The Hunt for Britain's Metal Thieves

Police! Open up!

Across Britain, the police are dealing with a new crime wave -

metal theft.

Criminals who tear apart Britain's infrastructure -

electricity...

water...

-the railways -

-PA: "This train has been delayed..."

Passengers are just fed up. They're fed up to the back teeth of it all.

..risking their lives and yours.

I don't have a house. It's got a massive hole in it.

But for the grace of God, that could've been the last shift for any one of us.

It's easy to swap metal for cash.

You can steal your metal, take it into a scrap dealer,

and it can be converted to cash with very, very few questions asked.

This is the gold standard - dry, bright, copper wire.

That's what it's all about.

As the price keeps rising...

Prices of metals have increased by between 400% and 500%.

..the police are in pursuit.

Listen to me. Don't start carrying on.

You're under arrest for theft of Network Rail cable.

They know that we know who they are.

They know that we know the places that they visit.

-PILOT OVER RADIO:

-"Right, right...

"Towards wooded section, right in front of you. Coming towards you."

The hunt for Britain's metal thieves is on.

British Transport Police are getting ready to make some arrests.

..at the burn site. Er, the second subject has been identified...

We've an incident where armoured railway cables

have been placed across the running lines. At the location.

And that caused one train to be quite severely damaged.

The train driver was very shaken up by the incident.

It may have caused that train to come off the running lines.

Thieves often place railway cable across the tracks,

using the train to cut it.

It's a dangerous practice.

Sergeant Dawes and his officers are raiding two houses in Leeds

to arrest the people responsible.

I'm arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy and endangering life.

You don't have to say anything, but it may harm your defence

if you do not mention...something you...rely on in court.

We've arrested all male occupants in this house.

There's going to be three males now arrested.

Take a seat in there, mate. All right?

They've had an intelligence tip-off,

that this is where to look for the stolen railway cable.

-Open the door, mate!

-Come t'front door!

-Pardon?

-Got to get keys.

-OK, no worries. Be quick.

My name's DC Hare, from British transport police. LISTEN!

Don't start carrying on.

You're under arrest for theft of Network Rail cable.

-Do you understand?

-Yes.

-How old are you?

-16.

-OK.

You aren't even proper coppers! HE LAUGHS

Proper cuffs, though, aren't they?!

Sacks of cables and wires are taken away as evidence.

At the first address, police find remnants of burnt railway cable

which may link the suspects to the crime.

Obviously, something's been going on at the premises that we're interested in.

I'll just get the Scene Of Crime to come up here and have a look.

we've officers from the operational support unit who will carry out a search of the embankment.

If we can link people forensically to cable theft, that's great.

Five men are arrested and interviewed.

But due to lack of evidence, all are released without charge.

This is what the thieves are looking for -

metal cable that runs alongside the railways tracks.

These men posed as railway contractors

to steal an enormous reel of cable

straight from a rail yard at London Bridge.

In this theft on the middle of the night at Bletchley,

thieves used a lorry and a forklift to steal thousands of pounds worth of copper wire.

And here thieves brazenly weigh their haul of stolen copper.

Police think they made about £85,000 before being caught and sent to prison.

In 2011, and estimated 15,000 tonnes of metal was stolen.

It's easy to see why.

At the London Metal Exchange, business is brisk.

SHOUTING

No sign of a recession here!

Prices are going one way - and that's up.

In the last decade, prices of metals have increased by 400% to 500%.

And this is unprecedented.

So, as an example, 10 years ago, copper was trading at around 1,500 US dollars a tonne.

In 2011, it traded in excess of 8,500 dollars a tonne.

Its high price makes copper the most attractive metal to steal.

Today, it's still fetching over 8,000 a tonne.

Consumption has grown because of the growth of China.

China in 2011 consumed as much copper as Japan, North America, Europe and Russia combined.

In the last three years, more than 13 million pounds' worth of metal

has been stolen from Britain's railways.

The thieves will take anything they can get their hands on.

What we lose from the railways, we lose copper cabling -

whether live cable or redundant cable -

we lose the clips that hold the track down.

We lose earthing straps.

We lose the overheads. Power lines.

We lose the track itself. It's anything which is metal.

But the most significant impact for the running of the railway

is the track and the cabling that's a link to the movement of trains.

British Transport Police in the North East

face the biggest challenge

with more thefts here than in another region.

From their office in Leeds, they've launched a crackdown called Operation Leopard.

Our specific role under Operation Leopard

is dealing with the theft

of cable from Network Rail.

We're looking for any receipts in relation to weighing in of scrap.

'We want to try and disrupt and deter offenders'

from committing crime on the railway.

On the nightshift tonight, police constables Mark Horbury and Bob Smith

are going on patrol to try to catch metal thieves in the act.

-I'll have a drive-by, see if there are any about.

-OK.

A very fast train - 70 or 80mph - passes here on this foot crossing.

So, you can see here, the trough where the cable's buried,

people can get access to it.

If there are people looking to steal cable here,

it's too close to the line.

It's extremely dangerous.

-You can feel the ground moving, as well! Can you feel it in your feet?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Imagine if something came off it, like a screw?

-Hm.

-That'd be it, wouldn't it? Lose your eye.

-Dead. Dead.

The dangers to metal thieves on the railway line

means they must be caught before they're hurt.

They tend to operate in the dark,

so PC Smith is using a night-vision camera.

It's basically a night sight.

It picks up a subject through body heat, so human being, animal...

Even through dense woodland, it will.

The darker it is, the better the equipment will work.

He's hiding good and proper.

RADIO COMMUNICATION

Looks like we've got some cable activity at Castleford.

-Did you hear that, Bob?

-No.

-Castleford East junction.

-Yeah.

Can you see owt?

Let's have a look.

If anyone's in this expanse of land, we'll see them with a night sight.

Been and gone, haven't they? Nothing. Not even a critter.

Er, they've gone through here.

See the cabling here. It's all exposed, isn't it?

That's where it's been cut before, and that's where it's been repaired.

-Touch that and see if it's live.

-No, thanks.

LAUGHS

We've examined the line-side, there where the cabling is,

and there's no recent activity.

It could quite easily be - remove the fencing,

and come back on another occasion when they think it's safe to do so.

It's common sense, isn't it?

With hundreds of miles of train track to patrol,

catching thieves in the act is hard.

One convicted ex-metal thief who calls himself Matt,

was caught red-handed taking railway track in Hertfordshire.

You can go up and down the train tracks all day long and you'll see

old bits of rail all the way along, which is...

it's gold...to some people.

Matt used a lorry and a crane

to steal disused track from the side of the railway.

I was collecting it all up, just about to take it all away,

and the police officers turned up, questioned us...

and then admitted that we was stealing it.

Matt admits he's made a lot of money from stealing metal.

One night's work, one day's work - you'll pick up £1,000 - £1,500.

Unlimited really. There's no cap to it.

Cable's always a good one because of the lead and the copper.

Whatever you can get your hands on.

You're not hurting anyone. You're not going into...

Not robbing people or going into... burgling people's homes.

It's... It's there.

So if people are going to leave it there, and it's unguarded,

and it's easy to collect, people are going to keep doing it.

PA: "This train has been delayed due to..."

But metal theft caused thousands of hours of delays

for Britain's train passengers last year.

This line in Essex was closed for a whole day

after stolen cable caused a fire on the line.

Some metal thieves are even targeting overhead

electricity cables - exposing dangerous live wires.

In 2011, fire crews were called to an incident in Castleford, West Yorkshire -

what happened next was captured on on-board camera.

Cars that were parked outside were buried,

the explosion happens in property three, then moved to four.

Then, as we thought

we were moving to a safe area,

property five also blows.

Fire crews had to evacuate the buildings.

The damage was devastating.

I don't have a house and... It's got a massive hole in it.

It's got everything in there. And we put loads of work into it.

and everything I own has gone into it, so...

And it were my birthday yesterday.

And I was supposed to have my house-warming tomorrow.

Cutting the cable removed the earth of the electricity supply

and diverted it into the metal in the structure of the houses.

The electrified gas pipes heated up...and exploded.

HUGE EXPLOSION

The cable's worth approximately £40.

£40 weighed up against what?

30 to 40 lives, it could have took.

It's frightening.

But it does bring it home to you how close things can come.

But for the grace of God,

that could have been

the last shift for any of us.

Thieves can't turn the metal they steal into cash

without a scrap-metal dealer.

The metal-recycling trade in Britain is worth over five billion pounds.

BTP have been working very hard to try and tackle the dealers

that sit on the fringes of the law,

or who blatantly work outside the law.

