Episode 8 Crime and Punishment

Today on Crime And Punishment, a motorist who joins the 2,000 a year who end up in prison

when they learn the hard way that drink and drugs

don't go with driving.

And an all-night booze-up leads to a violent family fight

and a trip to the custody suite.

-All of you stay there.

-Calm down, mate.

In 1952, when the Queen came to the throne,

the phrase "social media" didn't exist.

Now she even has her own Facebook page.

And the police can't afford to ignore Facebook or Twitter either.

Hi there, can you ask her to come to the door?

SHOUTING AND SHRIEKING

Why are you giving me duff details?

Policing our cities never stops, day and night,

right around the clock.

He smelt of some alcohol, he's provided a positive breath test.

In Birmingham South, Bournville Police Station is the nerve centre of operations.

So he was located outside the premises, yes?

Everyone arrested ends up here

and it's been like that for the last 60 years.

But today is a bit different.

For the next 24 hours, each detail of what goes on in this Bournville Station

will be recorded on Twitter, for a special police Tweet-a-thon.

It's a modern-day attempt to involve the surrounding community in what goes on at their local nick.

It all kicked off at 7am.

Darren Colley is the communications officer

who's doing the tweeting.

This morning, we've had various incidents.

Everything ranging from a drive-off at a petrol station...

We've had parking problems, where a vehicle has been causing an obstruction.

Officers have gone out and ticketed that vehicle.

We've had some fail-to-appear warrants

where officers have been at a premises, arresting people who've failed to appear

for issues such as shop theft, criminal damage, assault,

all of which is being relayed to our followers.

Sergeant Vanessa Eyles and her team are about to serve

one of those arrest warrants and bring in the person

who's failed to appear at court.

The warrant was issued by the courts

just four days ago, because this woman failed to appear

for a matter of theft which was connected to what we called a domestic-related incident.

First, they need to get into the woman's flat.

Hello, you all right? It's nothing to worry about,

we're trying to get to a flat above the bookies. How do we get there?

-At the front, there's some wooden gates.

-Yes.

You've got to go through those gates.

OK, thank you for the information about the dog.

Apparently they've got a dog.

One of the blokes said, "HE'S got a dog" so there's a male here as well.

KNOCK AT DOOR, DOG BARKS

Hello, sorry to bother you.

OK...nice and calm!

-Is

-BLEEP

-home?

-She is, yeah.

-She is.

-Hi, are you all right?

Do you want to take the dog away?

The dog seems harmless, but to be on the safe side, he's locked away.

The woman is soon found.

She's arrested on the fail-to-appear for a theft charge warrant,

and she's brought out to the police van.

Hopefully this message will go out to the community of Birmingham South

that we do execute our warrants,

and reinforces that people need to comply with bail conditions

and abide by those instructions given by the courts.

And Darren makes sure the arrest gets tweeted.

Police emergency? Hello, Amber.

You've got a report of a stabbing. How many patients, please?

One patient, male, 18 years.

In the control room, emergency calls are coming in thick and fast.

And it's their responsibility to dispatch officers on the ground to each job.

Darren Basterfield and James Debuse from the local policing unit

are out in a patrol car. They head for the house,

knowing they could be walking into a dangerous situation.

They arrive to a scene of chaos.

If you just want to come outside for us.

-Is the dog OK? What's happened? What's happened?

-I don't know.

-Who's called us? Who's called us?

-Me.

-What's happened?

I stabbed him in there.

Right, who's been stabbed?

Where have you been stabbed?

Show me, lift your top up?

-I'm all right.

-Turn round. Where's the knife?

-I'm all right.

-Where's the knife?

It seems the people in the house have been drinking all night, ending up in a fracas

where a young man has got a minor injury from a knife

wielded by his girlfriend.

Where did you say you stabbed him?

Whereabouts? Top of the arm?

The officers are trying to calm things down.

They want to keep the two people involved away from each other.

Just step outside here so I can search you.

-Have you got anything in your pockets?

-No.

But just as things seem to be under control,

the injured man's family, who live around the corner, get wind of what's happened

and turn up outside. We'll see later how things go from bad to worse.

SHRIEKING

-On the ground!

