Episode 18 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 tactics and technologies

where the bad guys 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 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, this thief's picked the wrong car to steal from.

It's outside a building full of muscular men training to be bouncers

and it belongs to one of the instructors.

I actually said, "Are you stupid,

"trying this with all these security officers here?"

Also today, a beloved grandmother

is treated with anything but the care she deserves.

And I seen the handprint - four fingers and a thumb - on her arm.

And it was very deep, deep bruising.

And builders make a not-so-generous donation to a hard-pressed

charity shop - a huge pile of heavy rubble.

We had to pay ?150 for a builder's skip.

A 91st birthday party for great-great-grandmother Bridie,

surrounded by her family.

Come on, all the kids, blow the candles out.

Come on. Spit all over the cake!

A happy home movie filmed by one of Bridie's grandchildren.

But just months later, another camera shows Bridie -

but it's a very different scene.

Bridie's health has deteriorated dramatically,

and she now needs 24-hour care in a nursing home.

What you're about to see is hard to watch and could be upsetting,

but the family feel Bridie's story needs telling.

As Bridie lies in her bed, a nurse comes in to tend to her.

No-one should hit anyone, but when you're 90 years old

and you can't move, that's evil.

East London.

Bridie Rees, matriarch of a large family,

was known for her larger-than-life personality.

My mum was the first person at a party,

that was always up to do a knees-up and get everyone laughing.

Happy, jolly. She would sing a lot.

As soon as you heard that laugh, you knew Bridie Rees was in that room.

Bridie had left her home in Limerick, Ireland,

shortly after the War,

and with her husband William moved to England, where she found work.

Mum worked in the Hackney hospital for 38 years as an auxiliary nurse.

It meant ever so much to my mum.

"Come on, Bridie, give me that song again."

And she'd sing songs from back home.

Bridie's health starts to go downhill

and she finds herself no longer nurse, but patient.

She had a succession of heart attacks and strokes.

With the family rallying round to care for her,

Bridie is able to return to her own home.

She looked after us, then we looked after her.

She was our focal point.

She was the person that, you know, our routines went by.

"When are you going to see Nan?

"Are you coming down to see Nan? Meet you at Nan's."

But when they see Nan, they notice signs of memory loss,

and after tests, she's diagnosed as having dementia.

It was very hard for us, watching this.

It was very, very, very, very hard.

Daughter Veronica decides to bring her mum back to her home

and look after her full-time. And her dementia got worse.

It just went down and down.

It becomes increasingly difficult for Veronica

to cope with Bridie on her own.

I spoke to my brothers and sisters and said,

"I can't give her nursing care. I can care."

"I can't give her the 24-hour nursing care that she needs."

So it was the case that she had to go into a nursing home.

Not because we didn't want her, but because she needed the care.

They find a suitable home that can provide the level of care needed,

and Bridie moves in.

The family visit every day.

At first, all is well.

But within weeks, they start to notice changes in her.

We'd go and give her a kiss

and she would flinch or she would recoil into the bed,

pull the covers up like a child so you could just see her eyes.

And there was fear in her.

Bridie's fearful reaction, coupled with some of the things she says,

starts alarm bells ringing.

Mum saying things to me like,

"A nurse punched me on the nose today." So I said, "Really?"

And then she said, a week or so later, "That nurse came back."

I said, "Did she?" "She slapped me in my face."

But she kept saying things like that too often.

And I'm thinking, dementia? And I was like a weighing scale.

Dementia? Real or not? I don't know.

The balance is finally tipped when Veronica notices a worrying injury.

I went in there one day and I seen the handprint -

four fingers and a thumb - on her arm.

And it was very deep, deep bruising there.

The home suggests the bruising

may be a side effect of Bridie's medication.

As she's been on it for some time with no problems,

Veronica thinks that's unlikely.

Meanwhile, more marks appear.

From the first bruising and the second bruising,

I knew there was something happening.

But without the proof you can't do nothing, and I needed that proof.

Veronica needs evidence.

She decides to put a hidden camera in the room,

with the help of her more technically minded nephew.

We looked at little clocks, little alarm clock things.

We looked at other things, and then the clock came up.

So I said, "Get her a clock.

"Put it right on the end of her bed so when she looks up,

"she can see the clock.

"And that will have a little camera in it."

Her nephew installs the clock camera

and leaves it in movement-detection mode.

So nothing can happen around that bed

without the camera clicking into action.

Veronica collects the footage every day

and gives it to her nephew to download.

My nephew, he does a lot of work away,

so I had to wait for him to come home to view it.

After an agonising wait, Veronica checks a few sections,

but sees nothing untoward.

And then she receives a call from the nursing home.

The matron said to me, "My staff has got reason to believe

"you've got a device in your mum's room."

And I said, "I have."

Veronica's nephew removes the camera

and a meeting is set up with the matron to talk it over.

But just before they arrive, her nephew describes something

he has seen on the last bit of footage.

He said to me, "Veronica, you're not going to like it.

"I've looked at the footage and the nurse has hit Nanny."

In the meeting at the home, the matron, the head of nursing

and Veronica watch the footage for the first time.

What they see is a nurse entering Bridie's room,

and without a word to her, starts to change the dressing on her arm.

Bridie asks the nurse what she's doing but the nurse becomes angry.

When Bridie puts her arm up to object, the nurse finally responds.

But roughly.

As the nurse makes the bed,

she pulls the sheet up over Bridie's head and leaves it there.

This is what happens when Bridie tries to object to her treatment.

Then the nurse accuses Bridie of abusing HER.

The nurse leaves, and Bridie is alone in the dark.

The next morning, the nurse returns and discusses Bridie's injuries

with her colleagues, claiming they were self-inflicted.

Viewing the footage with the care-home staff,

Veronica is shocked. But not as much as they are.

As the filming finished, they both turned to me -

they both had tears in their eyes as well,

they were absolutely gutted - and the head of nursing said to me,

"Veronica, what would you like to happen now? I'm so sorry.

"What would you like to happen now?"

That night, when the nurse turns up for her shift,

the care home take immediate action

and she is escorted from the premises.

They hand the incriminating film to the police.

Back at home, the rest of Bridie's family watch the footage. I cried.

Because it's just not nice.

Someone hits your nan.

To be told it was happening, I cried.

To actually watch it, it cut through like a knife.

The family tell Bridie she will not have to see the nurse again.

We said to my nan, "Nan, she's not coming back."

And my nan said, "Good. She doesn't deserve to work here.

"She shouldn't be here."

In court, the nurse pleads guilty to ill-treatment

and wilful neglect and is jailed for four months.

The family are putting the experience behind them by taking

action to try and prevent this type of abuse happening to other people.

We're talking about a tiny percentage of people in this profession

that are not doing the right thing, and to protect the people

at the hands of those bad people, it can only be CCTV.

Since all of this has happened, we started the petition.

We want CCTV to be in all care homes and nursing homes.

Not compulsory, necessarily, but to be a choice.

Sadly, Bridie passed away shortly after her 92nd birthday.

But with justice done,

the family can now concentrate on happier memories.

She always liked a bit of glam, didn't she?

She loved the dressing up. She loved the hair lacquer.

Always having her hair done. Laugh a minute. Yeah, laughing.

What a load of rubbish.

Thoughtless builders dump their waste

and hinder the work of a hard-pressed charity shop.

There was pieces of breeze blocks, there were bricks,

there was cement, there was heavy pieces just left there, in each pile.

And can Spider-Man's special spider senses

sniff out someone about to make a snatch?

Opportunist thieves are always on the lookout to take a chance.

But when opportunity knocks for a would-be car thief,

there are some big knocks just around the corner.

Manchester city centre.

A parked car. A man opens the car door.

Nothing unusual in that, you might think.

But it isn't his car.

He's a chancer, looking to pinch whatever's inside.

OK. One. In. Not too tight. Two. In.

And he's about to find out that he's picked the wrong car

in the wrong place.

I actually said, "Are you stupid, trying this?

"It's a security training company."

Although his surname may suggest otherwise,

ex-soldier Marcus Gentles has been a security doorman for 16 years.

When I came out the Fusiliers I basically found myself...

The only jobs that I could do

was working on building sites or being a doorman.

I actually went to work at Butlins holiday centres.

Best time of my life, working security for them.

I then decided I wanted to pass what I've learned on,

so I started a training company and here we are today.

So he's going to come in at you, bringing it in. OK.

Step. In. Drop.

Down. Down, down, down, down. If need be. OK?

In the five years Marcus has been running his training school,

he's helped almost 5,000 people get the accreditation

they need to work the door.

As of 2005, it became compulsory that all security operatives

in the UK had to have their licence.

The industry has changed so much in nearly ten years

because of this licensing.

With this guy, he's got more power, so you use your strong hand. OK.

If need be, straighten.

One of the skills Marcus teaches is how to restrain

and handcuff troublemakers.

And that's the course he's running on the day this opportunist thief

wanders into the closed-off car park.

You can't get through that way, so anyone coming there,

they're hanging about doing something they shouldn't be.

After getting lucky with the unlocked door,

the thief sits in the driver's seat. He's after the sat nav.

But the car belongs to one of the security instructors, Daniel,

who's spotted his uninvited passenger and goes to confront him.

I looked up and saw Daniel outside and he basically waved at me.

Marcus can see there's trouble brewing. His instincts kick in.

In anything we do in security, when we're approaching people,

when we're taking a task on,

we're taught to do a dynamic risk assessment.

A dynamic risk assessment

is assessing a situation before you actually get to it.

Well, this situation is developing fast.

What's the term for a collection of bouncers?

A bruising of bouncers, maybe?

That's how it must be looking for that thief.

Caught like a rat in a trap as a crowd gathers.

You've got to buy yourself that split second ahead of the person,

and I thought he may have a weapon, so I pushed his arms back.

Marcus asks one of the trainees to pass him some handcuffs.

It was quite easy to get the cuffs on him as well.

It was like he'd done it before.

And then with the help of Danny as well,

we lifted him up and took him inside the centre.

The incident has been dealt with so well,

the students think it's all just part of the training.

They honestly did believe that it was a set-up

until I started to bring the guy in, started to tell him

he'd been arrested and turned around to them and said,

"Can you call the police?"

That was a shock to them because they thought, "Oh, my God. This is real."

Marcus is stunned by the thief's stupidity.

Choosing to rob a car park at a security training school

isn't particularly smart.

I actually said, "Are you stupid, trying this?

"With all these security officers here and that?"

And his reply was, "You've got to try."

Not the best place to try, but a good place to fail.

In court, he pleaded guilty to theft from a motor vehicle.

Come on, then. See? There, there, there.

That's what you have to do.

Marcus, meanwhile, has ended up with a brilliant video

to use on his training course from now on.

We're going to show that to all our candidates in the future.

This is what happens. I mean, this is real.

If only all thieves were that simple to catch, there'd be no car crime.

But we don't all have Marcus's band of muscle men on hand,

so it's a good idea to make it less easy for the crooks.

Don't leave anything on display in the vehicle.

Lock it away in the boot or, if you can, hide it under the front seats.

One of the things we have in cars in this day and age is sat navs.

They're quite valuable pieces of kit so take them down,

put them in the glove box, make sure you lock the glove box as well.

But also, don't leave that telltale sign of the sucker mark,

cos they'll spot that in an instant.

Park somewhere where it's well-lit,

perhaps where there's a number of other people,

comings and goings, because that will deter an offender

from trying to break into your vehicle.

You might think they might not bother with a few quid

in your ashtray, but they will break into your car for just that.

Don't end up with a bill for a window smashed of a couple

of hundred pound for the sake of a few pound coins in your ashtray.

Now and again, check and make sure the central locking system

is working in the car and you're not inadvertently leaving it open.

Now for a short comic interlude, complete with a superhero

who uses his superpowers to trap a thief in his web.

You'd think any sensible thief

would avoid trying to steal from a shop owned by Spider-Man.

At least, that's what shop owner Michael is hoping.

His shop sells comic books, and some command high prices.

So Michael patrols the aisles, but in his own comic way,

dressed as Spider-Man.

It's all good fun until suddenly,

our superhero spots a customer acting oddly.

His spidery senses start to tingle.

As the man goes to leave,

Michael notices he's making off with a rare X-Men comic worth ?100.

Michael intercepts the not-so-super-villain,

who refuses to open his bag.

So our crusading crime-fighter snatches the rucksack from

the man's evil clutches, reveals the hidden comic, and calls the police.

Luckily, the baddie comes quietly

and Michael doesn't need his fanged teeth or venomous stingers.

Maybe next time.

Not in my back yard.

And that's particularly true when it comes to rubbish.

I mean, we've got enough of our own to deal with,

without being dumped with other people's.

The village of Little Chalfont in Buckinghamshire.

These pictures come from a CCTV camera behind a row of shops.

This man is making a delivery. But it's one nobody wants.

These men are fly-tipping, illegally dumping their building waste.

And they've come all the way from North London to do it.

Worse still, they're thoughtlessly dumping it

at the back of a charity shop, blocking the fire escape.

We had to pay ?150 for a builder's skip.

But they don't know they've been recorded,

and the council want to track them down.

The prospect of having some CCTV was a very exciting moment.

It definitely gave us hope.

Fly-tipping is a countrywide problem.

Not only does it blight the landscape,

it's a drain on resources.

Fly-tipping is a huge burden on the council in terms of cost

because not only have we got to employ people to clear it up, we've

then got to pay for it to go into landfill and dispose of it that way.

Buckinghamshire suffers like any other county.

Chris Smith works as an enforcement officer for the local council

and illegal waste dumpers occupy a great deal of his time.

There isn't one location that's particularly suited to fly-tippers.

They will go anywhere. Obviously, the rural offences stick out more

and look particularly unsightly,

but there are a lot of offences in the urban environment as well.

And a distressing example of this recently affected a charity shop

in Little Chalfont, run by Gill Edwards.

This shop has been here for about 14 years.

We raise money for people in later life

and we have about 18 or 20 volunteers who work extremely hard.

They give an awful lot of time for free here.

The shop relies on donations.

But one morning there's a donation they certainly don't need or want.

Builders' waste.

There was pieces of breeze block, there were bricks,

there was cement, there was...

Heavy pieces that had just been left in a huge pile.

To make matters worse, the bags are originally piled up

against the charity shop's fire escape.

We could open the door inwards but we couldn't actually physically get out.

If there had been a fire, we wouldn't have got out.

Plus we have flats upstairs,

so it doesn't bear thinking about the consequences.

Whoever dumped it had no thought at all.

With the fire escape blocked, it's dangerous for the shop to stay open,

but the waste is too difficult for the volunteers to shift.

We couldn't have asked any of them to have helped

move the rubble because it was so heavy.

They, you know... It would have been a danger to themselves.

They call the council.

They were big, heavy bags and that's what prompted my colleague

and I to give them a hand.

But even after Chris and his colleagues move the bags

away from the fire escape,

the dumped waste is too heavy to put in the shop's normal bins.

So as well as costing the charity time,

it's now going to cost them money.

We had to pay ?150 for a builder's skip.

You can imagine, a charity shop,

how much stock we need to sell to raise ?150.

It's this kind of charge the fly-tippers are trying to avoid.

Building or trade waste needs to be disposed of properly,

but to avoid the cost, dodgy operators dump it illegally instead.

Some even fly-tip so they can make money.

They'll tend to charge a household and say to a household,

"I'm going to charge you ?60 to get rid of that waste,

"but I'm going to have to charge you another ?40

"because I will be charged that when I go to the dump."

But rather than go to the dump and pay the ?40,

they will dispose of it illegally and that saves them that ?40

and they've made ?100 from that particular job.

The fly-tippers who dumped their waste at the back of Gill's shop

probably thought the quiet, poorly lit area

would enable them to avoid detection.

But they'd miscalculated.

The rear of another shop has a security camera.

There was potential for CCTV, and it doesn't happen very often,

so, yeah, it was a very exciting moment.

It definitely gave us hope.

This is what the camera shows.

5:00am and a transit van reverses up to the rear of the charity shop.

One man gets out and goes to the back of the van,

followed by the driver, who then acts as a lookout

while his accomplice presumably unloads their cargo.

The vehicle that was involved reversed in

more or less where this vehicle is here,

and it got so far back that this camera on the wall

but could see the door to the front of the van.

So while the two men are seen on camera getting out,

they aren't actually shown directly dumping the waste.

But crucially, in the 13-hour period between Gill's shop closing

and opening, their vehicle is the only one to come near this area,

so the evidence is clear that they are responsible.

I was quite shocked that they were quite brazen.

They obviously thought there wasn't any cameras.

But these fly-tippers are unaware that they've given

a tip-off to the council.

We could see the registration number and it was just so promising.

When they chase up the registered owner of the vehicle,

they find that he had sold it on before this offence was committed.

But we were able to identify the current user of that vehicle,

and it was that person we went after.

They had the name of a man based in the Tottenham area of London.

On the off-chance he might be known to police,

Chris visits the local station.

A particular officer there was very helpful

and happened to know this individual.

So he was able to supply me with a couple of addresses.

But the man proves to be elusive. It was a bit cat-and-mouse.

Every time I got one bit of information I went after,

checked that address and he wasn't there.

Having got another address, I checked that address and he wasn't there.

It was frustrating. The fear was that he'd gone abroad.

Before they dumped the inquiry, Chris has a brainwave.

He checks to see if the man has any pending court cases

and, unsurprisingly, he has.

He's got one coming up at Hertfordshire Magistrates' Court.

It was a particularly exciting moment, almost equalled

only by the discovery on the CCTV of a van with a registration. Yes.

Chris and his colleague find the man waiting outside court

and speak to him.

But even after being shown the CCTV evidence,

he still tries to wriggle out of it,

saying he's not been filmed personally dumping any waste.

But what it did show, and what swung the case,

if you like, was the fact he was the driver of the vehicle.

He drove the vehicle to its spot where the waste was dumped from

and obviously had control of the vehicle

and, in that sense, took part in the offence.

And rather than fly-tipping it in his North London manor,

where he stands a greater chance of being seen,

it appears this fellow has decided he's better off dumping his waste

in the quieter county of Buckinghamshire instead.

It just seemed as if it didn't matter to them where they put it.

There wasn't any conscience.

It was just literally "dump the rubbish and go".

The other culprit is yet to be identified,

but Chris and the council decide to prosecute this man.

And at court, he eventually pleads guilty.

As punishment for his rubbishy behaviour,

he's ordered to pay hefty fines and costs totalling over ?3,000.

I was pleased with the result.

A lot of work went into that investigation.

It took a lot of time and effort to get the man,

and it was right that he had to pay for the costs in doing that.

This includes compensation to the charity shop.

The day we got the phone call was...

we'd be getting our funding back from the skip that we'd hired.

So it was really good news on that day. I was really happy.

They'd done a great job at the council.

That's it for today.

catch more criminals red-handed.

For three nights in a row, on BBC Four,

I'll be putting stuff back together...

slowly.

This is rather beautiful, it must be said.