Episode 11 Caught Red Handed

Thieves will steal our cars, our valuables,

just about anything they can get their hands on.

To cut down on crime and antisocial behaviour,

police and other agencies are using new technology and tactics,

where the bad guys are actually getting caught in the act.

I can see the man actually commit the robbery. Lovely, thank you very much.

Local councils, shops and businesses

are laying some traps of their own.

Why should we feel frightened for the rest of our lives?

And the general public, too,

can help unsuspecting crooks get their comeuppance.

No way are you getting away.

We did it for everyone else as well that she might be stealing from.

We WILL name and shame you.

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

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today, a violent attack by armed raiders on a jewellery shop.

But they are about to get more than they bargained for.

I was annoyed that they were doing this in our town.

I was annoyed that they were terrorising people.

Passers-by and police join forces to chase the robbers down.

It's people power in action.

Also today, a nasty surprise for car thieves in London,

courtesy of the police.

We decided to place the fear of crime back into the criminals

to take our psychological warfare to them.

Putting the fear on the crims, the hidden power of police technology.

And, a brazen burglar who's caught on camera with his pants down.

His chances of getting away with his crime have just hit rock bottom.

But first, we're in Louth, Lincolnshire.

In 2012, Louth was named Britain's Favourite market town

by the BBC's Countryfile.

It's full of little shops, little organisations,

not too many big chains. It's almost got a village feel to the place.

Friendly shops, where everyone's welcome.

Apart from the day that armed robbers came to town.

A smash-and-grab raid on a jeweller's.

These two violent criminals have come looking for easy pickings.

They haven't reckoned with the brave townspeople of Louth.

I think they thought it was a sleepy little town,

and could get away with it.

I certainly don't think they planned for the public

acting in the way they did, and how things ended up.

I was annoyed that they were doing this in our town.

I was annoyed that they were terrorising people.

As we will see, Nick Gibson's stand against the robbers escalates

as lots of local people join in.

In all my time of dealing with different robberies,

this is the one that everybody pulled together to get the result.

The public and the police.

These two armed men picked the wrong town to mess with.

Financial adviser Nick Gibson lives in a village just outside Louth.

Louth's a beautiful little town. It's fairly sleepy.

I'm sure there are crimes,

but you don't tend to hear about things as much as other cities.

On the day of the raid,

Nick had travelled into his office in Louth

for a meeting with a client.

But first, he's popped out to buy a sandwich for his lunch.

I walked down the main road through the town, called Eastgate,

and went into a sandwich shop, got a sandwich, and thought,

"I'll go and see my stepdaughter, Hannah,"

who works at one of the shops.

I walked across the road to walk down the other side.

At that moment, two men on a motorcycle pull up

and park outside the jewellery shop.

Parking on double yellow lines is just the first,

and least serious, of their crimes this day.

The motorcycle that they had come into Louth on was stolen.

They had stolen it in a shed burglary a few days previously

from Grimsby.

They had altered the numberplate on it with tape

to show a different registration number.

This is one of the main shopping streets in Louth,

and it can get very busy, especially around lunchtime.

But that doesn't seem to bother these two.

They walk into the jeweller's without taking their helmets off

and straightaway start smashing into the glass displays with hammers.

They don't care about the noise,

or about the manageress of the shop who's standing just off-camera.

But even though she's terrified,

she bravely presses a panic button that locks the front door,

but locks her inside with the robbers.

I heard some glass breaking.

I looked into the jeweller's, saw two guys in motorcycle helmets

with claw hammers, busy smashing away at the counters.

Going at it quite well.

Nick decides to take action.

I was annoyed that they were doing what they were doing.

I just looked behind me

and saw a motorcycle there with the key in the ignition,

so I thought I'd help the job by taking the key out

and putting it in my pocket.

If nothing else, it will delay them, because they'll have to go on foot.

I just thought it would be delaying tactics for the police to arrive.

Inside the jeweller's the robbery takes a violent turn.

One of the men has a knife and, off-camera,

he now threatens the manageress to force her to open the safe.

Outside, Nick can't see the manager.

He believes the robbers are in the store on their own.