-Get off her!

-Stay there.

Politicians may be calling for prisoners to be made to work harder

whilst they're inside, but the problem is,

how do you get work for the prison workshops

when there isn't enough to go round on the outside?

The idea is to provide hard work in prison

so that prisoners will be doing something productive

instead of doing nothing...

For Kenneth Clarke,

the business of prisons is to stop re-offending.

He believes the way to do it is to get prisoners to work

40 hours a week and learn to live a normal life.

It's not rocket science, actually!

At Bristol, the new policy is already under way.

It's important for prisoners to work while they're in prison

so they have something meaningful to do to take up their time here.

But also so they build the essential skills they need

to move into employment when they get released. We give them the opportunity for rehabilitation.

Work's not easy to find, even beyond the gate.

So it's a big job, tempting companies to use prison labour.

OK?

It's Nikki Secker, the prison's head of business development,

who has to bring in the contracts to keep the workshops working.

Today, she's holding an open day for local firms.

What we're now offering is a commercially viable solution

in terms of your own business models.

That's what we're going to be able to demonstrate.

Next, the honoured guests are taken on a tour of the prison's workshops.

It's absolutely critical they should like what they see.

Previously, when we'd approach businesses,

we were very much going and asking for something.

We were asking

for a commercial company to offer employment opportunities on release.

That's the major shift because we're now saying,

"Yes, I'd still like you to take on X offenders on release

"but also, what I can do is offer a very competitive solution to your business needs."

We want to employ more prisoners and generate more revenue

and deliver more skills. And we can't do that on our own.

But even in a recession, there is still work that is so labour-intensive

that British businesses can't afford to do it in the UK.

Typically, it might be being done in the Far East

so it'll be assembly work

that because of our cost structure in the UK,

generally is migrated elsewhere.

Earning money to pay back to victims

instead of dreaming of creating more victims in future crime.

But there's another side to Ken Clarke's agenda.

It's not just about making offenders employable

by giving them work inside the prisons,

it's making them employable on the outside.

Current figures suggest that almost 75% of ex-offenders have no work.

They need to find someone who's willing to give them a job.

Adam Chaim is one of more than 150 former prisoners

who are working for the Timpson shoe-repair and key-cutting chain.

It's a family business and managing director James Timpson is sure

that employing ex-offenders makes business sense.

We've got dozens of superstars we've recruited from prison.

What we find is they're confident, they're bright,

they have a real urge to prove

to people they deserve a chance and they're going to make a success of their life.

But what about the risks?

The advantage I have when I recruit an ex-offender

is I know what I'm getting because I know their full history,

I get the full chapter and verse so I know what I'm dealing with,

rather than people lying on their application form

which, I'm afraid, is all too common.

Since we've been recruiting ex-offenders,

we've doubled the number of shops, we've doubled our profits

and the number of people we employ.

Putting all that together, I believe it's good for our business.

James Timpson is so convinced of the benefits of employing ex-offenders

that he, together with business leaders like Richard Branson,

signed a joint letter to the Financial Times on the subject.

Adam Chaim would agree with every word.

You start off emptying bins and sweeping the floor and build up

to a level... I'm happy with shop manager, or a bit higher than that.

I'll be happy running my own shop. You can go up and up and up.

But all of these benefits to businesses, to society,

and to ex-offenders, will come only if enough offenders learn how to work when they're inside,

which brings us back to Bristol.

I think it's very positive for the prisoners, for business.

I believe the business model that's been developed is very strong.

What I've seen is that each prison differs in what they can offer.

Bristol has been brilliant in showing us

what they give back to prison inmates.

But likewise, it gives them an opportunity to find work

and get a vocational skill which will help them.

I think the day's been a great success,

we've opened people's eyes to the fact the prison service has dramatically changed.

And the prison's marketing efforts have paid off.

Since the open day, two new contracts - one for making tables

and another for recycling - are in discussion.

Mr Clarke will be delighted.

When there's an incident on the road and someone is hurt,

the first job of the police is to make the area safe

and get the traffic moving again.

In some cases, what starts as an accident location

becomes the scene of a crime.