You know, you steal metal, you take it to a scrap dealer,

you don't get asked any particular questions

and you convert that into cash

and you get the market price for it.

Very, very easy.

You know, for us,

one of the keys is to shut that avenue down

and make it much, much more difficult for someone who has metal

to actually convert that into cash.

But scrap dealers say they don't help thieves.

First thing you see when you get here is,

that's the stance that they're taking.

"We don't want stolen metal."

The lads out 'ere,

they get a pep talk every week

about keeping their eyes open,

what to look for.

Mark Schofield's yard in Huddersfield

deals with more than ten tonnes of scrap metal a day.

Really,

this is the gold standard of scrap -

dry, bright copper wire.

That's what it's all about.

That's what's inside most of the cable that's getting stolen

in one form or another.

This stuff's been £6 a kilo.

Once it's in that form,

there's absolutely no way

of telling where it came from.

It's similar to

what would be stolen from the railways.

It doesn't say Network Rail.

It's... You know, the reality is

it's what a contractor is stripping out.

No way of knowing. Absolutely no way of knowing.

British Transport Police make

regular inspections of scrap metal yards.

Just a bit further down.

Just on the right.

Just en route now to Arthur Brotherton's.

A part of our remit is just to go and visit them

and try and educate them

about taking in cable

that could be possibly stolen.

Just making sure that they've got the right licences

and explain to them that we're going to be visiting on a regular basis.

That's him.

So you can see straightaway here

that we've got a guy with a flat-back transit

with all the washing machines, railings and whatever,

and they come on a regular basis.

PC Horbury wants to check this dealer's bins

to see if he can recognise any stolen railway cable.

Just pop here for a second and just explain to me

what you've got here.

What sort of skips have you got at the moment?

These are what plumbers bring in, copper and stuff,

and then I sort it into separate tubs for different money.

I don't ever keep a right lot

cos you get burgled. I've been done before.

-You've been burgled here?

-Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just household stuff, this, isn't it?

You know when you take cable in,

are you aware of some of the codes to look in?

What are they, then?

-Well, I've got me posters.

-You've got them already.

OK.

On the side of these cables,

we have certain codes.

And I'll tell you the code, so you know it.

It's 0005.

0005.

So if you ever see any of that coding on cable, that's ours.

That's ours. You know they brought out a law

in 2002

which basically means that if you get done for handling,

right, basically, if you get done for three offences,

so if we go through your books and we find that you've got three lots

of metal that you've taken in,

basically, we can do you for money laundering,

-handling...

-I've been told that, yeah.

And basically, then, what we can do

is, we can strip you of all your assets.

It's not worth it.

Not worth if for a couple of hundred quid's worth of cable.

It's not worth it, is it?

I don't know...

The police give out leaflets with mug shots of known metal thieves.

Do you know these people?

I know all in there, near enough.

Them.

Him, I've seen him before.

-Right.

-I've seen him before.

-Is it a big help to you, that?

-Well, what it is,

it's me telling them, isn't it?

It's me saying, "You can't come in."

-Yeah.

-And it makes it easier for me to say...

I can't show 'em that,

but I can say to 'em, "You're on that."

"You're on a list given to us by West Yorkshire Police. I'm not allowed to take gear from you."

From what he's telling me,

there's been a big deterrent on our visits.

He's taken on board everything we're saying in relation to cable thefts,

and as far as he's concerned,

people now know not to bother taking cable there any more

because he just won't accept it.

So as far as we're concerned, we're doing our job. It's good.

St Patrick's Catholic Church

has kept its doors open to the people of Birmingham

for over a hundred years.

The Lord be with you.

CONGREGATION: And with thy spirit.

Until October 2011,

when the church's CCTV caught bold metal thieves

walking in off the street and stealing its prize possession.

The central point of a Catholic church is the tabernacle,

where the Blessed Sacrament is kept.

And to show where the tabernacle is,

there's always a sanctuary lamp burning somewhere.

In this church, we had a lovely silver holder for the sanctuary lamp,

which hung just in front of the altar.

They came in

knowing what they were going to do.

They'd obviously been watching the place

and knew there was nobody in there at the time.

The thieves who took the sanctuary lamp

still haven't been caught.

It was 30 seconds they were in and out.

And many of the parishioners

were actually in tears over it.

He knew what he was doing because he blessed himself.

