Episode 15 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 is up to no good had better think twice.

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today, a shopkeeper bravely tries to lock in a knife-wielding robber.

He was flustered, very panicky, and he's smashing away at the glass.

Also today, a cruel, illegal attack on protected birds of prey.

What has been happening to birds of prey up here is despicable.

The RSPB investigator's on a mission to save them.

And a bank hold-up that's like a scene from a film.

But the hooded raider makes a schoolboy error

and his mum finds him out.

A winter's morning in St Neots, in Cambridgeshire.

It's the end of the rush hour, and stores are opening up.

After several small thefts, a CCTV camera system has been

installed in this family-run jewellery shop.

Today, the owner's son, Jack, is working alone,

taking the opportunity, before customers come in,

to repair a gold ring.

But just then, the door opens.

Jack looks up to see a man stepping the wrong side of the counter.

The man reaches into his pocket for something.

The CCTV next shows Jack going into the shop with the masked

figure following closely behind him.

It's now clear what the man was

reaching for - a huge knife.

This customer is an armed robber.

I don't have my children working in the family business, in a shop,

to risk their lives.

The young jeweller is being held at knife-point, a terrifying situation.

But Jack is coolly planning how to turn the tables on his attacker.

It was the most frightening moment of my life,

seeing my brother chasing a man with a knife.

The jewellery shop was set up by Paul Goldstraw in 1981.

I started the business as a young 21-year-old

and hoped one day that my family might be involved in the business.

And, obviously, that has happened.

Jack and Connie, two of Paul's children,

joined the family firm seven years ago.

My role in the jewellers is to serve the customers, to make sure

that my dad and my brother are doing their jobs properly.

I'm acting manager when my sister isn't here.

We kind of work in partnership, almost.

So I do as I'm told, make the tea, empty the bins,

but then also, you know, sell some jewellery and repair it.

Their father's work is well-known in the area.

He's done some commission work

for some quite high-profile people and companies.

Brooches for royalty,

he has also done the chain of office for the mayor.

And son Jack has also made a name for himself.

When I was 15, I was fortunate enough to win a scholarship

with BMW Motorsport, so I was a racing driver.

That was something I'll never, ever forget.

Helping to run the shop may not seem as adrenaline-fuelled

as driving powerful cars around the track,

but even in this trade, there can be moments that get the pulse racing.

We've had sleight of hand theft,

and you kind of try and sharpen up your act when you do get duped.

It has only happened a couple of times,

but nevertheless, this is a whole new ball game.

I mean, this is scary.

Back to that winter's morning, just before the armed robber walks in.

Their father is on a day off,

so Connie and Jack are opening up the shop.

We've set up the shop, Jack and I together.

I had gone over to the shop behind the Mews, which is where we work,

to exchange some flowers I had received,

because it was my birthday.

While she's nipped out to change her flowers, I'm sitting

behind my bench and I'm just doing a couple of minor repairs.

The man slips in. He's wearing a scarf wrapped around his face.

I look up and I see what can only be described as a threat.

Then, as he approaches Jack, the man takes out the knife.

He makes it quite clear that he's not here for a chat

as he's got a massive knife with a big, long blade.

The robber orders Jack to move to the front window.

He is after one particular watch that's worth £10,000.

My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to think,

"How can I, one, get out of this situation, and two, get him caught?"

I thought, "Can I turn around and punch him hard enough

"for him to fall on the floor?" Then I thought, "That's crazy."

I've already at this point tried to go for the panic alarm once

and he flicked his knife at my hands.

So I thought, "I can't push my luck too much. There's only so many chances I'll get."

So I ruled that one out and then I thought,

"Well, I'm just a passenger now, he is in control.

"I'm going to just have to do as he said."

Jack does do what the man says, but only for a few seconds.

Because as he's unlocking the window to let the robber

get access to the watch, Jack gets an idea.

As I opened the window, it becomes a barrier between me and the knife.

There's no way that the knife is going to come through the glass

in the amount of time I have decided to vacate the shop and hold him in.

As the robber takes the watch,

Jack takes a key out of his pocket and seizes his opportunity.

I've opened the door and rushed out.

He plans to lock the thief in the shop, but there's a problem.

It's the wrong key.

I have some keys, but they're for the window, not for the door.

Which leaves me in quite a sticky situation.

So I hold the door shut and at this point, a gentleman,

a passer-by, to all his credit, I mean, he didn't have to,

but he came to my rescue and he helped hold the door shut with me.

It's now the robber's turn to be desperate to escape.

He gives up just trying to tug the door open.

Now he gets a hammer out of his bag.

He was flustered, very panicky and he's smashing away at the glass,

gone back to the knife...

Now with the knife, he stabs at Jack's hand, forcing him

-to let go of the handle.

-He'd managed to catch me.

No real blood was drawn, but he caught me on the finger.

And now, when you're in the heat of the moment...

That, for all I knew, could have been an artery. So I let go.

The gentleman who was helping me, we kind of both took a step back.

The armed robber makes a run for it.

I don't know what came over me, I really don't. But I gave chase.

By now, Connie is returning to the shop.

As I've come back, I see my brother chasing a man with a knife.

So I called out to my brother to ask him to stop.

When I realised that he wasn't going to stop, I ran back to the shop -

realising that he might have left it open - and called the police.

Later, the armed thief is getting away from Jack.

I wish I wasn't flat-footed,

cos I might have been a little quicker in catching him!

But back at the shop, the robber has left a clue.

Although Jack's manoeuvre to lock the man in had failed,

it did enough to panic him into a big mistake.

He dropped some vital evidence for the police.

Next, to a covert operation, but not one to protect property this time -

one to try and save a species.

Many of Britain's birds of prey are currently struggling

for survival, and when a protected species is actually targeted, the

Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the RSPB, will take action.

The Peak District.

A conservation area and haven for wildlife.

Or at least it should be.

This video camera has been set up

deep in the woods by the RSPB.

The camera is aimed at a wire cage

built for a sinister purpose.

Inside it, there is a white pigeon.

It looks like some kind of aviary, but in actual fact,

it's a deadly trap.

To place a white pigeon in a trap

like that means one thing -

it is set to lure in birds of prey.

Those birds of prey will get themselves caught in the trap and then they will be killed.

There has been a steep decline in the number of birds of prey in this area.

What has been happening to birds of prey up here is despicable.

The RSPB is outraged about this. Many people are outraged about this.

This isn't an isolated problem.

These protected birds are being illegally

and cruelly targeted across the UK.

The RSPB are now using cameras and other means to set traps

of their own to catch the people responsible.

The Peak District was the first area in the UK to be

designated as a national park.

A beautiful wilderness

that gets an estimated ten million visitors a year.

This is the Upper Derwent Valley, towards the north of the park,

where the landscape is made up of heather moorland,

forests and waterways.

In the past, bird-watchers such as senior investigator

Mark Thomas have come here to see aerial displays by birds of prey.

People would travel from vast distances to come here, because it was THE place.

It was THE place to stand on a March day when goshawks were displaying and

peregrines would fly over, you know,

providing the public great wildlife encounters.

But sadly, these days, you'd be very lucky to spot a bird like a goshawk.

The population here has decreased from six to zero breeding pairs.

Nothing has changed. Habitat is the same, prey availability is the same.

Goshawks should be thriving in habitats like this.

Goshawks are protected by the law.

And yet, up here, they are being brought to the brink of extinction,

and the RSPB say the culprits are a few rogue gamekeepers.

Gamekeepers are killing goshawks or committing

crimes against goshawks because they believe

they are impacting on numbers of grouse that are reared.

Part of a gamekeeper's job is to rear birds like grouse

and pheasants for the shooting season.

The more birds there are, the more successful the shoot.

Certain gamekeepers, it seems, take their duties to the extreme.

They don't like the threat from wild predators to their stock,

so see birds of prey as an enemy.

It's not all gamekeepers, not by any stretch of the imagination,

but sadly, it's ingrained in the belief that birds of prey

need to be killed.

The RSPB want to stop the killing, but they can't patrol

hundreds of square miles of the British countryside.

So they have had to come up with new covert methods to get the proof

they need to stop the offenders.

