Episode 7 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 anti-social behaviour

the police are using new tactics and technology

where the bad guys are 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 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 woman who catches not just one carer stealing from her...

I was absolutely seething when she took the money.

..but two.

I thought, I don't believe this. Going to have to go through this whole rigmarole again.

Also today, the people who cross a dangerous line.

I remember seeing the blood spurt out, and I just thought, "I'm going to die."

The perils of trespassing on train tracks.

And noisy thieves...

who not only spook themselves,

they alert the whole neighbourhood.

This video footage is being recorded by a small camera hidden on a shelf.

The lady that lives in this house is sitting in a wheelchair in a different room.

She has regular visits from carers every day, who are paid to look after her.

There's a carer in the other room with her at the moment,

and even though it's poor quality, you can just about hear an audio recording of them

chatting above the noise of the television that's on.

If you look on that little desk,

can you see that dark object?

It's the lady's purse.

Keep your eye on it as the carer comes back into the room.

Shall I turn this TV off in here?

Are you keeping it on for the night, for the duration?

They'll ring us up and say, can you come back,

and turn her television off?

It's chilling. Seemingly, without a care in the world,

this carer has helped herself to some of her client's cash.

But the not-so-helpless woman took it upon herself to catch the thief

who was stealing from her every single day.

The woman who lives in this house wants to tell her story,

but wishes to remain anonymous, so we'll call her Laura.

Laura has been confined to a wheelchair for the past five years

following a terrible accident.

She lives alone, and relies on visits from up to four carers

to help her through each day.

I have the carers for daily routines, really.

To help me get up, go to bed.

You're not allowed to, but you do form a friendship with them

because you see them so often.

I'm a very trustworthy person, so I assumed everybody who came through my front door was trustworthy.

Once a week, Laura travels to her bank to fetch the money she needs

for living costs.

I never put my handbag away, and I've always just thrown my purse onto the sideboard.

But I assumed my front door was my safety.

Then she started to notice her funds were dwindling away

before all of her costs are covered.

Concerned, she rings her mother who lives abroad.

I used to phone her, and say to her,

"I can't understand why I can't pay my bills,

because I haven't got any money", and she just assumed

I was spending it, but I wasn't going anywhere. I stay at home.

The money shortfall continues, but it takes a long time

before Laura realises what was going on.

I wasn't very well, and to be honest with you, it took me about 18 months

before I actually really knew for sure that somebody was taking from me.

To confirm it, Laura jots down the serial number of each note that she leaves in her purse,

and she finds...

One would be gone, or two would be gone.

She now knows it could only be a carer who takes the money.

I had a number of people coming and going.

But I knew who it was. I phoned the care company, and spoke to the manageress.

I said to her this was happening, and I was pretty sure it was this person.

They said to me it was impossible. She's worked for them for nine years.

Laura decides to take matters into her own hands.

I couldn't carry on funding someone else when I couldn't afford to live myself.

My debts were becoming huge because I couldn't afford to pay.

She needs to gather proof for the police.

I thought, I'll go and see what's out there.

And I went to a store, and a very helpful bloke

told me what I could use, how to use it,

set it all up so it was dated correctly and everything.

Laura hides the camera on a shelf, and the very next day...

She was just so brazen, it was absolutely incredible.

..it catches the thief at work.

Shall I turn this TV off in here?

As if it's just an everyday occurrence, like folding the laundry,

the carer chats happily while pocketing Laura's money.

..say can you come back,

and turn her television off?

I must be honest, the first time I saw it

I was devastated.

I was absolutely devastated that it was that easy to do.

Laura speaks to the police, and explains she's got evidence.

They said to me, "Try to get her more than once,

because then she will say that it's just a one-off."

Well, as it turned out, it was daily for nearly two weeks.

Every single day, Laura has to act as if nothing is amiss,

and be polite to the person who is robbing her.

It was very difficult, because in the morning

when I was in bed, and that person was in there,

and I knew she was...I knew what she was up to.

I just...

..really had to bite my tongue,

and just not say anything, because you're so tempted to say, "Oh, what did you take today?"

But at least Laura knows her little camera is recording it all.

If you notice, she hasn't got gloves on.

She puts the purse always back in the right place,

the right way round.

She's wiping her fingerprints off.

Now, this is the electric wheelchair.

Now, she's supposed to put it towards the back end of the house over here.

But she doesn't. She pushes it, and just leaves it.

Takes the money, and goes.

The carer often gives away a telltale sign when she's about to steal the money.

SHE SINGS

She always sang for some reason, or hummed along,

or just something.

I loved the Carpenters, but I don't any more.

After a fortnight of day-to-day surveillance,

Laura presents her footage to the police.

They said, "She can't even try and talk her way out of it,

because it is just that blatant."

But she does try.

She kept saying it wasn't her, and it could be somebody else.

Blaming me, and saying I was stealing the money,

and all these type of things, and that went on for a couple of hours

before they actually showed her the footage.

She realised that, actually, she couldn't lie any more.

The carer is given a four-month suspended sentence,

has to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work,

and is told to pay £125 back to Laura.

And she's even ordered to pay for the cost of the camera that caught her out.

Finally, with one bad apple out of the way,

Laura can relax with her other trusted carers

who help her so much every day.

And that's what happens for 16 months

until one day, a new girl arrives.

I just thought, "I know what's going on here.

Here we go. I have to go through this whole rigmarole again."

Later, Laura faces a very familiar problem.

I was absolutely seething when she took the bracelet.

That bracelet meant everything to me.

She is forced to turn to a trusted friend, and her little camera is back in action.

Unlike Laura's single camera set-up,

the owner of this house in Gateshead

has splashed out on a multi-camera system,

and his investment is about to pay off.

Keep an eye on these two men.

One of them thinks he's spotted an opportunity.

With the owner out, they want to burgle his house.

He checks the back door, which is locked.

He doesn't seem bothered by the CCTV camera.

Nor does his mate, who decides he'll try the back door too,

and, unsurprisingly, it's still locked.

Next, they try some pulling power,

but this is one stubborn door.

He looks up at the camera again.

Yeah, it's still watching you.

He now tries some martial arts.

A karate kick...

which also doesn't work.

His mate wanders back, just in time to see Karate Kid in action again.

One...

two...

Third time lucky? Nope.

The man gives up on the door, and swaps a kick for a brick.

This time he's aiming at a window to the right of the door.

But he hasn't thought this through. This could make a hell of a noise.

And it does.

Spooked, they try to take cover,

but it's too late - the sound of the window smashing has echoed all around the neighbourhood.

A builder working nearby hears the commotion,

and rushes over to investigate.

One of the burglars scrambles through the broken window.

The builder grabs a brick for protection.

Looking like a modern-day superhero,

dressed in a white suit and utility belt,

he quickly works out what's going on.

One of the burglars tries to plead for his freedom.

But it's no good.

While warning him off with one hand,

the well-built builder dials 999 with the other.

The burglar in the house manages to escape, but not for long.

The police quickly rush to the scene.

Still, this burglar pleads for his innocence,

but the CCTV footage of them breaking in means they are both nicked.

One was sentenced to 29 months in prison,

while the other was given an 18-month community order.

And what of the builder? Well, it was all in a day's work.

He just goes back to his job.

Top man.

Sometimes, nearly as scary as being the victim of a crime

is witnessing a crime.

The shock can numb your reactions, but it's what you do next that could stop a thief in their tracks.

If you come across a crime in progress,

the first thing we'd say is phone 999 immediately,

where possible, from a landline,

because this means we can trace your location far more quickly,

but if you are calling from a mobile, tell us where you are.

Use a landmark, or description.

Don't get involved, and don't put yourself at risk,

but make sure you get a very good description of the offenders,

any direction of travel, and if they're in a car or vehicle, make a note of the number plate.

Coming up on Caught Red Handed,

two office raiders try to hide their crime

by tampering with a camera.

Too bad they haven't worked out it's recording them all the time.

And Laura suffers from another carer who mainly cares about stealing her money.

If they were doing it to me, you can guarantee they were doing it to other people.

Crosskeys railway station in South Wales.

The train on the left is about to leave.

A young man on the wrong platform is running late to catch that train,

which is already pulling out.

But instead of waiting for the next one,

he makes an insane decision.

He jumps down, and runs across the tracks right in front of the moving train.

For a terrifying second he disappears from view.

Then he leaps up onto the platform just in time.

The train comes to a halt.

Incredibly, the man seems to argue with the driver.

He wants to get in the carriage.

The train starts to move, but still he tries to get on.

It's crazy behaviour which could have cost him his life.

These CCTV clips of people putting their lives on the line

have been recorded by Network Rail's cameras.

They want to show them to raise awareness about the dangers,

and it's a major problem.

Across the UK, more than 40 people died from trespassing on the rail network last year alone.

Kate Snowden from Network Rail

is determined to bring this death rate down.

It's absolutely essential to realise

how quickly trains go.

It can take a train travelling at 100 miles an hour

almost a quarter of a mile to stop, and obviously they can't swerve.

Your reaction time, however quick you think you can be, you won't be quick enough.

One person who learned that lesson the hard way

is Kirsty Owen.

She almost died while waiting for her train home after a boozy night out in Anglesey, North Wales.

Can't remember everything about that evening.

I was on my phone, drunk, when I dropped my handbag on the train tracks.

I jumped down and got it,

and as I got my handbag off the floor, I remember seeing a light.

And that's when I panicked.

The light was moving. It was a train.

I thought, "Oh, my God, I need to get up on the platform really quick."

I was nearly up on that platform, but half not.

The train passed, and sliced through my back.

The steps leading up to the train doors tore into Kirsty's back.

I don't remember any pain. I remember seeing the blood spurting out.

I just thought, "I'm going to die." I just thought, "I've got to move."

I did like an Army crawl all across the floor,

and then I grabbed the steps, and dragged myself up them,

and half the bridge.

It was really far.

I was screaming for help.

She was saved when a woman heard her screams, and dialled 999.

She just held my hand until the ambulance came.

Kirsty was rushed to hospital.

Her injuries were horrific.

Thankfully, she survived. Many don't.

These are people that just make bad decisions.

"I dropped my phone. I'll just nip down and grab that."

"I dropped my bag. It'll be all right.

I'll be able to get down and back up again in a few seconds."

It's much more difficult than you can imagine.

These clips are from a film Network Rail produced

to show how difficult it is to cross the tracks.

It's in the form of an experiment.

This athlete will try to run across the tracks before being hit by a simulated train.

For his first attempt, the track is dry and clean from debris.

He just makes it across.

On another attempt, they add some props to make things a little more realistic.

Some oil and rain onto the mix.

If this was for real, he would have had no chance.

The people we see that are unfortunately getting killed

tend to be 16 to 25-year-old men.

And that tends to be because they are the ones that are risk-takers.

But it does tend to be, outside of that, almost anyone.

There is frightening video evidence of people who ignore the dangers.

This guy almost trips up as he brazenly crosses the rails.

And a few moments later, he heads back across,

obviously too lazy to take the nearby footbridge.

He can barely get off the tracks. Luckily, a train isn't coming.

Here, a train is coming,

but still a woman decides to climb down onto the track.

She trips, and for a brief moment seems unable to get back up.

Luckily, the train is slowing, and she gets away before it reaches her.

Perhaps the most chilling is this girl, who's planning on taking a shortcut too.

She looks both ways, and decides to risk it.

As she crosses, something goes wrong.

She loses her footing, falls,

and lays motionless right across the rails.

It's a busy station where an express train could come hurtling through.

Thankfully, a station worker spots the girl in time.

These people are not only risking their lives - they're also breaking the law.

I think people think that trespassing is something that doesn't affect other people.

Drivers are cautioned, so they have to slow down their trains.

That means everybody that's not just on that train,

but maybe other trains behind - thousands of people -

are delayed getting to where they need to be.

This can have a massive knock-on effect. Thousands of minutes of delays every day.

And the knock-on effect is huge for train drivers too.

Every year, through no fault of their own, 1 in 45 drivers

will be controlling the train that kills someone on the tracks.

Matt was driving an express train on an early-evening journey

from Barnsley to Sheffield.

He's about to pass through a station at 70 miles an hour

when he suddenly notices something.

We've got three girls sat on a platform edge with their legs dangling over,

and their attention was drawn to a group of boys on another platform.

They had no idea we were nearly on top of them.

-And what went through your mind?

-Panic.

To start with.

Obviously, you've got to brake as quickly as possible,

but by the time you realise they're not actually going to get out of the way...

you're even closer, and you just have to hope...

You've got no option but to just hope they get out of the way.

The train hurtles through the station, and it's an agonising wait for Matt to know

whether he's hit the girls or not.

It wasn't until I got back to my home depot

that I found out they had all made it out of the way in time.

It's a big relief. The whole incident stays with you for years.

I can still see exactly where they were sat,

exactly how they were positioned, and...

that can stay with you for quite a while.

Part of the reason people wrongly believe they are safe

is because they think they'll hear the train coming.

You would think a train coming towards you, the sound would be pushed forward.

Not true. Actually, sound gets pushed out through the wheels of the train.

It gets deflected off embankments,

other buildings that are near the railway.

To prove the point, Network Rail invited two sound experts

from the music world to conduct another experiment.

Rapper Wretch 32 and George the Poet agree to help.

They both have to listen out for a simulated train heading towards them,

and then pick the right direction it's coming from.

With wind and traffic noise added in,

it's not easy.

They both get it wrong.

Another factor that can play a part when someone makes the crazy decision to walk the line

is alcohol, as Kirsty who we saw earlier found out to her cost

when she went to retrieve her handbag from the tracks.

Because I was drunk, it gave me more of an instinct to get it.

So I felt, I'll just go and get it.

Thinking I'm fine, and obviously I wasn't.

After being hit by the train,

Kirsty has had to undergo 14 operations.

The doctors, they told me if it had been any lower down or higher up, it would have gone straight through me.

So I'm lucky I'm here anyway.

So the message is clear for anyone who's ever tempted to do anything as stupid as this...

You may think you're more than capable of crossing a line,

but there's plenty of people that work on the railways that know that you're not.

And there's plenty of cameras too to catch trespassers in the act.

The biggest risk of course is that you'll lose your life,

but you could also be fined up to £1,000,

and if you are disrupting services, and causing a lot of problems to everybody else,

and to the industry, we will take action.

We're back in Bristol with a woman we're calling Laura,

because she wants to remain anonymous.

She was being frequently robbed by one of her carers.

After setting up a hidden camera,

she was shocked at the scale of the treachery in her own home.

The very first day I put the camera up, I was absolutely amazed.

I didn't realise it was every single day, and I had to keep topping up the purse.

I thought, this is getting stupid now.

The carer was arrested and charged, but the experience didn't change Laura's outlook.

I am a very trusting person, so I do give the people the benefit of the doubt.

What a cynical world I'd live in if I looked at everybody, and thought,

"You steal."

But unbelievably, just 16 months later

Laura finds she has another questionable carer in her home.

I got this young girl in.

She'd come here, she'd chat about this, chat about that.

All sorts of things. The thing is, they're very nice to your face.

That's what is so sickening, because now you look at people and think, "Can I trust you or not?"

Laura first suspects something is wrong after withdrawing £120 from the bank.

I put it in. Wasn't even in my purse.

It's in the back of my diary in an envelope.

But the next time Laura opens the envelope

she gets a feeling of deja-vu.

There wasn't £120 in there.

There was only £70.

I thought, "You're having a laugh, aren't you?"

Scarcely believing it's all happening again,

Laura sets up the hidden camera for a second time.

My motivation was not solely for my own purpose.

It was because if they were doing it to me,

you can guarantee they were doing it to other people.

The first day's recording shows the carer rifling through Laura's private documents

looking for an envelope that contains money.

She now knows there's money in there.

And so another two weeks of covert surveillance begins.

She actually takes money there.

Sly.

She even shows she's good at multi-tasking,

stealing and talking on the phone at the same time.

Off she trots.

One morning Laura can't believe her eyes.

This is the clip that annoys me the most.

In there was a bracelet that she'd been checking out.

She takes the bracelet. I was truly mortified.

The money I could still handle, but that... I felt physically ill.

When my father passed away, he left me some money,

and with that money I bought that bracelet,

but it wasn't the cost - it was the fact it was associated with my father.

My mother says, "You stupid girl. Why do you leave stuff on the side?"

I said, "Because it's my home. I don't expect people to take my stuff."

Luckily for Laura, the crafty carer either had a change of heart,

or she feels she's about to be rumbled.

She realised that we knew that the bracelet was missing,

and you can see her returning the bracelet.

Once again, Laura goes to the police, and they arrest the carer.

She tries to deny the thefts.

When she saw the footage, she actually said I had asked her to get some money out.

I had asked her to fetch the bracelet.

Some people can think very quickly on their feet. I don't think I could be that quick.

But there's no getting out of it.

In the carer's car, the police find ripped-open birthday cards

with money missing that she'd stolen from other patients.

You're so trusting.

You genuinely think that person has put that into the post box.

She didn't. She was opening them.

It wouldn't even cross my mind to open someone else's letter.

I would've just dropped it in the box down the road.

But the camera shows this carer just dropped it into her pocket.

She got a 16-week suspended sentence,

and had to pay £100 compensation to Laura.

Laura is delighted that she invested in a smart bit of technology

that has helped stop two thieves from abusing their power.

I got those two people off the street, I want to say.

They'll never work in care, or any field with vulnerable people, so...

that I think is the deed done, really.

This is the lobby area of an office block in London.

Two men walk in.

They plan to raid some of the offices.

They clock the camera, and it clocks them.

Perfect framing. One for the album.

In case they're being watched, they act all casual,

just like workers strolling in.

It hasn't occurred to them that the camera actually records them for posterity as well.

After a short strategy meeting, they've worked out how to cheat that camera.

Glad I wore my hoodie.

When we see them again, they switch off the light.

Smart move they think, but smart technology is smarter than they are.

The camera has night vision, and it clearly catches them

piling up their haul of stolen goods in the foyer.

Hold on... Now they have another cunning plan.

Point the camera in a different direction.

Well, yes, that might actually have worked

if you'd done it before you robbed the place.

Happy that they've won the battle of man versus technology,

they step outside right in front of...another camera.

Genius.

They call their car, and load the boot with the booty,

and head off.

Freedom doesn't last long for these two.

It turns out they are prolific thieves, and are wanted

for over 25 burglaries from offices in the London area.

With the help of this CCTV footage where they pose so well for the camera,

they were each given 28 months in prison, and were ordered to pay £120 Victim's Surcharge.

Their late-night shifts at the office are over,

but they've now got plenty of overtime at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

Join us next time when the police and the public

catch more culprits...red handed.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd