Episode 1 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,

the police and other agencies are using new tactics

and technology where the bad guys actually get caught in the act.

Brilliant footage. Police officers love CCTV.

Local councils, shops and businesses are laying some traps of their own.

As soon as he walked into the picture I knew who he was.

And the general public, too,

can help unsuspecting crooks get their comeuppance.

We definitely needed proof.

You're not going to get away with it, you might as well just pack up.

It made him swallow his pride. It was brilliant.

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

They might just get caught red handed.

Today, watch out for doorstep crooks like this man

conning his way into an elderly woman's home.

And it turns out he's really distracting the owner

so his fellow burglars can creep in.

Also today, a gang that cruelly and illegally chase deer for sport.

Sad, sick, sadistic.

One man goes on a mission to stop the cruelty,

and the hunters become the hunted.

And with severe storms on the way,

these people are rushing to protect their houses,

but they're doing it by stealing their neighbour's sandbags.

It takes a flood to show the depths some people will sink to.

An October morning near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

A man rings an elderly woman's doorbell.

-Hiya.

-Hello.

Have you spoken to the bosses this morning?

-No.

-No. We're going to be taking up some of the drains outside.

He claims to be from a water company about to start working in her road.

He pretends he's being helpful,

but really the only people he wants to help

are his two accomplices now coming through the front door

that he's left ajar,

because he's not from the water board, he's a distraction burglar.

This type of offence, it angers me through and through.

It's the most hideous crime.

He and his cronies are here to steal from an elderly pensioner.

The bustling market town of Aylesbury.

This 78-year-old woman lives in a village nearby.

It's a close-knit community where everyone knows each other.

She lives on her own. She's very independent.

Loves having her little walk to the shop

and will talk to everyone on the way there. Very, very friendly person.

We're not showing the lady's face to further protect her from fraudsters.

When these persons unfortunately have come to the front door, again

she's been her usual friendly self.

It was evident that she had trouble with her memory

and unfortunately got confused quite easily.

This lady has been conned out of money before,

and PC Hollie Cromarty from Thames Valley Police knows from experience

that that means there's a high chance she'll be targeted again.

Unfortunately, sometimes once they identify someone that is

vulnerable, they will try and target again and again and again.

Sadly, we all need to be careful about strangers who

appear on our doorsteps,

especially the increasing numbers of elderly people living alone.

Doorstep conmen can be very approachable,

and have convincing stories.

And remember, the conmen can be conwomen.

80-year-old Audrey from Reading knows this only too well.

She's lived by herself since the 1970s.

It's quite a nice community cos I've got superb neighbours.

I have a very good life, really.

One day when Audrey had just finished running her weekly

sewing club, the doorbell rang.

I could see a strange face through the glass,

but she was only a young girl.

So I went out and she was obviously upset.

She wanted this phone call to her sister.

So I told her she'd have to be quick because I was due to go out.

Audrey has to go upstairs for a moment,

leaving the girl she's helping downstairs on her own.

She'd made her call and came out into the living room,

and I thought she was going to say thank you

and leave it at that, you know.

But she doesn't say thank you and leaves.

Audrey goes to get her handbag and she can't find it anywhere.

And of course then you spend time searching in all the obvious places.

Her handbag has been stolen, along with her purse, mobile phone

and bus pass.

The girl had smuggled it away inside her own larger bag.

I couldn't believe it. I was just...

I was so upset and just speechless

when I thought that's the only person that could do it.

Back in the Aylesbury area, as we've seen,

there's another elderly woman who PC Hollie Cromarty is looking to

protect from doorstep criminals and conmen.

This woman has been conned before,

and police suspect there's a good chance she'll be targeted again.

But it's impossible to know when.

So, Hollie and her colleagues decide to install a video recording system

with several cameras that can be left for long periods.

They only switch on and record when they sense movement.

These cameras are made

so that they can be disguised as an every day household item.

You wouldn't be aware that they were around you.

The lady's property has been turned into a hi tech trap for criminals.

A neighbour agrees to notify Hollie straightaway

if anyone behaving suspiciously pays a visit.

It is a case of we just then have to wait until we do get that phone call.

And sure enough, after several months, this man comes to the door.

The cameras are rolling and we can hear the conman's convincing patter.

Have you spoken to the bosses this morning?

-No.

-No. We're going to be taking up some of the drains outside.

-Oh, I see.

-There's going to be a lot of work going on.

He's very charming,

he's very polite and he was giving a very convincing story.

He's explained to her that there's maintenance work being

carried out in the road, and asks has anyone been in to check.

He talks his way into her house. He constantly fiddles with his phone.

Maybe he's signalling to his accomplices.

Then he pretends to close the door but leaves it ajar.

While the woman is led into the back garden, supposedly to look for

a drain cover, two further crooks creep in through the front door.

This was news to us.

We didn't know that we were dealing with three persons,

and she had no knowledge that these other persons had entered her house.

With a trio of burglars indoors, the spy cameras are working overtime.

One offender in particular is putting a pair of gloves on.

He's thinking, "If I've got gloves on no-one's going to catch me."

The woman is kept distracted in the kitchen as the two other

burglars rifle through her belongings upstairs.

A moment later they slip out of the house with an envelope full of cash.

After a tip-off from the neighbour,

Hollie collects the footage that the cameras have recorded.

Eureka. We see the deception.

Personally, as much as I hate the crime that was committed,

I couldn't have been more happy that we'd obtained this evidence.

The motion cameras have done their job well.

Now it's time for some good old-fashioned police work.

So it was just getting together hundreds and hundreds of names of

people that potentially could've been responsible,

and then trying to marry them up with the footage

that we had, and we were successful.

Gotcha. One by one the men are arrested.

He stated that it wasn't him, he'd been elsewhere.

It was at that point I showed him the CCTV.

It was evident from his facial expression

that he knew he'd been caught.

With such overwhelming evidence,

the trio had little choice in court but to plead guilty to burglary.

Martin Sweeney is sentenced to two years and eight months in prison,

Michael Keeley is given two years and nine months,

and Benjamin Crowley is sentenced to two years and four months.

I was over the moon.

Probably one of the best moments of my career, I have to say,

and certainly my colleagues as well.

Spurred on by their success,

Thames Valley Police will continue their covert camera campaign,

and Hollie has a message for any would-be doorstep con merchants.

We will catch you and we will identify you

and we will put you in front of the courts and you will go to prison.

And over in Reading,

the burglar who stole Audrey's handbag was also arrested

and sentenced to two years and one month for a number of crimes.

Thankfully, Audrey's strength of character remains

undiminished by what has happened.

I've been brought up by parents to trust each other...

..and I wasn't going to change that.

Not to please somebody like her. No way.

Those fraudsters gave pretty plausible stories

to their elderly victims.

Ones that were easy to believe and easy to fall for.

So how can we stop ourselves, our relatives

and our neighbours becoming victims of distraction theft?

Distraction burglars can talk the hind legs off a donkey.

If they haven't got an appointment, they don't get over the threshold.

Keep the chain on your door.

If somebody does come, keep the chain on and ask for ID.

Don't be embarrassed or shy about doing that.

If they are a legitimate tradesperson,

they'll be glad that you've actually done that.

If you have got a neighbour that you think could be vulnerable to

this type of crime, educate them.

Make sure that they've taken on some of the steps,

like extra security, checking the ID or even giving you a call

if someone turns up to the door so you can come round

and check them out for yourself.

Now, love thy neighbour.

I would like to think that we'd pull together in times of trouble,

but next these two neighbours are only interested in

helping themselves.

Winter time at the seaside,

and with extreme storms about to batter the UK,

the owners of this beach-side hotel in Great Yarmouth have been

preparing for floods by building a sandbag barrier.

They're out collecting more supplies. Meanwhile it looks like

these helpful neighbours have popped over to lend a hand in the crisis.

But hang on. The defensive wall of sandbags isn't getting any higher.

That's because these neighbours aren't actually helping to

build it, they're transferring it to their own place up the road.

Unfortunately for them, one of the bags bursts,

emptying sand over the driveway.

And when the owners return, they're puzzled by the mess.

They check their CCTV

and they see the cause of their shifting sands.

Better still, they can trace where the ransackers ran to

as the trail of sand leads all the way to the culprits' front door.

The police are called and give them a talking-to.

Thankfully, the hotel isn't flooded,

but it's fair to say the owner's relationship with

some of their unneighbourly neighbours is just a little stormy.

Coming up, a building site burglar is caught on camera, but who is he?

It tests the skills of a super-recogniser,

a police memory expert,

and he's sure he's seen that face before.

Right here. This is his identity, to me.

But first, these are wild fallow deer,

a rare sight in the British countryside.

When they come under threat from illegal deer coursers,

a rural police officer masterminds a special operation

to stop the cruelty.

Northamptonshire.

A rural idyll in the heart of England with a wealth of wildlife.

But in the dead of night this peaceful landscape is

turned into a place of terror for the animals.

It's against the law and it's cruel and it's barbaric.

Sad, sick, sadistic.

This crime has never been caught on police camera before.

The footage shows the illegal blood sport of deer coursing

filmed by thermal imaging camera on a police helicopter.

Deer coursing is a cruel way of hunting, using dogs to maim

and kill.

A deer that's been mauled by dogs would have a very,

very high chance of a lingering death.

But a local rural police officer, Paul Mitchinson,

kick starts an operation to catch those responsible.

It's absolutely exhausted. They're having their fun.

They're probably shouting at it and tooting the horn.

And he turned several square miles of farmland into a large trap

to catch the hunters red handed.

The activities of the coursers were brought to the

attention of the police by Richard Clark.

He's worked as a gamekeeper on this farm in North Hants

for more than 30 years.

One morning he and a colleague come across a badly-injured fallow deer.

It was actually this spot here that we discovered the deer.

It was sitting there with its jaw hanging, both of its shoulders

had been mutilated, and it was in a pretty sorrowful state, really.

The animal is a victim of deer coursing,

and Richard has the unpleasant task of putting an end to its suffering.

But this is not the only sign of coursing he's come across.

These fields seem to be getting more popular with illegal hunters.

The more activity we've got, and certainly finding the injured deer,

there came a point where something had to be done.

Local PC Paul Mitchinson is already aware there's a problem.

As well as the cruelty involved,

farmers have complained of expensive damage to their land.

The farmers have to earn a living,

and if you drive a vehicle across the crops it ruins the crops.

And we're not just talking about a few pounds,

it can soon add up to be hundreds, even thousands.

But it's because of the cruelty to animals that deer coursing

was outlawed in 2004, but it's not an easy crime to prove.

I've stopped quite a few deer poachers in the past,

but all they've had is a vehicle with six dogs in.

You've not actually got the evidence that they've been coursing the deer.

They've got no dead animals inside the vehicle, so in essence all

you've got is four people, six dogs, who are possibly lost.

It's clear.

The only way to stop the coursers is to catch them in the act.

But it's not possible to patrol large areas of the countryside 24/7.

So, Paul, with the help of some technical colleagues,

becomes an inventor.

We've devised a covert vehicle sensor, which we dig into the ground.

The sensor's quite a simple piece of equipment.

It's got a battery inside of it from a motorbike,

it's got a SIM card, and once something, a vehicle,

goes anywhere near the sensor,

it sends a message straight to a mobile phone immediately.

From the sensors Paul is able to work out the courser's

pattern of behaviour.

They often appear on a clear night when the sky is at its brightest.

Paul also discovers they drive in from miles away.

Over 80 miles to get to us all in the name of sport.

I don't think this is a sport. I think this is barbaric and inhumane.

Paul now has all the information he needs

to set up a major sting operation.

He chooses a cold bright winter's night.

There's a lot riding on his decision.

Officers from different departments and areas are now involved -

some on the ground, some in the air.

We had the helicopter on stand by, we had the traffic department,

the firearms department and a dog handler with us.

There was probably in excess of 20 officers

at three o'clock in the morning.

It's a nerve-racking wait.

But then Paul gets the text signal he's hoping for

from one of his hidden sensors.

We struck lucky.

The police helicopter scrambles, and for the first time begins to

record evidence of illegal deer coursing.

A large off-road vehicle heads down a track next to a field.

The occupants are unaware there's a helicopter above

because it can't be heard over their own engine.

The driver has his headlights turned off,

but that small white shape hanging out of the window is

a powerful lamp used to spot and dazzle the deer.

They veer off the track, flattening crops as they go.

They've seen their prey and drive straight at them.

RADIO: The vehicle is chasing quite a large herd of deer.

The herd takes flight.

They're going to try and catch up with the deer in the vehicle,

and they're going to try and corral two or three of them off.

The hunters split the deer up at a fence line.

They've corralled a small group off, and all they're doing here is

just tiring the deer out, cos the dog will tire quicker than the deer will.

They release two dogs.

The dogs are partitioning two off.

One off that way and one off this way.

The dog is only a few metres from the deer.

But happily, this particular deer gets the better of the dog.

That's quite a steep hill and the dog's getting tired.

The deer has gone over a fence and into a woodland.

The dog's lost it and this deer's got away.

I'd like to be able to say they call off the hunt, but sadly they don't.

The hunters simply collect up their dogs

and go in search of their next prey.

RADIO: The vehicle's now on the move again.

And it's not long before they spot some more unfortunate animals.

They've found a small group,

they've splintered four off and then from them four they'll splinter

a couple off, and now they've gone for the deer that they want.

As they skid on mud, the hunters throw the dogs out.

RADIO: Dogs released.

For some reason, the deer has stopped,

drained and perhaps blinded by the glare of the spotlight.

The first dog nearly captures the deer,

but the deer is too fast for it.

A full grown deer, fallow deer,

and the dogs aren't much smaller. They're bred to be big dogs.

But the deer is used to the uneven terrain and it almost escapes.

The deer's run through some rough ground, they've lost

a bit of ground on it.

But the hunters were never going to make this a fair contest.

They race past the deer.

It's absolutely exhausted.

They're having their fun, they're leaning out the window,

they're shining a light at it.

They're probably shouting at it and tooting the horn.

One more dog is released.

So you've got a fresh dog with new legs

and this is going to catch the deer at the fence.

There's a fence that runs all the way along there.

The deer is absolutely exhausted.

The dog's now got hold of it by the back leg.

The hunters have already broken the law on two counts,

deer coursing and damage to property.

And this gang commit one further crime,

causing unnecessary suffering to the animal.

They've decided to release the deer, which is just there,

and then they release the dog back on it.

They could have held the dog back off and let the deer run off,

but they decided not to.

Eventually, the injured deer escapes them.

And we assume it dies later,

the same as we have seen with the other deer.

Now, Paul and his team are very keen to arrest this callous bunch.

As far as we are concerned, it looks like the hunters are now the hunted.

The helicopter tracks the coursers.

Now, they're the ones in the spotlight.

We've got the evidence. They didn't know that at this stage.

All they know is that there's a helicopter above them,

and they're just driving at a normal speed as if nothing's happened.

Paul rushes over, so his vehicle's behind the hunters.

Now, it's the hunters who are corralled into a farmyard.

The police close in.

They now know the game's over.

The problem we have is we don't know if they've got firearms,

but we know they've got dogs.

That's why we make this dynamic.

A dynamic arrest means shouting clear orders to the offenders,

and aggressive barking from a police dog.

The adrenaline's pumping. The police dogs challenge,

and we shout for all the occupants to get out and get on the floor.

Which they do.

One of the dogs comes out, goes to challenge the police dog, and decides

better of it, and then, all four are arrested and taken into custody.

It's a good night's work.

Sadly, it's likely the deer is critically injured,

but many others may have been saved from a terrifying ordeal

at the hands of these callous coursers.

It was just like a big release for us.

And a big "Yes, we've done it, we've caught them!"

In court, all four illegal hunters plead guilty.

They are given prison sentences of between 11 and 18 weeks each,

suspended for 18 months.

Between them,

they have to pay almost £3,000 in compensation to the farmer.

The operation Paul set up has paid off.

There have been no more incidents of deer coursing in the area.

We've seen from all the farmers involved,

they were so grateful that we'd done something about it.

The message needs to get across to these people that carry out

these activities that it's not going to be tolerated.

If it happens again, we'll capture it again.

Catching sight of criminals on camera isn't always enough,

because they need to be identified, too.

And the police have some exceptional officers,

with a unique memory for faces.

They call them the super-recognisers.

London has the greatest number of crimes in the UK

and, because of that, the highest amount of security cameras.

But not every criminal is bothered about the cameras.

Like this man, who's attempting to burgle a building site in Soho.

I presume he's been appearing on lots of CCTV

and not had any problems with it before.

He may be unfazed by cameras, but the man hasn't counted on

the Metropolitan police's other secret weapons.

The team of officers known as the super-recognisers.

People like Idris, with an uncanny ability to remember a face.

My memory stretches back a long time,

so it might be people I haven't seen for three, four, five years.

I still remember them.

So when this man's CCTV picture gets circulated around the force,

there's a chance that Idris might have clocked him before.

Eric runs a team of builders and decorators

and specialises in renovating office buildings.

During a recent job in central London,

he had to leave the site for a few minutes.

While Eric's away,

a man on a bike stops by to say hello to the workers.

He was very friendly and very affable with the guys,

telling them what a nice day it was, and all the rest.

He tells the builders that he works here.

Then he gets a phone out and begins to report on the workmen's progress.

He's telling whoever's on the end of the phone what a lovely job

the guys were doing and how well it all looks.

He says he's come to fetch some stuff he left in the office.

Then he makes his way upstairs.

He quite cheekily asks us to keep an eye on his bike,

to make sure nobody nicks it, which seems a little bit ironic.

That bike puzzles Eric when he returns to the site himself.

Once I saw the bike, I didn't recognise it.

And I was instantly suspicious that something wasn't quite right.

Eric intercepts the man coming back downstairs.

He was very pleasant, all smiles, gave me a big hello.

He insisted he worked for the company.

I said, "Look, I tell you what, mate, let me take your picture."

And I thought, if he's not going to let me take his picture,

then he's actually, de facto, admitting to being a wrong 'un.

Still, the man doesn't flinch.

Never batted an eyelid.

He was very, very convincing.

But when Eric asks to look at the man's backpack, he refuses.

Eric now has to make a quick decision.

I was starting to get a little bit edgy

because, in about 30 seconds' time, he's going to be gone, on his way.

And I decided, well, what the hell?

I've got to go for it.

As the man attempts to run off, Eric pounces.

Just off-camera, he unzips the man's backpack

and pulls out two stolen laptops.

At which point, he just turned round, swore at me and then ran off.

Eric reports the incident to the Metropolitan Police.

And the images of the would-be thief are posted

on their "wanted" website for unsolved crimes.

Everyone in the Met can view the unnamed faces,

but the super-recognisers' exceptional powers of recognition

have a high strike rate, identifying criminals this way.

Idris currently works in a custody suite

at Charing Cross police station. He is a super-recogniser.

Prisoners will stick in your head from year to year to year and then,

once you see them on a still, your memory tends to click in to them.

When Idris spots someone familiar on the website,

it triggers a process in him that can even allow him

to narrow down the exact cell they were held in.

Each one of the cells, to me, mentally, has a personality,

so it's registered, so from there, I whittle it down to

whether it was winter, summer, a couple of years ago,

and then you move from there, and I would go through my work roster

and eventually, I would get that person's name.

So when the building site burglar's face appears on his computer,

Idris activates his powers.

Right here. This is his identity, to me.

What I see here is, he's always bald-headed,

but with a protruding forehead.

And this quarter of his face is always memorised in my head.

And I know he's got a scar on here.

So he's up to his old tricks again.

The man has been locked away before, not just in the cells,

but in Idris' memory bank.

The main thing I vaguely remember is, he's quite cheeky

and he'll ask you for stuff that he knows you can't get, but he'll try.

The man is arrested and pleads guilty in court.

He is given a two-year suspended jail sentence

and placed under supervision for 18 months.

He's just one of over 200 suspects

that were identified by Idris last year.

Though, with a head full of faces,

it can be hard for a super-recogniser to switch off.

Some things do get under our skin.

During my off days, bang, you're watching TV,

"That's who it is!"

And my wife does look at me funny,

and, you know, I've done it in custody where a burglar has come in,

and I've been studying this guy for ten burglaries, then he came in,

and I was so happy and everybody was looking at me weird.

It's just one of these things!

That's it for today. Join us next time,

when police and the public will be catching more criminals red handed.