He must have known what he was doing.

That is the killing bit about it.

I came in to Mass the next morning...

I just broke down.

Because it was such a shock.

WOMAN: We've had our children baptised in the church,

made their first Communion,

been Confirmed

and married.

All under that lamp.

Can't do that any more. It's gone.

And the Son

and the Holy Spirit.

St Patrick's now has a replacement lamp,

and has put security measures in place.

I was so keen that the church should not be locked up.

To me...

..a locked church is a waste of space.

You take the risk and you pay the price.

Metal thieves will take anything that isn't securely tied down.

Wearing high-visibility jackets,

this pair posed as contractors as they helped themselves

to a manhole cover in Birmingham in front of passers-by.

In the leafy suburbs of Sutton,

just outside London,

it's reached epidemic levels.

So, er, another theft...

of, um...gulley covers.

We've had quite a few in the area lately.

Anything up to, we've had 50-odd in one weekend before.

It leaves a big hole.

And, er, for anyone to fall down...

it's seriously dangerous.

You could lose your dog down there,

let alone break a leg.

A motorcycle, he'd go straight over the handlebars.

We've even had cars stuck down them.

After 200 of their gulley covers were stolen,

Sutton Council decided to replace the metal ones with plastic.

This is the plastic one.

It looks quite similar to the metal ones

but, er..

Yeah. Slightly lighter and, er,

they're a lot cheaper to replace than the whole gulley itself.

And literally...

fits straight in, like so.

And nobody wants 'em, so they're safe.

All of Britain's utilities have fallen victim to metal theft,

from our water supply to the cables we rely on for telephones and power.

Across the country there are 20 thefts a day

from electricity substations.

They now spend £12m a year

on security.

In all of our major substations, such as this one,

what you'll find is a secure fence around all the live equipment

and then another fence around the perimeter of the substation itself.

We're absolutely clear, so people are well aware

that if you come in here, the biggest risk to you

is a risk of electrocution.

This substation in Chatham stores electricity

and distributes it to more than 200,000 homes

and businesses in the area.

The buzz bars overhead contain over 132,000 volts.

Buried under the pathway beneath them

are steel pipes and copper cabling.

That's what two thieves were after

when they broke in one night.

They were working all along this area.

The slabs from where we're standing

right up to the end of the transformer bay there were all lifted,

and you can see them cutting it into manageable sections

to get it back out the substation.

You can actually see in the video where one guy lifts it up

and it really makes you...

take a sharp intake of breath,

knowing how close he was

to actually killing himself.

Which he wouldn't have seen. It was night.

He probably wasn't even aware at that time that there were live buzz bars

above his head.

The pair were finally arrested a month later

after their car was stopped

with a large haul of copper piping in the back.

They were convicted of conspiracy to steal

from four different substations in the area.

What they did certainly wasn't worth

the risk of nearly killing themselves.

I would estimate the metal that they stole,

I would be amazed if they got more than £50.

I'd be amazed if they got more than £50.

They risked their lives for £50.

Over the last five years,

20 people have been killed while trying to steal metal

from electricity substations.

16-year-old Ryan Woolams,

from Rothwell, near Leeds,

died in July 2011

after he and a group of teenagers

broke into Skelton Grange substation.

A massive electric shock killed him instantly.

The lads who were with him described what had happened.

He unbolted some of holding down clamps

and he actually acted as a conductor.

The sort of voltage that was involved...

It's just frightening to think that anybody

who's not got experience with dealing with any sort of electricity

should even be anywhere near, not even in the vicinity, you know.

But it seemed not to have deterred Ryan.

Minutes before his death,

he was said to have joked about getting an electric shock.

And before that day he had repeatedly put himself in danger.

On one occasion he was thrown 15 feet,

so that must have been,

obviously, um...

a big one.

But obviously if I'd known about this, I'd have put a stop to it.

And on occasions like this, you wish you'd done a lot more.

He would have still been here

had he not been doing something he shouldn't have been doing.

And with electric, it's just...

any cable, just stay well clear,

because this is what can happen and it just destroys families.

Ken Dunn is a leading burns consultant.

He's treated a number of metal thieves

who have survived electric shock, but are badly burned.

Electrical injury is profoundly destructive.

They are probably one of the most complicated injuries to assess

and treat, and they are certainly one of the most devastating

and ultimately disabling injuries to suffer.