West Midlands Police Collision Investigation Unit

was set up in 2010. If they get called to a car accident,

it means it's so serious that someone is likely to die as a result of it,

or at the very least, someone's life will be changed forever by it.

The CCTV footage you're about to see will make you think twice

before ever breaking the speed limit.

It's shocking but it provided vital evidence for the police.

It shows the precise moment when a woman was hit by a car.

On Christmas Eve, 2010, this 23-year-old woman was walking home

from work.

She was hit by a drunk driver doing nearly 60 miles an hour

on an icy residential street.

She survived the impact but is still receiving treatment for serious head injuries.

This is the story of the investigation

and how modern technology brought the driver to justice.

Graham Harrison from the West Midlands Police Collision Investigation Unit

was in charge of the case.

The road had been closed by our colleagues from the local area.

I could see straight away there was a body lying in the road,

being attended to by a number of paramedics and doctors.

There was a vehicle parked, a silver VW Golf, in the middle of the road,

at a sort of 70-degree angle, which was obviously the collision vehicle

because I could see apparent damage to the front of it.

At this stage, it seemed unlikely the woman would survive.

Graham began gathering evidence for what he believed would become a fatal accident.

We're looking for skid marks, damage to the vehicle itself, road surface,

basically anything we can find, debris that might give you an idea

of where the person had been stood when the vehicle collided with them.

20, 25 years ago,

officers would come down to a scene such as this with tape measures

and they'd do what we call "chain and offset". Measure across the road and along a datum line,

write it all down and go back to the office and like a draughtsman,

then draw a plan to scale.

These days, we have advanced surveying equipment

which allows us to set the gear up,

and then go along and do hundreds of points,

then feed it into a computer and it will provide us with a scale plan

that's accurate to millimetres.

And from the very start, it was clear that CCTV footage

would play a vital role in the investigation.

Back in the 1980s, you were very pleased if you got a VHS video

with a blurry image on it.

These days, with digital imagery recording systems,

one of the first questions we're asking is how many frames there are per second.

You can work things out if you know the timings.

On this occasion, fortunately, everything was being recorded on a digital recorder.

As well as having the footage, one man saw the whole thing.

Patrick Baggott was taking his children to the circus

as a Christmas treat. He was driving carefully

because of the freezing conditions.

It was a real bad cold snap.

My son was sitting there

and the other little fellow was in his seat at the back.

As you can see, the size of the road,

and it was like pure ice. As I drove down here,

I've seen the girl on my left-hand side walking towards me.

Patrick had to swerve to avoid another car

coming in the opposite direction.

This is the point here now where I've had to slide to move over to the side

as he was bombing up there, flying really, basically.

The next few minutes will stay with him forever.

I looked in the mirror. That's when I've seen her flying through the air.

Patrick stopped to see if he could do anything.

Only a few months before, one of his best friends had been knocked down

and killed by a car.

As I got out, I slipped a little bit,

gone running up towards him, told him he was driving...called him a few more choice words,

and then told him he was driving way too fast.

And with that, he started crying. I said, "Is she all right?"

He says, "I think so."

With the CCTV footage, a clear eyewitness account,

and precise measurements from the scene,

Graham could begin to piece together what had happened.

Time now for our second look at Bournville Police Station,

where they're still recording the day's events on the web.

Things are hotting up as they try to sort out a domestic incident that's spilled onto the street.

Ladies, go home and we'll bring him to you.

On a housing estate in Birmingham, there's a real rumpus going on.

The mother and two sisters of the young man attacked by his girlfriend

have turned up and start pitching in.

Joe, Joe, who are they?

What you doing? What you doing?

Joe! Who are they?

James has taken hold of the older sister's arm

to keep her away from her brother.

Joe, stand still, mate, stand still.

The officers are doing their best to keep things calm

but all members of the family have lost their tempers

and the youngest sister has decided to take it out on the police.

-Get the

-BLEEP

-off.

-There's a dirty

-BLEEP.

AGGRESSIVE SHOUTING

Meanwhile, the young man has decided to show the police previous wounds

he's allegedly sustained from his clearly rocky relationship.

-Get off her!

-Stay there, all of you, stay there.

The young sister is handcuffed and led away.

