Episode 6 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 pack up.

It made me swallow with pride, it was brilliant.

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

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today, four violent robbers storm into a pub

and so begins a terrifying ordeal for the couple that run it.

One of them put a knife to my wife's throat and said,

"Behave or she gets it."

I thought,

"Are we going to get killed?"

But less than ten minutes later,

the same four men are running for their lives out the door.

They picked the wrong landlord to rob.

Also today, it's burglar watch. "Smile, pal, you're on live TV."

This office raider thinks he's alone

but downstairs he has an audience, watching his every move on camera.

It's one of those jobs that you

think you're never actually going to get.

You're there and you can see the person there.

And the bizarre case of the lolly and the brolly.

A careless bank robber forgets to bring his swag bag.

He drops the loot and makes heavy weather

of stashing the cash in an umbrella.

A barmaid is clearing up in a pub in Leeds city centre.

It's nearly closing time on the night before Christmas Eve.

But her festive cheer is about to change to fear for her life.

Because these men outside aren't bearing gifts.

They're four armed robbers.

After tying up the barmaid,

they rush upstairs to where the couple who run the pub live

and burst in on them.

-I thought we were going to die.

-I just thought we were going to die.

What follows is a shocking ordeal for the landlords,

but as you'll see, there's a twist in this tale.

At the end of the day, they started it by coming through the door.

Every sequence of events has consequences

and you've got to be prepared for the consequences.

The Ship Inn, a local landmark in Leeds city centre.

Steve and Vicky have only been running the pub for six weeks.

It's actually one of the oldest standing pubs in Leeds.

1755, it were built.

We never thought about taking another one in Leeds city centre

but as soon as me and my wife came

in, we liked the feel, so we said yes.

Stephen spent eight years in the army before meeting Vicky.

Since then, they've run a number of pubs,

spending many a happy hour together.

We're soul mates, we're best friends, we're a pair of slippers.

You call it, we just are, we just match with everything.

They know how to run a tight ship,

and how to sail through any troubled waters.

We've been in the pub game for over 20 years

and we've been in some rough houses.

The thing is, you treat everybody how you expect to be treated.

You speak to everybody how you expect to be spoken to.

And you give everybody a chance until they drop a clanger.

But nothing could prepare them for this terrifying night

close to Christmas, when their lives come under threat.

It's Sunday evening on the busiest weekend of the year.

It's nearly closing time, and as the last customers leave,

Steve and Vicky head upstairs to their newly-furnished flat,

leaving a barmaid to clean up.

It was the day before Christmas Eve.

It was the first night that our furniture has been delivered.

And it was our first night to just be able to sit down...

..and watch a bit of telly.

But there's a real-life Christmas

crime drama about to unfold downstairs.

Four men wearing balaclavas walk up the alleyway...

..and head inside the pub.

They grab the terrified barmaid...

..and tie her hands together.

We just heard a bit of banging but never gave it a thought.

The masked gang are armed.

Two have knives, one has a hammer, and the fourth grabs

a bottle of tequila from behind the bar to use as a weapon.

They're dangerous men

and they make their way up the stairs towards Steve and Vicky.

The door flew open.

And there was a guy stood there with a balaclava on.

At the time me and Steve laughed,

because some friends of ours had been in,

and we just thought they'd pulled a prank on us.

So I got up and said, "This is in bad taste."

The penny dropped.

I just thought, "This is real. This is real. What do we do?"

Steve acts instinctively to defend his wife.

He launches himself at the men and starts fighting.

Steve had no fear. No fear.

He just jumped up and wanted to tackle them all.

I think it was more adrenaline than anything, and anger.

I thought,

"Are we going to get killed?"

One of them put a knife to my wife's throat and said,

"Behave or she gets it."

He would have carried on fighting if they hadn't turned onto me.

I just behaved and basically did what was said then.

They were just screaming at us, "Stay down! Stay down!"

That's all that...