I didn't realise there was somebody in the shop.

For some reason I thought the shop had been locked and left for lunch.

I tried the door, tried to push the door open and it wouldn't,

because obviously it was locked.

Then I thought, if I can't get in, they obviously can't get out,

and again, delaying their departure by holding the door

so that when it was unlocked,

they wouldn't be able to make good their escape.

Nick asks for help from passers-by who call the police

and hold the door with him.

This mobile phone footage shows just how many people

are now getting involved.

It was nice that so many people helped.

It was definitely a team effort.

I think, if I was going up against two chaps with knives, on my own,

I might have thought twice about it.

One of the group decides to damage the motorcycle.

It's something Nick's not keen on.

A person came along and tipped it over,

and was actually jumping up and down on it,

although I did tell him to leave it

because it probably belonged to somebody else,

and it might be evidence.

Meanwhile at the local police station,

Detective Constable Becky Fowler and her colleagues

have received the emergency call.

I think our first thoughts were that we wanted to get there

as quickly as we can.

We have security gates at the police station,

and they just don't open quick enough.

Every car that was available, every officer that was available,

immediately went out.

Our concerns are for the safety of the lady at the jewellery shop

and the other public that were around.

So yeah, you just want to get there, you want to catch them,

and you want to make sure everybody's OK.

But the two armed men inside the jeweller's

know the police will be on their way, so they're not hanging about.

-They head for the locked door.

-We were holding the door.

They were trying to smash their way through with these claw hammers,

and obviously we were being showered in glass.

And myself and the other chap, we pulled our heads down

to avoid being showered, but also to protect our eyes.

Realising that brute force isn't working,

the robbers drag the manageress over to unlock the door.

Once we realised that the lady was still in the shop

and that they could harm her, or they weren't going to let her go,

it was a case of withdrawing, stepping back from the door.

One of the men heaves the door open

and they warn the crowd to back off.

SHOUTING

Threatening, "Get away, get away, or else."

It was quite comical actually because they both ran to the bike.

They scrabble for the ignition key, but it's not there.

It's in Nick's pocket.

They decide to make a run for it,

but Nick and others are hot on their heels.

It was a case of just following on

and making it hard for them to get away,

or at least to give the police the chance to catch up.

And the police aren't far behind. They're about to arrive in force.

The public were absolutely brilliant.

All these different people that delayed everything

an extra few seconds.

They even had weapons pointed at them themselves at times.

And just thought, "No, we're not having this."

The offenders ran off, they thought,

"We're not letting them get away with this in our town,"

and chased after them.

Later, the desperate armed robbers meet even more determined locals

as one of them tries to steal this man's car.

There was no way that I was going to let him have my car.

And I would do all I could to make sure he didn't get my car.

And Nick finds himself in a direct confrontation.

He stopped and turned to us with the claw hammer,

as though he was threatening us.

The robbers want to run, but the locals aren't about to let them.

Laptops, mobile phones, handbags,

we leave a lot of valuable items in our cars these days

that are very attractive to thieves.

But in north London,

the Metropolitan Police have reduced the amount of thefts from cars,

and they've done it using some very special high-tech devices

that are invisible to the human eye.

This man's about to commit a crime.

While he's chatting to someone on the phone,

he notices that this car window is open,

and there's a laptop in a bag on the passenger's seat.

He decides to help himself to it,

then casually continues his conversation and walks away.

Elsewhere, this other man sees an unlocked car door.

He starts to rummage through the belongings on the car seat,

looking for something to steal.

But both these men are making a big mistake.

They've fallen into traps set by police.

In the London Borough of Brent,

sneaky thieves like them are getting snared.

Here at Brent we decided to go to war with the criminals, if you like,

place the fear of crime back into them, by using these covert methods.

They never know, when they break into a car, if this car is a trap car.

And some of these methods can leave a car thief feeling,

and looking, rather silly.

It's a high-volume crime.

It affects every aspect of the population across London.

It's an endemic problem,

and it affects and blights the lives of most of us

at one point or another.

A thief can rob your vehicle in next to no time,

as Lynn sadly found out

when she was dropping some papers off at her sister's house.