The first thing they do is send an investigator to the area

where birds of prey numbers have fallen.

We put a field worker on the ground,

and he just wandered round these woodlands.

And he was looking for cage traps.

Now, they are lawful, but we were looking for misuse of them.

Cage traps are allowed by law if used properly.

They're normally designed to catch members of the crow family who can

attack other nesting birds. They work a bit like a giant lobster pot.

Birds can get in but can't get out again.

We came across a large cage trap,

and in there was a gleaming white pigeon.

And that's Christmas dinner for a bird of prey.

A bird of prey would be really lured in to eat the pigeon.

It's illegal to use a pigeon as bait in this way,

and the position of a trap like this raises suspicion.

The trap was set just on the fringe of where the woodland

and moorland join, which is a classic hunting line for birds of prey,

particularly things like goshawks that will stay low to the ground

and hunt along the woodland edge.

The next stage of the investigation is to set up a camera to find out

who has set the suspicious trap.

And they don't have to wait long.

The very next day, a man walks into frame.

He's carrying a rifle and checks to see if he has caught anything.

This time, he hasn't

and, with a frown of disappointment, he heads off.

The clip only lasts for a few seconds, but is crucial evidence.

The footage confirms that the man responsible is the local gamekeeper.

So at that point, we'd got the evidence.

We knew who was checking the trap, we knew it was the gamekeeper

and, really, we knew the motives,

because the motives of a gamekeeper checking a trap

baited like this is to catch and kill birds of prey.

Mark sets up another camera to gather more evidence.

Just a matter of days later,

the camera has captured a man coming to check it again.

Except this time, he had a full face balaclava.

He's wearing the balaclava to mask who he is

and he releases the white pigeon,

oblivious to the fact that it is the bird that could give him away.

What he didn't know is we had been in there and marked the pigeon

in a unique way which meant we could identify that bird at a later stage.

He then disarms the trap,

and that's all done on a Saturday when this place is full of walkers.

So he clearly wanted to make the trap look as though it wasn't in use.

Mark takes all the evidence to the police,

who pay the gamekeeper a visit.

It was an evening search, and thankfully the pigeon that he

had released had then gone back to the dovecote on his land.

And when we searched the dovecote with the police,

we found the same pigeon that had been in the trap now in the dovecot.

It had unique markings on its wings

and it tied this person with this trap to catch birds of prey with.

The guilty gamekeeper is given a 100-hour community order

and has to pay £10,000 costs.

He appeals unsuccessfully and ends up paying £17,000.

He also loses his job.

The result was an extremely good result.

Without these cameras and the use of camera technology,

we would have never got this evidence.

Cameras are fantastic for this type of investigation.

Later, the cameras are put to work again

in another part of the countryside.

This time, it's buzzards that are being caught in a trap.

A gamekeeper picks up a club and enters the cage,

and as we'll see, the RSPB are outraged by what happens next.

Also coming up, what happens next at the jewellers in St Neots

where an armed robber is on the run, closely followed by Jack.

My mind was racing as to what had happened to my brother.

And a bank hold-up. But hold on, is that gun for real?

The young robber who terrorised the bank staff

but couldn't fool his own mother.

But first, some poached eggs.

Or rather, an attempt to poach some eggs.

We're in Baildon, West Yorkshire.

The owner of this property, Ian,

decided to review the footage from his CCTV system after finding

the gate to his front garden had been mysteriously left open.

He's surprised to see a strange man with a child wander up his path.

He's clearly up to no good and ducks down when a car drives past.

Turns out he's hatched a plan to steal eggs from Ian's

pair of beloved chickens, called French and Saunders.

But the man is about to get a surprise.

Upset at having their hen night disturbed,

the chickens get in a bit of a flap and fight back.

The child is scared and runs off.

And the henpecked poacher himself finally...ahem, chickens out.

Ian is left wondering what sort of adult would set that

sort of example to a child. Clearly, he was a bit of a bad egg.

But thankfully, he has never come back.

No eggs disappeared and those henpecked birds,

French and Saunders, had had a "clucky" escape.

Sorry.

Earlier on, we saw the attempted armed robbery

at a family-run jewellery shop at St Neots, Cambridge.

The owner's son, Jack, tries to lock the man in,

braving the threat from a massive knife blade.

But the robber smashes his way out and Jack decides to chase after him.

All fear that was in me had gone.

That turned into adrenaline, and I was determined to get him.

And the thought of my sister being here or my dad or mum being here,

that's what was going through my mind.

I don't know what I would have done if I had caught him, but I just didn't want to let him get away.

The man eventually managed to disappear among houses

on an estate, so Jack returns to the jewellery shop,

where his worried sister, Connie, has been waiting for him.

My mind was racing as to what had happened to my brother,

but luckily, he was safe.

It wasn't till about ten minutes later that he came back and I realised that.

They let their father know what's happened.

I got a phone call which...

Oh, I mean, rocked my world, really.

And when I found out a knife was involved in the robbery, oh...

You know, I don't have my children working in the family business,

in a shop, to risk their lives.

Jack's family had mixed feelings about what he did,

putting himself in such a dangerous situation.

Business is business. Goods can be replaced. Your brother can't.

He has behaved in a way that I hope any honourable citizen would behave.

But then, of course, you think about him being harmed or,

goodness knows, even fatally harmed.

I'm very, very proud of him, but also I've told him

never to ever do that again if he was ever in that position.

But that's not the end of things.

It turns out that when Jack had the man trapped in his shop,

he had obviously got him badly rattled,

enough to panic the man into making a big mistake.

When he was frantically hitting the door with a hammer,

he then went for his knife and he dropped the hammer.

The police arrive and take the hammer to be examined by a forensic team.

The DNA was recovered from the hammer.

The police successfully match the DNA evidence to a man

they have on their database of known criminals.

The police told me on the day they'd catch the person.

If I'm being honest, I was sceptical.

But, true to their word, they caught him.

The armed robber was 23-year-old Leon Caine.

In court, he was sentenced to four years in prison.

The watch he stole has never been found,

but the insurance paid out to cover the loss.

Got the watch, but that's not all he got.

He got a prison sentence as well.

There are absolutely no winners in this situation.

You know, he's in jail, erm...

I don't think he's been to jail before,

so it's not going to be a great experience at him.

But hopefully, he'll come out of jail

and he won't want to undertake anything like this again.

In the immediate aftermath of the robbery,

Paul had considered shutting the shop for good.

We were seriously thinking about that.

Obviously, it was still very raw, but the local community were amazing.

Honestly, I cannot tell you.

They came in their dozens.

I mean, over the next couple of months, probably

a couple of hundred people came in and asked us please not to close.

'And it made a massive difference to our decision.'

So, the shop stayed open, and the family are back to happier times

and a happier type of customer.

Jack was a bit of a have-a-go hero, but if he had been seriously hurt

it might be a different story altogether.

Now it's unlikely we'll ever find ourselves in a situation like that.

But what should we do if we ever did?

Property can be replaced, you can't.

The best evidence from you that

we can have is you being a good

witness, so we need you to keep an eye on the detail whilst

the crime is happening, but don't put yourself in danger's way.

Make sure that you have

adequate insurance cover

and make sure also that you invest

in good quality security systems

such as a portable panic alarm, CCTV,

and make sure they are all in good working order.

News of another armed robbery now,

but of a very different sort and with a very surprising outcome,

where some fast-thinking cashiers give the thief what he asks for

but a little bit more than what he wants.

Liverpool, and it's approaching midday in this branch

of a high-street bank.

All is quiet. Staff are preparing for the lunchtime rush.

So they are not expecting what happens next.

The peace is shattered when a hooded figure bursts in,

brandishing a firearm.

He orders the tellers to hand over all the cash.

He informs them that he's just got out after five years in prison

and they shouldn't try anything stupid.

He eventually leaves with notes worth about £2,000.

But all is not as it seems. This is no hardened ex-con.

Hiding under the hood of that anorak is a 15-year-old boy,

and the gun he's waving is a fake.

What he doesn't know is that the canny bank staff

have answered the fake with a fake.

They have put a dummy note bundle into the bag and it's designed

to detonate and spray dye over the cash when it leaves the building.