Injuries from electric current

can be far more serious than they at first seem.

This type of injury does not look particularly severe,

but because of the contact time with the circuit,

the survivability of the tissue,

particularly in the fingers,

meant that, unfortunately, amputation was necessary

for some of the damage to digits beyond repair.

Electric current not only carries a high risk of amputation,

but it can damage organs

throughout the body.

Where the current has flowed through the body,

it creates continuing tissue damage,

often in the muscles, certainly in the blood vessels,

and as a consequence

that damage can be profound.

The cenotaph at Carshalton in Surrey

is one of a hundred thousand war memorials across the UK.

Most have bronze or copper plaques

to honour the men who gave their lives for their country.

The War Memorials Trust estimates

that one a week is being vandalised for its metal.

Rowena Preston's grandfather was a platoon sergeant

in the First World War.

This memorial is his only grave.

She's come here with World War II veteran, Clifford Cooke.

So, Clifford, this is my grandfather, Frederick Charles.

Or Grandad Fred, as I like to think of him.

In 2011,

the bronze plaques which held 700 names of soldiers

who died in action

were stolen by metal thieves.

The only word I can really think of to describe such a person

is "despicable".

For anybody to go to the length they went, with crowbars,

to remove 14 bronze plaques,

that looked so wonderful on this particular memorial,

what more can you say?

They could have had no kind of...

humanity in them.

And they obviously would not regard any of these people

as being worth remembering.

These men gave their lives for this country.

They gave their lives for the people that's taken the plaque off!

That's the most important thing for me.

SIREN WAILS

Send 'em straight to Selby Road,

A63 road bridge at the back of the old City Lights pub.

At the back of the flats.

That's the location that's been getting hit recently.

Send them there, if you could, please.

Sergeant Dawes and PC Smith

head to where they think the thieves might go next.

All the fencing panels have been pulled out.

And there's a very...extremely steep banking,

which leads directly on to the railway.

This is a regular spot where thieves

come to dump the cable's outer casing,

which could identify where it came from.

There's evidence of cable being stripped.

Cable sheathing.

We can't say it's definitely Network Rail sheathing, but there's a good chance it is.

They'll cut it, pull it down the banking, then strip it,

either on the banking or take it somewhere else to strip it.

Either back gardens or sites out of the way,

where they're not going to be seen by members of the public.

Some images have been sent on the log.

If you could go and have a look for us, Phil,

and if you think it's this lad, then we'll take further action on it.

Can we just have a quick word, love?

There's been two incidents, right, relating to possible theft of cable.

One last week and one tonight.

Information suggests he may be involved.

The woman says that her son was at a party all night.

If he's been at a party, that's something we can verify,

but we need to speak, all right?

So can you just go and get...? All right.

Having had a good look at the 16-year-old,

an officer comes out to check the CCTV images.

This kid's been suggested that it's him,

but when you look at this lad,

from the build, you can quite clearly see it's not him.

The one on both sets of photographs is stocky,

he's got quite a fat bum and big legs.

This kid's tall, slim.

I think at the moment,

the realistic situation is that

we've been given the wrong name.

As well as trying to solve crimes,

the British Transport Police

also try to prevent them.

They visit young people at risk of offending

in order to deter them from stealing metal.

We've got four to do in this area.

Hopefully they'll be in. We can speak to them individually.

If they're not in, we can still disrupt through speaking to the parents.

Cos the parents won't want the police knocking on the door.

So that's what we're going to do.

-He's a cocky little

-BLEEP,

-this one.

He knows all the cars.

He opens the curtain and looks out and even waves at us!

Police.

We're here, really, just to remind you

of the fact that we're out here

watching the railway.

From British Transport Police, right,

and we're out here watching the railway.

Looking at people like YOU, who steal cable off the railway.

-I don't steal cable!

-Well, it's alleged that you do, mate.

It's in your interest to answer your bail and stay off the railway.

Offender management does work and I'm a big believer in it.

They know that we know who they are.

They know that we know the places that they visit.

The next person on their list

is a 16-year-old who's been seen near railway tracks.

The purpose of our visit tonight is to remind you

that British Transport Police take cable theft very seriously.

Yep. All right.

Unless you're legitimately on the railway

you've no other reason to be on it.

Nah, nah, I won't be going on it.

I won't be going on it ever again.

That's good. That's good. Do you mean that?

Yeah, I am being truthful, aye.

Honestly.

OK. Do you realise how dangerous it is?

Yeah, obviously.

What can happen to you?

-You can obviously burn, can't you?

-What do you mean by burn?

They all think it's a big joke.

Whether they're taking it seriously or not.

But we give them the warning. If they listen to us, that's fine.

In the market town of Warrington, in Cheshire,

the callous disregard of metal thieves caused outcry

when they stole a memorial plaque to the two child victims

of an IRA atrocity.

The council placed the plaque here

because this was the first of two IRA bombs.

This was the place where it detonated

and it blew in the betting shop window

on the other side of the road.

So I was horrified

and a feeling of disbelief that someone would be so...

well, despicable,

as to take something which had little metal value

but a lot of emotional value.

On the 20th March, 1993,

two IRA bombs, which had been placed in litter bins

along a busy shopping street,

exploded within a minute of each other.

Colin Parry's 12-year-old son Tim

and three-year-old Jonathan Ball,

were killed

and 54 people injured.

This is where the second bomb went off.

This is where Jonathan died and where Tim was fatally injured.

Tim did die five days later,

but this is the spot where he lay,

there, behind the bin

in which the bomb was planted.

And the history of the bombing is on the edge of the dome.

It insults memories. It insults events.

It insults history in a way.

It says a lot of base things about the kind of person

who took that plaque.

To make sure that the crime of metal theft doesn't pay,

in 2012,

the government brought in a new law

to change the way scrap metal is bought and sold.

Does this go into a hard drive?

-The...?

-The CCTV.

Yeah.

Up to that thing there.

Under the new rules,

traders have to keep records of all their transactions

and demand identification

from customers.

We're scanning everything in

and then onto a memory stick

and then it's uploaded on to...that.

The measures are intended to make it easier to trace the seller

if stolen metal is discovered in the yard.

But scrap dealer Martin Craven has reservations.

Not everybody's got ID.

It's photo ID that's the problem.

It's like, a guy came in, he's been coming in 25 years.

Got a paper driving licence, never been abroad,

so he's got no passport.

The only photo ID he's got is a bloody bus pass.

Scrap yards will also have to stop paying their customers in cash.

At his yard in Huddersfield,

Mark Schofield is not happy with the changes.

Traditionally it's been cash.

And of course, cash doesn't equal theft.

From our point of view,

it's a convenient method of payment.

Yes, they get paid cash, they have to stand there, they have to give their ID,

they have to sign for it.

We've got plenty of evidence to prove

that every customer that's sold us scrap,

the name, date, time, place is recorded.

He believes the scrap dealers

are victims, not villains.

It's well documented that more metal is stolen at scrap yards

than all the other victims put together.

So where does that metal go?

Well!

You then come back to

how do you detect stolen metal?

You can't.

It's impossible.

We're probably all buying each other's stolen metal

without even knowing we're doing it.

When the metal leaves the scrap yard,

it's even harder to detect.

It's packed into enormous containers

which are loaded onto ships bound for countries like China.

Here in Felixstowe port,

they ship more than three million containers a year.

In a separate part of the port,

British Transport Police conduct searches of suspicious containers.

Those two vehicles there,

we've got to check the final details on them.

But they are suspect vehicles.

They use police intelligence

to identify which containers to inspect.

You can see it was just stuck on with double-sided tape.

And there's the true identification on the back of the vehicle.

In 2012,

a search of 420 containers in ports all along the East Coast

uncovered over half a million pounds' worth of stolen metal

bound for China,

West Africa

and India.

During the operation, a lot of the containers were opened

that had scrap metal in, also car parts,

broken-down cars,

parts of,

even cars cut in half.

So the scrap and the stolen vehicles were very much mixed together.

We're trying to build a puzzle, really,

around what is going on with scrap metal.

We're pretty certain it's organised crime groups behind it.

It takes a lot of effort to steal infrastructure cabling.

And this afforded us the opportunity

to gather intelligence and information

on exactly what scrap metal boxes are leaving this country,

where they're going and who is shipping them out.

Increasingly, it looks like organised crime

has moved in on the trade in stolen metal.

Between November 2011 and May 2012,

thieves struck 22 times

to steal a total of 6,000 metres of copper cable

from this remote railway line in the Cotswolds.

They left live wires dangerously exposed.