I parked right outside her house and it was broad daylight.

I reached over, grabbed the paperwork out of my handbag,

left my handbag on the passenger's seat in the front,

locked the car, ran into my sister's house,

gave her the paperwork in, said goodbye, came back out.

And the passenger window had been smashed, and my handbag was gone.

Lynn had only left her car for a moment,

parked on a residential street.

I think I was shocked, to start with.

And probably a little bit frightened,

because I didn't know if the person was still around.

And then after that, angry. Very, very angry.

Thefts from cars can take just seconds to commit,

but they can affect victims' lives for a long time afterwards.

In my handbag was everything. Everything that I run my life with.

My phone, my Filofax, my purse with all my bank cards.

I had to reapply for a new drivers license.

And of course, there are some things you just can't replace.

My camera was stolen as well,

and on my camera I obviously had lots of pictures

that I'd taken of the children at various school events

and family gatherings, which... Yes, I can replace the camera,

but I can never get those photographs back.

They're gone forever.

The trouble is, police can't normally be around

when these quick thefts happen.

But Madeline and her colleagues in Brent

found a way to be right on the spot at the scene of a crime.

We needed something else. We needed a new innovation.

We needed maybe to look towards technology to try and help us.

So, they set up a series of trap cars,

rigged with camera sensors and other clever devices.

And, sporting a selection of the sort of valuable items

that attract thieves.

Like this man.

This gentleman here, as you can see,

has got absolutely no idea that this is a trap car.

He's reached in, he's taken what is actually a laptop in this instance.

He's so very casual about what he's doing.

He doesn't even bother to finish his phone call,

puts his phone back to his ear

and carries on chatting to whoever he was.

This is in the middle of the day.

This is how brazen and how quickly car thieves operate.

But the camera is operating too, and it's caught the thief in the act.

To make it even harder for criminals to deny their crimes,

the police have some other tricks up their sleeve.

Or, in this case, ON the sleeve...of the robber.

It's a special type of liquid

that helps give detectives solid evidence.

Let me show you how traceable liquid works.

If I was a car thief breaking into one of our trap cars,

I'd get sprayed with the liquid.

I even try and wash it off, or wipe it off with a towel, as you can see.

Still nothing can be seen on my hand.

However, as soon as I dim the lights,

and put a UV light on, as you can see, I'm glowing bright yellow.

If I were a prisoner, what would happen now is,

I'd be taken through to the custody suite,

swabs would be taken of my hand and sent to the laboratory.

The laboratory would be able to look at that sample

and immediately link me back

to a particular crime scene, house or vehicle that had been broken into.

Each separate container of liquid has its own individual code.

The stain is harmless, but even with regular washing

it will stay on clothes and skin for weeks.

This footage from another force shows the liquid in action.

A man opens the door of a car, intending to steal.

As he rifles through the items on the passenger's seat,

he triggers a spray. He wasn't expecting that!

The fine mist has gone all over him.

He's confused and checks his hands and arms.

The spray's put him off any further rummaging,

so he shuts the door and leaves.

What he doesn't know is that he's now a marked man,

and linked to this specific crime scene.

Madeline has another example from a different capture car.

We received an activation early one evening

to say that the trap car had been broken into.

Officers attended the scene and very quickly identified

where the items that he'd stolen had been taken to.

The man denies it was him that had taken them,

so police bring out the special ultraviolet torch.

He glowed bright green. He was absolutely covered in the stuff.

This is the arm that leaned in to take the stolen property,

and you can see how he's been sprayed with the traceable liquid.

And here, under normal light, absolutely nothing.

Whoops. There goes the case for the defence.

In court, the man was sentenced to a 49-hour community order

and had to pay £400 in costs.

And this other ever-so-casual thief didn't fare any better.

Justice was swift for him, too.

In less than 24 hours, he was arrested, charged,

put before the courts and given a six-week custodial sentence.

It's a successful campaign for Madeline and her colleagues.

Eventually, word gets around about these capture cars.

Opportunist thieves decide to stop risking opportunities.

And the amount of thefts from vehicles in the area has fallen.

We decided to place the fear of crime back into the criminals,

to take our psychological warfare to them,

to say to them quite clearly, and quite simply,

if you come to Brent, our new technology will be waiting for you.

Coming up on Caught Red Handed:

In Lincolnshire, the jewellery robbers are on the run.

But not for long.

And, an angry homeowner launches an internet campaign

when his camera catches a burglar with a wardrobe malfunction.

We're back in Louth, Lincolnshire, where two armed men

in motorcycle helmets have raided a jewellery shop.

Some of the locals have decided to take action

and have been delaying the robbers for the police to catch them.

I was annoyed that they were doing this in our town.

I was annoyed that they were terrorising people.

And when the two men try to run away,

financial adviser Nick and several others run after them.

Anybody that knows me knows that I'm not a runner,

so I didn't really believe I would catch up with him.

I just believed that I would keep up with him,

or keep a distance from him.

The robbers and the chasing pack of townspeople

are all heading towards a car park where another resident,

Eric Chapman, has just finished an appointment in town.

I went to get my eyes tested,

and I went back to my car to drive home to do my next job.

The robbers split up. One of them approaches Eric's car.

We ran around this corner here.

We got up to about where that lady is there,

and the car, Eric's I believe, his car was manoeuvring.

One young man ran across the front of me

with a motorcycle helmet on his head.

The burglar ran towards the vehicle, pulled the door open.

He made it obvious he was after my car.

There was no way I was going to let him have my car.

And I would do all I could to make sure he didn't get my car.

He shouted at the driver to get out.

He sat there, he wasn't going to move.

To try and force Eric out of his car,

the man lunges at him with a knife.

All of a sudden, a knife...

His arm came out at that sort of angle.

And I didn't really...

Even though I was stabbed in the eye,

I didn't really think about that.

I was more focused on what was going on round me.

We shouted at him to let the man go,

on the basis that he was making it worse for himself

and the police were on their way.

That was my saving grace, I think, at the end of the day.

The fact that all these others were running after him.

Within a few seconds he'd reconsidered,

he'd taken the knife away.

He ran off into the corner of the car park there.

I've been through far worse.

I've been in the forces and I've been in a war zone,

so it didn't faze me one bit.

Hospital pictures show how near the tip of the knife

came to Eric's eye, and to blinding him.

Nick and others carry on pursuing the robber.

As he was running he threw away the knife that he was carrying

into some undergrowth.

Down alleyways and round corners, they keep him in sight.

I finally caught up with him on a hill just outside the chip shop,

Mr Chips, as it's called locally.

And, as I got to him he was about to use his claw hammer on us,

on me and another chap that was coming up.

And he was threatening.

And I said, "Look behind you," so to speak, and he looked behind,

and there were four bobbies running down the hill with their batons out,

telling him to get on the floor, drop his weapons,

which he didn't do very quickly, I was pleased to say(!)

And they all jumped all over him.

The man is quickly disarmed

and Detective Constable Becky Fowler arrives

as the handcuffs are going on.

I was immediately passed some jewellery

and a knife that another member of the public had picked up,

that had been dropped by the male that they had detained.

I couldn't help saying to him at the time,

while the police were arresting him, that he is not such a big man now,

now he's not threatening a lady and an elderly gentleman.

He's been chased from the shop all the way through to where he stopped.

He's got the jewellery on him.

He's banged to rights. He's caught red-handed, basically,

which makes our job so much easier.

The man, now identified as Damion Clark,

had ridden to Louth on the motorcycle from Grimsby

with his accomplice, who was still at large.

The hard part for us was finding out who he was with

and where they'd gone.

While the police start scouring the town for the missing man,

Nick has to get back to work.

I could see the helicopter flying over the office,

and circling around Louth for a long while.

I saw a lot of police cars racing through the town.

The police helicopter, special search teams with dogs,

and many locals, try to pinpoint where the man is.

30 or 40 people rang up that day, giving us information.

That was how involved the public were.

Unfortunately, the man has disappeared.

But now they have Damion Clark in custody,

they can work out who the other man might be.

My colleagues get onto Humberside and build-up an intelligence picture

as to who Damien associates with.

And from that, we quite quickly identify

that the other person is most likely to be Christopher London.

Christopher London is well-known to Humberside police.

And they also know who he associates with.

So now, they can make a good guess at a vehicle he could be using.

We was able to identify what car he was in,

and Humberside stopped the car and arrested him later that day.

They'd hoped their day out in Louth would get them a haul of jewellery.

But instead, all they got was a jail sentence.

In court, Damion Clark pleads guilty

and asks for 17 other offences to be taken into account.

He is sentenced to six years in prison and because he used his knife

to wound Eric above his eye, he's given an extra 3.5 years on licence.

Christopher London also pleads guilty

and asks for 12 other offences to be taken into account.

He is jailed for four years.

It's a result for the police, and for the people of Louth.

Without the public in this situation,

we probably would have had an undetected robbery on our hands.

However, it could have been a very different outcome.

While it was an excellent result in this case,

we would never recommend that people put themselves in any danger,

or take matters into their own hands.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Brave or stupid?

Stupid, definitely. Yeah, yeah. That's me! INTERVIEWER LAUGHS

It was certainly a close call for Eric,

who was stabbed by Damion Clark

while preventing him from taking his car.

My friends and family have been very proud of what I did.

There have been mixed opinions.

Some said I should have given him the car,

and others say, "Good on you, you did the right thing."

But at the end of the day, I do what I want to do,

what I feel is right at the time.

We do tend to hear the negatives,

about nobody helped somebody in distress,

and I think it's so nice that so many people helped and took part,

and obviously I was just a small cog in the system

that got these guys, and stopped them and caught them

and enabled them to be put away.

It wasn't just the police. It was people power, yeah.

Now, what should we do if we see a crime happening in front of us?

Well, Nick and the others in Louth got stuck in.

But that's not necessarily the best thing to do.

If you witness a crime, the first thing you do, stay calm,

keep yourself safe, and dial 999 for the police.

If you do feel that you've no option but to step in

because somebody else's life is at risk,

or you feel that it's your public duty,

then shout to others around you.

Get the support of the community around you.

Think about,

I might be asked some questions about this at a later date.

What is that person wearing?

Can you give us a full description of what that person looks like?

You can have just as valuable an input

as being a witness to the crime

because you can actually tell us what's happened,

and you can help us identify the offender.

There was a time when a criminal could avoid capture

by running round the corner and hiding amongst a crowd.

Nowadays though, it's a lot harder, because within just a few hours,

their face will be all over the internet.

This home belongs to Eddie and his family.

They have two good-quality CCTV cameras

which keep watch over their property when they're out.

Someone who doesn't know about the cameras,

but will wish he did,

is this burglar, who's just parked outside.

It's a hot day, but cool as a cucumber,

he knocks on the door to check if there is anyone in.

No-one home.

So, he takes a look around the side of the building.

Moments later, he breaks in through a window.

Unfortunately, the effort of doing so is too much for his trousers.

He wipes away fingerprint evidence,

puts gloves on,

and goes on a recce of the house.

Maybe he's in search of a belt...

Having decided what he'd like to steal,

he has the cheek to pick up one of the owner's own knapsacks

to help him carry away their possessions.

A little later, he comes down the stairs with the backpack bulging

and an old water bottle containing coins -

the children's coins, which they've been saving for a family trip.

Not content with his haul so far,

he emerges from a downstairs room with another bag of loot.

He finally leaves, walking calmly to his car.

But he's not going to remain calm for long.

Because the house owner Eddie, when he discovers the crime,

posts this footage on the internet.

The burglar's little trouser problem catches people's interest.

The video soon spreads around across the whole region.

It's seen by many thousands of local people.

It all gets too hot for the burglar

and just two days after his crime, he goes to the police station

and hands himself in.

It turns out he was already on probation for other offences

when he decided to rob Eddie.

He is sentenced to six years in prison

with a minimum of 2.5 years to be served

and also has to pay a large fine.

Even though Eddie and his family lost some of their belongings,

they are pleased with the outcome.

The burglar was caught in quick time

and won't be released for a long time.

That's it for today.

Join us next time when the police and the public

catch more criminals red-handed.