He thinks he's got away from the bank security, from the police,

but he hasn't reckoned with every teenager's ultimate deterrent -

his mother.

Because later on, his mum finds the dye-stained cash

and fake firearm in his bedroom, and she turns her son in.

The judge sentences the teenager to serve 14 months in a young

offenders institution to deter him from a life of crime in the future.

Earlier, we saw the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

using covert cameras to trap a gamekeeper.

He was illegally killing goshawks,

one of Britain's protected birds of prey.

He did it by adapting and abusing a crow trap, a type of cage

normally used legally to help stop crows from attacking nesting birds.

But this is not an isolated case.

It's not just goshawks that are targeted, it's buzzards too.

Sometimes, buzzards get accidentally

caught in traps because they're

attracted by the same bait as crows.

If a gamekeeper finds them in his trap,

the law says they must be set free.

They're a lovely bird, people like to see them.

On a summer's day, the call of a buzzard circling overhead

is one of nature's great sights.

But sadly, in certain areas,

they're being killed because they're coming into conflict with...

Particularly about rearing time,

when the pheasant poults are put out, you know,

they're putting a massive amount of natural food out there.

The buzzard's natural prey includes pheasants, which makes them

unpopular with some gamekeepers who want to protect their stock.

They see buzzards as a threat and a target, which is

why the RSPB had mounted a special operation.

Alan is at home when his phone rings.

A member of the public had contacted the RSPB to report

a couple of buzzards in a cage trap.

Alan and a colleague find the cage trap in woods near Penrith, Cumbria.

We found it fairly quickly. Had a couple of buzzards in the trap.

We immediately set up a camera on it to monitor what was going to happen.

The cage is legally baited and seems set correctly to catch crows.

But inside it are two buzzards.

The buzzards could have been an incidental by-catch,

and the chap isn't committing any offences at that point,

as long as the birds are then released when he finds them.

Just as the investigators are leaving, a man approaches them.

He is a local gamekeeper. He asks them what they're doing here.

'We played a bit daft and said we couldn't understand why anybody'

would keep buzzards in an aviary in the middle of woodland.

And he was very obliging.

He explained to us that it wasn't actually an aviary, it was

a crow cage trap that was meant to catch crows, not catch buzzards.

He gave us assurances that the birds would be released unharmed,

and we had no reason to disbelieve him, you know?

The camera's already in and running, so we had to leave the camera there.

They return several hours later to retrieve their kit.

We got back to the trap, the trap was empty and we thought,

"Good, he's been true to his word, he's let the birds go."

It was only then when we went to the camera and checked

the footage on the camera that we realised what had actually happened.

Just three minutes after they had met the man,

he turns up again with a bucket.

He then picks up a fence post and enters the cage.

It's too disturbing to show what happens next.

He coldly kills the buzzards with the fence post.

Those birds are quite difficult to handle.

Birds, you know, they have very sharp talons, and yet the efficiency

with which he dispatches those birds is quite alarming.

The RSPB alert the police, who arrest the gamekeeper.

He admits the crime, but sadly, Alan is right -

this gamekeeper has in fact killed many more buzzards.

They find out where he has hidden all the dead bodies.

Show us where it is again.

-In here.

-Right, OK. Under here?

-Under those branches, I would think.

Made a search around where the trap was and recovered a further

ten dead buzzards around that within 10, 15 metres of the trap.

It's a start. It's only one area, but here at least

the buzzards will not be killed by this man any more.

He pleads guilty in court and is sentenced to 70 days in prison,

which is suspended for a year.

The RSPB hope that all this will act as a deterrent to stop other

gamekeepers from breaking the law.

It was a good conviction.

Everybody loves wildlife, everybody wants to see birds and animals.

The animals that should be here, wild, in our countryside, should be there.

The RSPB is planning to set a lot more

cameras around the country in the battle to save birds of prey.

I think it's a battle we will ultimately win.

It's important that we win it.

If we lose this battle, we're losing wildlife for future generations,

and that's not something we can allow to happen.

That's it for today.

Join us next time when the police

and the public catch more criminals red-handed.