A criminal gang had calculated that there was no CCTV...

..and the police were unlikely to be in such a remote area.

Operation Distillery was set up in response to cable theft

between Evesham and Morton-In-Marsh.

We knew this was an organised criminal gang

that were out to make a lot of money. And the way they were doing it,

they were ripping the heart out of the rail infrastructure, effectively.

The actual damage they've caused to the rail network in that area

is over half a million pounds.

At midnight, in cold winter snow, in February 2012,

British Transport Police were patrolling the line

when they saw two of the gang.

Knowing they'd been spotted, the thieves ran away

to hide in a dark wood.

At the moment, we've got three or four deer

that we can see on the side with the two officers in the field.

The police called in a helicopter to help with their search.

But at first its thermal imaging doesn't show any human life.

We're just checking to see if there's anything else,

but, yeah, three or four deer at the moment.

Having located the thieves,

the helicopter crew directs the ground crew towards them.

They're still lying low within the wooded area.

There's tracks, we can't see what that is.

The wooded area directly beside you.

We're just trying to reacquire them again.

They're hiding behind a tree.

Yeah, they're now up and running

from your direction.

Right, right, right, towards the wooded section.

They're right in front of you.

They're going to come out towards you, I believe.

All units stand by.

Bloody excellent work!

The arrests of these two men gave the police the opportunity

to check their fingerprints against forensic evidence

from the theft sites

and to analyse their mobile phone records to find out who else was in the gang.

It was the breakthrough they needed.

It's 6am in Birmingham.

Now that the police know more about the metal theft gang,

and where to find them,

it's time to make a few house calls.

All the addresses are nearby each other

so by the time we all get there,

there won't be time for anybody to phone anybody.

It's just a question of going in and do the doors and that's it.

Police! Open up!

Police!

They find one of the men they're looking for.

Do you understand that we've got a warrant to search the premises today?

Yeah.

OK. You're also being arrested

on suspicion of conspiracy to steal railway cable.

Railway cable? Me?

Between November last year and May this year.

-Me?

-Yeah.

But I working!

No, I working!

OK, well, you are under arrest.

You do not have to say anything,

but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned

-something which you later rely on in court.

-OK.

-Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Understand?

-Yes, no problem.

The search team have found something hidden inside a sofa in the garden.

Bolt croppers underneath the...

Quite heavy-duty bolt croppers, I would suggest,

and they are the type of bolt croppers found previously

when we've discovered cable theft and tools have been abandoned by the side of the track.

And upstairs there's more evidence

that could link one of the arrested men to a crime scene.

The crime scene examiner has recovered a footprint, basically,

and we need to establish whether the boot or trainer matching the print is on the premises.

So as they're a quite close match on the treads,

we'll be seizing both pairs.

And in a car owned by one of the men,

they found half a tonne of copper cable.

Have you got any ID or anything?

Sorry?

Any identification cards? Passport?

No. No passport.

At the moment, there's no documentation for himself.

But there's documentation for Russett, the person we're looking for.

There's two bank cards here for Russett, right?

Yeah.

If he's...

They're both valid,

so I'm saying to you that somebody called Russett lives here

While the police are outside trying to decide what to do next,

their suspect arrives.

Hang on. Jase!

Jase! Jase!

Stefan?

Yes, sir.

I'm arresting you on suspicion of conspiracy to steal

electrical cable from the railway.

Hey, hey, come on.

I'm not criminal. I not doing nothing wrong.

Come on, let's go.

It's been a successful day for the British Transport Police.

They've arrested their suspects,

and later in court, the eight members of the gang

all receive jail sentences.

The ringleaders get four years each.

Metal theft, as a whole, nationally,

affects everybody commuting to work.

It's your property that's being stolen.

And we are tackling it.

From the results today at court,

where you've got these eight men

that have been given a total of 20 years between them.

It sends out a clear message that it's not worth it.

The former metal thief, Matt,

believes tougher sentences like these

are just what's needed to deter people from stealing metal.

You start putting people inside for it, behind bars, they'll start thinking twice about it.

But as the price of metal stays high,

the temptation to steal it could be around for sometime yet.

We do not see a return to the lower metal prices

at any time.

It's all about the increasing demand from Southeast Asia,

and when China stops growing,

we can think about India, we can think about Indonesia,

we can think about Brazil taking over that baton.

And so that will continue to increase prices.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd