Episode 5 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 won't 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, bundles of cash go missing from a family home.

It was obvious somebody was taking it.

We definitely needed proof.

But the writing's on the wall for the thief, thanks to a spy pen.

Also today, these aren't removal men.

They're some of the most brazen burglars you'll ever see.

Total disregard for someone else's property.

They steal the furniture, then a few minutes later

they're selling it to someone right outside the house.

This male that's invited into the premises likes what he sees

and he agrees to take the couch.

But there's a clever bit of kit in the house the burglars have missed.

The police are watching.

And a cold case.

Two muggers hotfoot it across the snow.

Hm! I wonder which way they went!

We found a fresh set of tracks.

The town of Dereham in Norfolk.

This woman is in the house of an elderly couple

who have come to rely on her for help.

These pictures are being recorded by a tiny spy camera hidden in a pen.

It's been tucked inside a desk by the couple's son.

Over time, this carer has become a trusted family friend

and trust is important because sometimes large amounts of cash

are kept in this room for the family business.

She's here to help the lady sitting in the nearby kitchen.

But the main thing on her mind is helping herself to some money.

It was disbelief that she could have done it to us.

Yeah, gobsmacked.

The so-called friendly carer has been taking so much money

that the family business is in danger of shutting down.

This independent plant nursery has been run

by four generations of the Read family.

Alan Read is currently in charge.

The business was started in 1910 by my great-grandfather.

I left school quite a few years ago

and obviously joined my father in the nursery business

which we basically grow plants and supply various stores

around Norfolk, Suffolk and slightly further afield.

After years of working at the nursery,

Alan's mother Sheila retires to spend more time at home.

Her health started to decline.

She just needed help around the house to begin with.

We employed a cleaner for her approximately two days a week.

But before long, Sheila begins to show signs of a serious illness.

My mother developed dementia quite badly and it progressed very quickly.

She could no longer care for herself and for her husband David.

The cleaner had previous experience of caring for people

with dementia so it was an obvious choice.

The cleaner agrees to care for Sheila five mornings a week.

My mother was looked after very well by her. My father was pleased.

So she became part of our family

and a good friend.

During this time, Alan takes on all the manual work at the nursery,

leaving his father to look after the finances.

He had a very simple routine.

He would always go to the bank on a Thursday,

he would draw cash for various things,

including wages, and he would store it in the bureau.

They continued to run things like this for a while,

until one day Alan gets a worrying phone call from his accountant.

Large amounts of cash have gone missing.

I did not know what to think,

other than it was obvious somebody was taking it.

And we're not just talking about a few quid.

The sums of money that were going missing on a regular basis

could range from...

£50 a week

up to, potentially, £1,000 a week.

Alan believes the cash is disappearing from his father's desk.

I had a suspicion, a very tiny niggle in my mind,

that the carer might be responsible.

Alan's father cannot believe that their trusted friend

could be the culprit. To him, she's like one of the family.

I don't think he wanted to find out that it was the carer

who was stealing the money.

Alan's father, David, became dependent on her totally.

He treated her like a daughter.

Trusted her, respected her...

-..confided in her.

-We definitely needed proof.

Alan needs to get evidence to convince his dad

and to give to the police.

His mate advises him to buy

a sophisticated little spy camera disguised as a pen.

As you can see, there's a tiny hole there

which is the lens and you can set it up

by pressing the top and then, to stop it,

click it again.

Now Alan uses his green fingers for a different kind of planting.

A trap.

I set it up where I thought was best.

I disguised it in a box, cut a tiny little hole in the box.

He leaves it on a shelf.

Next, he puts some money in the usual places in the desk,

noting the serial numbers.

Then he goes back to work and waits.

Just under an hour later, the carer enters the office.

She makes sure no-one can see her through the window

then she opens the desk carefully...

..and starts rummaging.

She doesn't seem to be in any hurry

and spends the next few minutes going through every drawer.

She puts a wad of the family's money into her pocket.

And now she carefully returns everything back to normal

before leaving.

Half an hour later, Alan returns to collect the camera.

He watches the footage and checks the desk.

£80 has gone missing.

I was angry.

Angry, hurt. All sorts of emotions.

Um, relieved.

It is probably a funny thing to say,

but relieved that I had found out where all this money was going.

Alan and Vicky show his father the evidence,

but it still doesn't seem enough.

Obviously, he could see what was happening, but he, you know...

his immediate reaction was one of...

He didn't want to believe it.

I just got that feeling he needed to be convinced a little bit more

to make sure of it.

Alan sets up his trusty pen camera again.

This time, to get a better view, he puts it in the desk itself.

My father is with me,

observing what's going on cos I felt that was important

that he was there to see this.

Alan leaves the money in the same places,

but smaller amounts than usual.

Just closing the desk, the trap to be set.

40 minutes later, the carer arrives.

And even before attending to Sheila, she opens the desk

and raids the drawers.

She's now taken the money and now putting it in her pocket.

But that was only a mere £70.

Perhaps she thinks there could be a lot more on offer today

because she continues to search over the next hour...

She's just searched through the wallet

that my father keeps my mother's carer's allowance in.

..though she does take the odd break to attend to Sheila.

-Have you eaten that up?

-Yes.

At this stage she's reassuring my mother.

My mother is through that door to the left,

in the kitchen, eating her toast.

At one point during her search

she unwittingly moves the camera pen

but conveniently puts it back again.

The carer seems to know how the nursery business is run

and looks at details like the cheque book stubs.

By looking at that she can tell how much money

has been drawn from the bank the day before.

She knew a lot because, as I said earlier, my father confided in her.

It seems as though she can't understand why there's

not as much cash as usual.

She's obviously getting very frustrated.

Did you see that hand movement in frustration?

Eventually, she gives up her search.

The carer's spent at least half the amount of time

searching for money, rather than caring for my mother.

This time, when he sees the video, Alan's father

finally accepts the truth.

Then he realised that there was no shadow of a doubt

that she was the guilty party.

With enough evidence, Alan calls the police

and the carer is arrested.

At first, she denies everything,

bizarrely, even when shown the footage.

But by the time her court case arrives,

she changes her plea to guilty.

She is sentenced to 18 months in prison.

The thefts almost destroyed the family business.

The business has suffered to the point where

my husband Alan didn't know whether to carry on.

Alan wasn't going to let the nursery wilt away.

He's had to put in a tremendous amount of work.

It's been running for more than 100 years

and it takes more than one bad seed to spoil things.

They no longer keep large amounts of cash in the house.

New carers now look after his parents,

and Alan's happy with the arrangements.

There are a lot of very, very good carers about

and I think that needs to be said.

This particular carer was a small minority.

The one thing I would say to everybody is be vigilant.

And if you've got a suspicion,

then just check and double-check

but be vigilant, that's the important thing.

Next, a winter's tale,

where the police take steps to track down two muggers.

Norwich, just gone 4am.

This student is about to be knocked to the ground

by these two muggers. It's a violent attack,

but thankfully the student doesn't suffer any lasting injury.

While their victim lies helpless in the snow,

the attackers steal his wallet, cash and mobile phone.

But a sharp-eyed CCTV operator

has caught their cold-hearted act on camera.

The robbers run off into the night,

not realising that the cold is about to catch one of them out.

When the police arrive at the scene,

they find the pair have left a handy trail of footprints

in the snow to follow.

HE PANTS

We believe the male's gone to Coslaney Street.

Filming the chase, they set off hot on the heels of the muggers.

We're still following the footsteps.

The robbers have split up,

but police can still make out one of their footprints.

Found a fresh set of tracks.

Clearly, from the distance of them,

it looks like someone's been running.

In the end, this robber has SNOW-WHERE to go.

He's caught red-handed and white-footed.

He'd only been in the UK for two days,

after arriving from abroad to start a new life.

Although the student he's attacked suffered no serious injuries,

the attack was bad enough for the mugger to be jailed

for two years and eight months.

A new life behind bars, then.

The bizarre case of a thief who actually steals security cameras.

This must be Bradford's dumbest criminal.

He leaves a nice selfie behind.

But first, a moving story.

Furniture-moving, to be precise.

Sometimes one particular area in a town will be targeted by burglars

time and time again.

But Cleveland Police have a very clever way of

dealing with these persistent pests.

A terraced home in central Middlesbrough.

This smiling, chatting couple look like they are happily moving house.

They take their time, carefully, to lift bulky items,

like this table, out of the window.

It's a removals job, all right,

but this laid-back pair are actually burglars,

and they're in the process of gutting somebody else's home.

Brazen criminals like this have been blighting the whole neighbourhood.

There goes a cupboard.

It looks like they are taking everything, even the kitchen sink.

Their casual house clearance is shocking.

You can see that there is laughter going on.

Total disregard for someone else's property.

But they won't be laughing for long,

because these two are nicking from a house that is designed to nick them.

It is especially set up with police surveillance gear.

In the past few years,

Middlesbrough town centre has had a face-lift.

It has been regenerated. We have lovely bars and shops...

clubs, very popular.

But working for lettings agency,

Georgina was frustrated that in this up-and-coming area,

some criminals were determined to bring it back down again.

We had a problem in one of the town centre streets,

which is largely student accommodation.

Last summer, a couple of empty properties, which were obviously furnished,

being student accommodation, were being targeted by burglars.

We were unable to furnish the houses in and around that area

for fear that they were going to get burgled.

Detective Inspector Cath Galloway of Cleveland Police

also sees how the burglaries are affecting the whole area.

What they were doing was removing the copper piping.

The damage that can be caused through this type of crime is huge.

We're seeing properties flooded,

which resulted in neighbouring properties getting damaged.

We have had gas leaks in the area

and we have had to evacuate several houses in the street

until we can get this sorted,

so the impact is quite significant.

Part of the problem is that properties are often

empty for short periods of time.

Other then making the house literally like Fort Knox,

so no-one could get in, they still could be breached.

Instead of trying to stop the burglars,

Cath and the team try a different tactic,

which is...not stopping them.

They set up what is known as a sting house.

From the outside, it looks like any other place.

Inside, hidden cameras and sensors wait to catch burglars in the act.

What that means is that when the premises are breached,

we are told about it, and the camera instantly kicks into operation.

Next, Cleveland Police set about finding

a suitable location for their sting house.

They enlist the help of Georgina's estate agency.

We agreed that they would put some hidden cameras

in a property of ours

where we had had the property next door targeted.

It just stood out as a particularly vulnerable address,

right in the middle of the street.

As a previous victim of burglary,

the owner agrees to the plan.

He wants the problem sorted as much as anyone else.

Cath's team hide the surveillance kit

where it is most likely to see some action -

by a large kitchen window at the back of the property.

And how long is it before someone tries to break in?

A week? Two weeks?

A month? No.

It's just 48 hours later.

A pair of shady figures cross the camera's view.

They've already removed the window pane,

and this large object coming into view

is an orange sofa.

Most burglars aim to sell on their stolen goods quickly,

but this has got to be a record.

The buyer for the couch has actually come along to inspect the item.

It's this chap.

Here is almost comical,

if it hadn't been such an emotive crime.

It appears that they invite someone into the premises

to show them their goods.

It then appears that this male, that is invited into the premises,

likes what he sees and he agrees to take the couch,

because he then helps them remove the couch from the property.

A bright orange sofa is not to everyone's taste

but, clearly, this guy does not seem too fussy.

Obviously, you don't normally invite people into your house

through the window,

so you would think that they would start to become suspicious.

One of the burglars helps him to carry it out and they all leave.

Because there have been so many burglaries in this area,

there's a good chance

there's more than one bunch of crooks responsible,

so the police keep the cameras running at the house.

And sure enough, at the crack of dawn,

another couple pay a visit,

also a man and woman.

They don't seem in a hurry, and once it's light,

they start removing all the other things that are left in the house,

from a chest of drawers to a mattress...

to a table.

They even take the pictures off the wall.

I think this particular property has just been word-of-mouth.

Someone has already breached the premises,

removed some of the property,

and it becomes a bit of a free-for-all sometimes.

Even after lifting out the last item,

a washing machine, the couple seem in no rush to leave.

He has a cigarette tucked behind his ear,

as if he was on a break from his day at work, or something.

They've taken everything.

He's even having a go at the kitchen sink.

He's not going to be able to sell on that tap once he's ripped it out.

So why do it? He just doesn't care.

The thieves go about their business,

completely unaware they are being caught on camera.

Watching them brings mixed feelings for Cath.

Obviously, you can't deny you get a little bit of satisfaction initially

because your plan has worked,

but then it can really make you angry after that.

It's as if they've convinced themselves

there is no-one at a loss here.

They don't think about the neighbours,

they don't think about the person who has invested

perhaps their pension into this.

Thankfully, the police do think about it.

DC Mark Coverdale oversaw the arrests.

Charges are not brought against the two women involved,

or the man who bought the orange sofa.

He isn't identified, but Mark

makes short work of tracking down the two main male burglars.

Doing the job we do, we get to know the same faces,

and as soon as I've seen the footage

I've immediately known the offender.

The sofa snatcher is arrested.

He pleads guilty to burglary and is sentenced to eight months in jail.

The second man also pleads guilty to burglary.

A strong message goes out to anybody who's considering

burgling a house in the area - beware, it could be a sting house.

This is an important message to get out there,

that we don't just deploy for a day or two days,

and get bored and put it in another property.

We can set these sting houses up for weeks and months on end.

And the deterrent works.

Over the last few months, we've seen some of our best figures

for burglary for the Middlesbrough area.

I believe that both the permanent residents

and tenants and student tenants

that might just be here for a term or two

feel more secure and more safe.

Cath and her team use specially rigged sting houses

to deter the burglars.

But we all have to leave our homes empty from time to time.

So what can we do to make them more secure?

If you're going to go away on holiday

and leave your house empty, the most important thing

is to not make it look like it's been left empty.

Make sure you have a neighbour or a friend that comes in

and removes the post from your doorstep.

Would anyone mind parking their spare car on your drive,

just making it look like your house is occupied?

Invest in a timer. Use one for a radio, maybe,

so it will come on during the day and have another one for some lights to come on in the evening.

You wouldn't think about putting an advert in the paper saying, "I'm going away on holiday

"for two weeks, burglars come and try your luck at my address."

So what I'd say is, don't post it on social media.

It's an open invitation for the criminal community to

target your address.

As we've seen,

thieves will take anything, even if it is bolted down.

Like this next chap. He is clearly not

bothered about CCTV cameras.

But there is a slight flaw in his plan.

Bradford, in the early hours of a Sunday morning.

This man is trespassing.

Picked up on CCTV,

he is scoping out the back of this office building.

He leaves, but then, hold on,

he's back in the frame,

this time in daylight.

But then he spots this camera filming him,

stops and stares right down the lens.

Being caught on camera would normally put off

a would-be thief,

but not this star of the silver screen.

It's the cameras he's after.

For various reasons, we're not showing his face on TV,

but he's about to commit one of the most blatant thefts

you'll ever see.

This must be Bradford's dumbest criminal.

He's staring straight at the camera

and we have such a clear picture,

I can see him even sweating.

Amjad runs a law firm

that he has built up from scratch.

This is my baby, in terms of I initially set it up.

I went through the initial heartbreak of getting the work in,

obviously dealing with that work,

and employing staff.

The business thrived and Amjad needed to expand.

He took on this former pub and started building work

to turn it into new offices.

But while the work is still in progress,

Amjad's legal firm attracts attention

from people on the wrong side of the law.

Straight away, there were several attempts to burgle the premises,

especially with the copper piping inside

and all the materials people could use to sell off as scrap metal.

I realised we would have to do something about this.

Amjad protects the former pub with shutters on the doors and windows.

Then he gets CCTV cameras fitted,

but just one week after the cameras were installed,

an employee, Obi, sees that something is amiss.

I was just walking down from the main road here,

going to the bank, which is further down.

I noticed there's a camera missing right over there.

I just seen a bare wire.

Checking around the rest of the building,

Obi sees that not just one but four cameras have vanished.

He now has to tell Amjad that,

ironically, the very gadgets he has fitted

to secure the place have been stolen.

When he told me this news, obviously I was devastated.

I thought, "I've not paid my bill yet,

"around £1,400," and I was extremely annoyed.

But all is not lost.

The cameras record onto a computer

inside the building.

Perhaps it will provide a clue as to the identity

of the camera snatcher.

Look at these images - how fantastic is that?

Turns out it provides a lot more than a clue.

Amjad has clear images of the moonlit prowler,

who returns in the morning with some tools

and spends the next four hours - yes, four hours -

removing the cameras from Amjad's walls.

But by the time he gets to this last camera,

a fatal flaw in the man's plan is revealed.

Cameras can record,

and he leaves a perfect selfie behind.

He was looking straight into the cameras,

which at that time I found quite funny and quite amusing.

Not realising that whilst taking the cameras,

he's being recorded. I mean, for God's sake, he's taking cameras.

I can describe him to a T.

Amjad takes the footage to the police,

and the local press, who run a front page

with the man's image plastered all over it.

The exposure soon pays off.

I think he was caught within four or five hours.

He was identified and arrested.

Pleading guilty to theft,

the 22-year-old is sentenced to a 12-month community order,

with 12 months' supervision, and ordered to pay compensation.

With the thief caught and convicted,

you'd have thought that would be that.

But to protect his business from further trouble,

Amjad installs a new camera system. But guess what?

Eight months later, the incident happened again.

I thought to myself, "Oh, no, this can't be."

Unbelievably, another thief gets his hands on Amjad's cameras,

though, unfortunately, this thief didn't leave a selfie

and isn't caught.

Amjad's installed more cameras to protect his building now,

but these ones are theft-proof.

Installed them higher, put security screws, which can't be taken out.

There have been no more incidents

and Amjad can now concentrate on running his business,

though he does think he might have found a way for

the first camera thief to make a more honest living -

-as a photographic model.

-Perfect, a fantastic pose.

So much so...I think Vogue might be interested in him(!)

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

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