Her brother has now broken down in tears over his girlfriend.

Of course, that's just his side of the story.

It's escalated from being a domestic-type incident,

both parties have had a few drinks,

even though it's only just gone 11 in the morning.

Obviously, family members are very agitated,

getting involved and making matters ten times worse, so...

The young man has said he doesn't want to go to hospital to be checked over.

For his own safety, he'll be taken to his other sister's house,

well away from the area.

The younger sister is taken off to the police station to be questioned.

Darren keeps the Twitter followers informed of the disturbance.

Superintendent Peter Blackburn is doing his rounds of the station.

Just for today, he'll be sending a record of all his activities to Darren to be tweeted.

I'm just going to the custody block next

to review what prisoners we've got down there,

to see if there's anyone I need to authorise to be in detention longer than 24 hours.

I drop in there to see how things are going.

This will be automatically picked up by Darren over here.

He'll be able to re-tweet that, send it back out to all the followers

for Birmingham South.

Everyone who's arrested on Pete's patch gets brought into custody.

We need to try and establish the truth, basically.

So we have to interview the people, and a lot of the times,

people don't tell us the truth so we try and find evidence to establish whether they're guilty or not.

All the evidence capture is done here, so we do DNA,

if someone's reported or charged,

and we also do photographs and we do fingerprints as well.

What's important to mention is not everybody who comes here is guilty

so we treat everybody fairly and transparently.

Just being checked in is our young woman who went for the police officer in the street.

She's much calmer now.

So she tried pushing past you in order to get to...

Anything being said at the time?

She'll be thoroughly searched before being taken to the cells.

Farham Din is the arresting officer.

She's pushed past me and that was clearly an act of antagonisation.

In an effort to keep her where she was,

at a safe distance from the other officer,

she's then pushed me up against the side wall.

Once that's happened, I've arrested her

on the suspicion of assaulting a constable.

She's then continued to be verbally abusive towards us

and the other officers. A small struggle has taken place,

she's been handcuffed and taken away.

Once it gets physical, you've got no choice but to get hands-on

and make them understand what they've done is wrong.

The day's moving on and the cells are filling up.

The Tweet-a-thon log records everything.

60 years ago, no-one could have imagined this kind of instant communication would be possible.

As darkness falls, another operation swings into action.

We'll be out on the road with them as the Tweet-a-thon continues.

60 years ago, there were only 1,100 female prisoners in the system.

Now, that number has quadrupled.

And the number of women officers working in prisons has grown even faster.

I'd like to introduce you to Lorna and Nikki.

First question, do I address you by your first names, or Ma'am or Miss?

-Lorna's fine for me.

-Nikki's fine for me!

Good, I wanted to get it out of the way. Nikki, tell me what it's like

being a female prisoner officer in a male jail.

I think the most important thing, for any individual,

is how they work, it's irrelevant what sex they are, male or female.

It's what skills you bring to the job

and that's the most important thing. You want people from a wide range

of society. We just happen to be two of those people.

Lorna, do you find you get a different reaction to some of the male officers or is that a myth?

No, I'd say it's definitely a myth. I agree with Nikki, it's about

the skills you bring to the job - the attitude, the values

and how you treat people who are in prison.

If you treat people with respect, you'll get respect back. It really is as simple as that.

I'm sure a lot of women who are watching think,

"Wow, it's a scary job, it's quite an intimidating job to do."

Do you feel scared when you walk up and down the wings?

No, absolutely not and it goes back to that previous comment

about treating people with respect. It's about having great relationships

with the staff you work with but also good relationships with prisoners.

People used to say to me, "It must be a really scary job"

but I'd say to them, I feel safer walking down the wing of a prison

than walking down the street at night sometimes.

And Nikki, you'd agree with that?

Yes. I think the difference is, when you're in an establishment,

we know the risks and we manage the risks

so we're far more in control of the environment

which results in it being far safer than the outside community, where you can't control those risks

and you're not even aware of what they are a lot of the time.

Thank you for your time, lovely to meet you.

I might just call you Ma'am and Ma'am, out of respect!

-Please not.

-Yes, don't.

Earlier, we saw West Midlands collision investigator

Graham Harrison collecting evidence at the scene

of a serious road accident in Birmingham.

Now he's got to put it all together to find out exactly what happened.

When a young woman was run over by a car and almost killed

on Christmas Eve, 2010, Graham Harrison,

from the West Mids Police Collision Investigation Unit, had the job

of putting together a picture of exactly what had occurred.

As well as an eyewitness account,

he had CCTV footage from four different cameras.

Looking at camera one, you see the pedestrian appear

from the bottom left-hand corner of the screen,

and start to cross the road.

She gets to over three-quarters of the way across

when you see Mr Shanahan's car come into view from the left-hand side

and collide with her. At this point, it's already lost control.

It's going sidewards down the street.

Looking at camera number five,

you can see she gets flung down the road surface towards us.

As you click through, you actually see she slides down the road,

and actually out of camera shot, she slides so far.

This all happens in less than ten seconds.

Graham can click through the recording frame by frame to find

the precise point of impact.

You can actually see the car touching the pedestrian's leg.

So from this, we can pinpoint the exact point of the collision.

You can then work out how fast the car was travelling when it hit the pedestrian.

Four clear skid marks at the site of the crash provided more evidence.

We can measure those, using surveying equipment

and a prism. And then later on, we can take those measurements,

apply equations of motion to them and they will tell us how fast

the vehicle was travelling at the start of those skid marks.

It was down to old-fashioned maths to work out the speed the car was travelling when it hit the woman.

The figures were checked and double-checked

by the collision team. There was no doubt

that the driver was way over the speed limit.

We can prove at the start of the skid marks

that he was doing not less than 57 miles an hour.

He's then skidded, lost a bit of speed and actually collided

at about 40 miles an hour.

As well as the tyre marks, the position of every piece of debris is recorded.

From this data collected at the crash site,

computer software can recreate a detailed picture of the incident.

So you've got the skid marks,

and the computer tells it to put it in as skid marks,

all the various cars, showing which direction they were facing,

the debris field, and you can highlight the different types of debris there were with colours.

And the red mark at the end which shows where she came to rest.

And this can then produce an animated version of the crash.

You can look at it from any angle you wish.

So, as you can see, the skid marks are already laid down on the road,

to give an idea of what's going to happen.

She starts to cross the road,

the vehicle comes into sight,

and follows the skid marks exactly,

and the blood spot shows where she ended up.

With all the evidence gathered and processed,

Laurence Shanahan appeared in court to face charges of dangerous driving.

On top of the speeding, he also had well over the limit of alcohol

in his blood.

Had the woman died, the driver could have served up to 14 years

in prison.

Under current legislation, the maximum is dangerous driving which is two years.

He received a 16-month prison sentence and a four-year driving ban.

The young woman is recovering but will still have to undergo

months of surgery.

If he'd been doing 20 miles an hour, he wouldn't have even hit her.

When you're driving a car, it's a lethal weapon, half a tonne of metal.

You've got to concentrate on the job in hand,

you've got to be aware of what you're doing and what others are doing,

not thinking about what you'll do at the end of the journey, you've got to keep your mind on the job.

Here in the control room at Birmingham Central Police Station,

they don't just deal with CCTV,

they take non-emergency calls from the public.

The man who knows all about it is Inspector Andy Bridgewater.

Tell us a little, you've got a new service, haven't you? 101.

-What is it?

-101 is hopefully a memorable number

that people can use as an alternative to 999 if it's not an emergency.

What kind of things

should they call 999 for and then, what's the difference?

If there's a crime in action, if you're witnessing a crime unfold,

you're a witness to something happening there and then,

that's an emergency, they should phone 999.

-And 101?

-101 is if there's an ongoing issue

or a crime that's already happened that you need to report,

then we can tailor the best police response to that

-and it might not be an immediate one.

-I know you get time-wasting calls,

what sort of examples have you had here?

Er, a recent one was a gentleman phoned to say

his brother hadn't invited him to a wedding. He abused the 999 system

-by calling us for that.

-He called 999 because he hadn't been invited to his brother's wedding?

-Yeah!

-That's not the end of it, is it?

-No, it's not.

Very common calls are people contacting us on 999

to say they've run out of credit on their phone!

Clearly, that clogs up the emergency network

and stops real emergencies getting through and will hamper our response.

The other thing you've noticed is there's a generational issue.

-Perhaps the older generation don't even call for emergencies, is that right?

-Yeah.

There certainly are people who don't want to bother us with stuff.

Clearly, if your house is getting broken into,

-that's the kind of thing the police should be responding to immediately.

-Quite right. Thank you.

Over the past 40 minutes or so,

we've been watching the work of one police station in Birmingham

as they mount a 24-hour Tweet-a-thon

on the social network site Twitter.

Darkness is falling and it's moving into its closing stages.

There's still plenty to tell their thousands of followers.

It's just another night at Bournville Police Station.

Officers are going about their duties.

However, tonight, everything they do is being tweeted

on the West Mids Police website.

It's the most up-to-date way for the police to keep in touch with the public.

I know from my own 15-year-old daughter, it's a part of daily life,

particularly for younger people.

If their phone breaks or doesn't work, or they drop it,

it's like part of their life, part of their body's been cut off!

We're here to police the community and represent them, protect them.

If we don't move with the times and communicate in a way

that the community are communicating, we'll get left behind.

An operation has been set up on one of the main roads out of Birmingham.

It's all part of their drink-drive campaign.

We're working with force traffic, they're out in the road stopping the vehicles for us.

They're picking half a dozen vehicles randomly

and directing them onto the forecourt here

where officers are speaking to the drivers and making them aware of what we're doing.

We're also looking at doing voluntary breath tests with people,

whether it be a passenger or the driver.

If they've had a drink, they may want to know what their limits are.

It's an opportunity for them to go through the procedure voluntarily.

I'll tell you when to stop, OK?

As they check this car, they get a strong smell of cannabis coming from it.

It's enough to warrant a search of both driver and passenger.

It seems history may repeat itself as the police have found two bags

of marijuana. But that's not all.

We recovered a small amount of herbal cannabis from the car.

And the passenger's got a lock knife on him as well,

which is an offensive weapon.

There are more offensive weapons in the back of the car.

Keith Bennett and drugs dog H have been called in.

We use this type of dog because they're so agile

and they're the right size to use in vehicles.

You can see he's extremely enthusiastic, energetic

and he can get into the smallest of areas.

H makes short work of the small car.

I'm happy with that.

An officer's done a physical, we've put the dog in,

we're happy the car's now clear and there's no further drugs inside.

The driver and passenger are arrested and taken to the station.

It's all added to the Twitter log.

The operation continues. This man tested clear

but it was extremely close.

I'm interested from the point of view of having had a beer at lunchtime

that you can come out and I've still got something in the system,

which...I wouldn't have given it a thought.

I mean, I wouldn't have had a beer after work and come out

under any circumstance this time of the year, so very, very surprising.

The legal limit is 35 micrograms of alcohol.

Anyone over that will be taken back to the station.

This man has blown way over the limit.

Come over to the van.

The guy says he's had alcohol the last two hours,

he smelt of alcohol and has provided a positive breath test.

At the roadside, he's blown a reading of 52.

Legal limit is 35 so anything over 35, we can arrest them and take them back to the police station.

At the police station, if they blow over 40,

they'll be offered a blood test or a blood option.

If they blow between 40 and 50, that is.

Anything over 50, it's a charge and go to court in a week or so.

By the end of the night, the operation has had good results.

A very successful day. We've had just under 200 cars stopped today.

We've had four prisoners in - two for drink-drive

and we've had two in for offensive weapons and drugs as well.

The public appear happy too with the crackdown.

It's a very good campaign

where we can find out the people who don't know what are the penance of drinking and driving.

I'm a GP myself so I would definitely encourage it.

It's nice and high-profile so people can see what's going on.

It makes people stop and think.

A very good idea, yes.

You shouldn't drink and drive, should you!

The 24 hours are up. Thanks to the Tweet-a-thon, there's a complete record

of everything that has gone through Bournville Police Station.

270 calls for help, 24 arrests, 200 tweets.

The number of police Twitter followers has also gone up to 4,000.

It's a busy place, it doesn't stop, it runs 24 hours a day

and we've got police officers coming in and out of here continually,

all doing different sorts of roles but the one thing in common with all of them is to make a difference

and to protect the community and work with them.

These fantastic-looking cars were on parade in 1954 for an inspection

by the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II.

And amazingly, this magnificent beast is still on the road.

BELL RINGS

What a fantastic car, what a fantastic noise! Thank you!

This was one of the original police cars, it's a Wolseley.

Steve knows lots about these kind of cars.

Tell me, what were its defining features?

Obviously the big illuminated Wolseley badge on the grille,

-which terrified the public.

-Did it?

They'd drive up behind them and they'd be really worried?

Yes, if you saw one of those in your rear-view mirror,

-you'd know you were being followed by the police.

-When were these used?

-From 1953 to about 1958, '59, around then.

-A beautiful car.

Were they fast or not?

We wouldn't think so today but then, '53, about 80 miles an hour.

-They eventually had to be replaced because of the speed issues?

-Yes.

To something which I prefer even more than that.

-This is a beautiful car, a Daimler Dart.

-Yes.

Why did these come into service?

The Met Police in particular had a problem with a group called Cafe Racers

which were basically rockers who'd soup up their motorbikes

and they'd race from the local cafe, the Ace Cafe in North London in particular,

around a series of roundabouts, and get back to the cafe.

They'd put a piece of music on the jukebox...

They had to get back to the cafe before the record finished.

This, how fast did it go?

-120 miles an hour.

-Gosh.

You'd never imagine a police officer driving this kind of car now

because, for a start, it's convertible!

Yes, and they had to drive them with the hood down.

And then this came into being, didn't it?

-Yes, the panda car.

-The panda car, look at it!

-The original panda.

Sky blue. Why did we call them pandas if they were sky blue?

When these were first introduced in 1965,

all the photos in the papers were in black and white.

A journalist coined the expression they looked like pandas.

And it stuck ever since.

Walk us through it. I mean, it's tiny for starters.

We had one when I was growing up, with three kids in the back.

-How do you put criminals in the back of this?

-Well, we did.

Minis were the first pandas I ever drove.

And we used to put prisoners in the back.

Let's have a listen to the siren on this one as well.

Slightly different, with the two tones.

TWO-TONE SIREN BLARES

That's straight out of a film, isn't it?

So those obviously had their particular purpose.

-And then we got quite a different looking car, didn't we?

-Yes.

This is a Jaguar XJ6, from 1983, '84.

This was one of the standard motorway patrol cars for the whole of the UK.

We had the panda, we know why that was named.

This was called "a jam sandwich".

Yes, for obvious reasons, you don't need to explain it, do you?

But it was a sort of standard livery for most UK forces,

-up to the mid-1990s.

-Presumably a nice car to drive.

-Was it reliable?

-It wasn't the most reliable car on the road.

When it was going...

SIREN WAILS

-..it was lovely to drive.

-They are more reliable now?

-Certainly are.

Here comes the modern version. Ooh!

Thank you very much, Steve.

-So, yes, straight into 2012. Hi, Neil, thank you very much.

-Hi.

Ooh, that's very loud.

I'll let you get out, shall I?

-Nice piece of kit?

-Thank you.

-Yeah? Nice piece of kit?

It is, definitely.

Talk us through it. It's a Jaguar, it's very fast, isn't it?

It is, yes. Jaguar XF 3-litre, about 150, 160 miles an hour.

150 miles an hour. How does it feel, driving at that speed?

It's comfy. We've all done courses to be able to drive at that speed.

Of course, nobody's allowed to do that.

Tell us about other things, we've got cameras, all sorts of kit on it.

It's fitted with automatic number-plate recognition that reads all the vehicles that pass us.

OK, so there's a camera there.

And from there, the shots go into your computer.

Correct, they come up on the computer screen and give us the information on vehicles that pass us

and tell us if they're required,

no insurance or criminals using them on a regular basis.

-What's your favourite bit about the car?

-It's nice, comfy and quiet!

-Would you like one of those though?

-They do look nice!

-Thanks very much.

Can we have the sirens on and everything?

SIREN WAILS

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd