

My granddaughter arranged for a girl to come in two or three days a week

and do some cleaning for me.

It were fantastic, it were helping us out,

because we were all working full-time.

We were pretty friendly and...

She was very obliging. In fact, her daughter,

who'd done some care work, joined her.

It was nice that we could trust somebody else to help out

and Norman was happy with it, he got on really, really well with them.

On several occasions

I went out with them, went to a restaurant

for a meal all evening.

Everyone... Everyone were happy.

But that happiness is not to last.

Because money soon starts to go missing from Norman's flat.

It's a week before Christmas and Norman notices

that cash has suddenly disappeared from his wallet.

It was money that I had saved for treats, birthdays, trips out.

He spoke to my uncle and he spoke to my mum, "Have I lent you any money?"

No. We thought he might have misplaced it,

he might of miscounted, things like that.

So my uncle came down, went through everything and made sure,

"Right, yeah, there is some money missing."

Norman's family want to find out who's stealing from him.

Only his carers and relatives have access to the flat.

My uncle then went and got a little camera in a clock.

Jodie's uncle, Norman's son, Steve, has decided to turn detective.

He sets up the hidden camera in the kitchen,

an hour before the carers are due to arrive.

The camera doesn't look like a dummy, it just looked like a clock.

We finished up putting it on the mantelpiece.

The family leave Norman in the flat. He knows he has to behave

as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

The mother and daughter carer team arrives.

INDISTINCT CHAT

Norman chats with them as usual.

They don't notice the new clock sitting on the shelf.

INDISTINCT CHAT

Soon, it's time for Norman to take a shower.

The daughter helps him through to the bathroom.

A few minutes later,

she's back and she hands something over to her mother.

It's a handful of cash.

With Norman out of the way,

she raided his wallet in the sitting room.

The mother stuffs the wad into her bra,

clearly happy with her ill-gotten gains.

Coincidentally, she looked straight at the clock,

oblivious to the fact the camera is seeing everything.

The carers leave.

And the family arrive later to check Norman's wallet.

They find that ?80 is missing

and take a look to see what the camera's captured.

Jodie hadn't prepared herself for how she'd feel

seeing the carers steal from her grandfather.

The first time I actually watched this video, I was in tears.

I was crying. It was awful.

It made me so angry, it really did.

Seeing people he trusted stealing from him affects Norman deeply.

It's like a stab in the back.

You know, you feel like you've been groomed because when somebody

friendly like that comes along, you really appreciate that...

That warmth and that friendship.

And then...

..it all gets smashed asunder, doesn't it?

Talk about being judges of character,

I mean, I've had enough practice but I'm still not that good, am I?

Steve wants to get more incriminating evidence

before going to the police. He writes down the serial numbers

of the cash in Norman's wallet so he can identify the notes

if they are stolen during the carers' next visit.

Sure enough, ?90 vanishes from his dad's wallet.

Steve challenges the carers.

My uncle confronted them, she threw a wad of notes at my uncle.

Serial numbers on the notes matched the serial numbers

that were written down, so that were brilliant, really.

It were a good bit of thinking from my uncle, to be fair.

So they called the police and they arrested them.

And the so-called carers are charged.

They pleaded guilty to two counts of theft.

In the face of such evidence, they had little choice.

The mother got a six-month custodial sentence and the daughter 20 weeks,

both suspended for two years.

They must also carry out 200 hours of unpaid work

and pay compensation and court costs.

Jodie now looks after her grandad and they're closer than ever.

It's nice cos you get that bit of extra time with him as well.

We'll sit down, we'll have a brew, we'll have a chat.

Sometimes a heated discussion, depending on what it's over.

It is really nice to be able to do that for him.

Norman's family are planning a special night for him soon.

It is quite a big year this year,

it's the 25th anniversary of the pub being open.

He will be able to see how much he's loved and appreciated.

And Norman can't wait to catch up with the regulars

in his beloved bar.

I just want a nice, peaceful life, good friends in the bar.

That's what life's about, really.

It's important to remember that there are only a few bad apples

amongst the millions of carers in the UK. But what can people do

if they're suspicious that something isn't quite right?

If you think somebody working in your home is potentially stealing

from you, the best way to gather evidence is to keep a log

of property or money that you have coming in, perhaps going out,

so that you can see when it's being taken and you can actually identify

who was in the house at the time when it happened.

If the person you suspect of stealing from your loved one

finds either the hidden camera or the detailed diary

that you've been keeping,

I would never advise to confront them face-to-face.

I would perhaps come up with an excuse as to something

like you're just looking after the loved one when you're not around

and just keeping a diary for that purpose

and I would then, when you can, when you find an appropriate moment,

contact the police and let them know what the situation is.

I think it is really important if you've got concerns about somebody

you love being taken advantage of, come and speak to the police early.

We can give you some advice,

we can listen to what your concerns are

and you might just have the missing piece of the jigsaw

that we need to put some information together.

Corbridge in Northumberland is a quiet village

where nothing much happens -

just the way the locals like it.

Tourist information officer Steph has lived here for 15 years.

I moved to Corbridge with my husband initially to develop a property

and sell it on but we just fell in love with the place.

I have three children now and I have no intention

of ever moving from Corbridge. It is almost crime free,

you never worry about leaving your bike outside the front of your house

or anything like that.

It's a very honest village.

25 miles from Corbridge, in Durham Police's Chester-le-Street station,

Detective Sergeant Andy Smith heads up a serious crime team.

I've got just around about 25 years' service,

predominately working within the CID.

We deal with some of the most serious jobs

that the force will face.

Andy and his colleagues have recently been facing

a series of raids on convenience stores

in small towns and villages in the north-east.

There have been a spate of premises in rural areas being attacked

where there was ATM machines inside.

Obviously what they were trying to do

was get the cash out of the machines.

And Andy's team has gathered intelligence

that a gang's about to strike.

That's what led us to be in Corbridge

on the morning of the 8th of January.

Despite Corbridge having one of the lowest crime rates

in the country, Steph and the other villagers are in for a shock.

It's 4am and the cameras outside Corbridge's village store...

..show two men approaching.

Their faces are covered, so the identities are concealed

and actually you can see that this guy here is on his mobile phone

at that time.

He may be calling other accomplices.

Now you'll see they'll attack

using crowbars and other tools and weapons.

They know exactly what they're doing,

they know how to force doors like that

and how to get into the premises in a matter of seconds.

The men quickly find their target - a cash machine.

A car pulls up outside,

and three more men remove large straps from the boot

while their accomplices dislodge the ATM.

They wrapped that around the ATM machine

and drive the car away to drag it out of the store.

They're highly organised.

He realises there's a CCTV camera, so they smashed that.

But unknown to them, other cameras are still recording.

And that's not their only problem.

A strap isn't reaching the cash machine.

They just haven't got the car close enough to the store.

They're wasting valuable time.

The cameras that have been recording this crime

are about to witness its dramatic conclusion.

Thanks to the information they received,

Andy's colleagues have been waiting just around the corner

and decide it's time to act.

The burglars hear them arriving and try to escape.

We were in the right place at the right time and we could react

within minutes of them attacking the village store.

The police park in front of the getaway car, blocking their escape.

One of the burglars even tries to hide in the car boot

before thinking better of it. It was the guy that was in the boot,

I think he realised that that wasn't the best hiding place

when his colleagues were in the process of being arrested,

so he jumped out of the boot and tried to run away,

but he was arrested just a few yards away.

This is a dangerous operation for the officers.

It's the middle of the night, they are five balaclava'd men,

armed with tools which could be used as weapons

to cause some serious harm to the arrest team.

They saw what they were faced with

and the most appropriate way to use the minimum force that was necessary

was to Taser one of the suspects to get control of that person

and, as a result of that, the remaining arrest team

could deal with the other offenders really, really well.

The operation is a success.

Five men are arrested at the scene

but the officers suspect others are involved.

We would expect them to have a second vehicle relatively close by

which they can then put the ATM into

and drive with no real suspicion being raised.

The police start searching the area

and the locals realise something's up.

We heard the police helicopter, it was really, really low

and then light lit up the whole bedroom.

We initially thought that somebody had went missing

and were concerned for their wellbeing.

Definitely didn't have any idea

that it was going to be something like this.

It was about 35 minutes later that we actually find the vehicle,

parked up in a little cul-de-sac.

Inside the transit van is another one of their associates

and, as the police officers arrive,

he's the process of trying to damage a mobile phone.

With no incriminating CCTV footage of the suspect in the van,

the police need to find alternative evidence to prove he was involved.

Even though he tried to damage his phone, we could still retrieve

the information that we needed, which proved he was in contact

with the five burglars up until the point of his arrest.

Andy shows the gang the CCTV evidence.

They realise the game is up.

Me and my team were responsible for interviewing the six suspects.

They were quite accepting of the situation,

they knew they'd been caught, they knew they were bang to rights.

Every time a group of criminals like this goes out to commit crime,

they have got to be lucky every night.

We've only got to be lucky once.

And, on this night, they were unlucky.

In court, all six men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit burglary.

They were sentenced to a combined total of 15 years in prison.

Knowing the gang is behind bars

is a huge relief for Steph and the community of Corbridge.

Because the police responded so quickly and caught all of them,

I think it almost...

It reassured them a little bit and I think a lot of people, yeah,

really wanted to give the police a pat on the back

and congratulate them.

It is a really rewarding, worthwhile result

because this is an organised crime group.

As a force, we showed that we can tackle them,

we dealt with them and ultimately we sent to prison.

I think the incident will be talked about for a long time.

I think people will be telling their children and their grandchildren

about it for a long time.

That's it for today. And that's it for a few more criminals

who've been Caught Red Handed.

Need a medic.

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Humanitarian mission.

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