Even now, I still have it in my head.

The robbers make it clear they want the weekend's takings

and demand to be taken to the office.

I stood up, because I was going to take them to the office,

and they said, "Not you."

They got hold of the back of my hair and dragged me into the office.

I panicked, because they were asking for the safe keys.

Vicky didn't know where any of the keys were, so they tipped

the filing cabinet upside down, which had all the keys in.

And they said, "You will get hurt.

"Stop messing about. Where are the keys?"

They found a set of keys for what we call the change safe.

The two robbers with Vicky steal £1,000 from the change safe.

The other two robbers guard Steve. Separated and cut off,

the couple are terrified for each other's safety.

I thought, "Is he all right? Where is he?"

"What have they done to him?"

The first thing I thought is,

"Have I made it worse?"

I didn't know whether Steve were alive or dead.

Convinced there's more money to be had, the two men with Vicky

continued to search for the keys to the main safe.

But also in this office

are the monitors for the pub's CCTV system.

And suddenly, some unexpected movement on a downstairs

camera draws the robbers' attention.

One of the regulars walked back into our pub.

The pub is still open.

The robbers have forgotten to lock the front door.

The other robber who'd got hold of me from behind had seen it.

And said, "Somebody's walked in. Go downstairs and sort it.

"It needs sorting. Sort him out."

The customer hears the barmaid and goes over to her.

He unties her, then heads to the back of the pub.

The barmaid tries to run for it, but it's too late.

Off-camera, the armed robber catches her and the customer

and forces them upstairs.

They're put next to Steve on the settee.

He's dismayed to see them.

He's been waiting for the slightest opportunity for he

and Vicky to escape, but more people means less chance of that.

Now you've got to behave even more

because there's more people to be threatened.

What Steve doesn't know is that the distraction of the customer

does give Vicky a chance to slip away.

For a moment, there's only one robber with her,

and he's busy searching for keys.

That split second I just saw the gap

for me to get away. And I just ran.

But Vicky's only escape route is upstairs.

I thought of jumping out of the window on the third floor, to just

get out to try and raise the alarm to police or just scream and scream.

But I panicked because I knew I couldn't jump that far down.

Vicky has no option but to hide in a cupboard

and pray they don't find her.

I was just trying to keep so quiet, trying not to breathe

so they couldn't hear me breathing.

Steve is unaware that Vicky is now hiding,

and he senses that the robbers are starting to panic.

They were flapping because it was obviously not

going as well as they thought it was going to go.

Steve comes up with a way to get the menacing robbers downstairs,

away from Vicky, to give him a chance to take the advantage.

It was just a case of that if you fight back they're either

going to do something, or they're going to run.

It's four against one.

How can Steve turn the tables?

If at first you don't succeed, well, if you're a burglar,

best not to try again.

The second time, they might be ready for you.

The police have him in the palm of their hands,

thanks to some useful technology.

Andy's gadgets have made this job for us.

And a dodgy rubbish dumper.

He thinks he's getting clean away with it,

but can the council do the dirty on him?

But first,

this man is just leaving a bank with a load of cash.

Nothing unusual there, you might say, but this is a bank robber.

He thinks everything's going to plan,

but he suddenly suffers a drop in the bank rate. Oh, dear.

He didn't bring anything to put the bundles of notes into.

A case of cash and can't carry.

He spots an abandoned umbrella.

Not the most obvious choice of swag bag.

To completely rain on his parade,

the clerks have pushed a button

behind the counter to alert the local police.

The man does eventually make it out of the bank, but not very far.

Trying to escape the police, this wally with the brolly

slipped on a patch of ice, banging his head in the process.

Convicted of robbery, he's sentenced to ten years in jail.

It never rains but it pours.

Pretty versatile these mobile phones.

Texting, making calls, taking photographs.

And sometimes it seems, catching criminals.

This is the inside of an office in Watford.

But it's outside office hours. All is quiet, but not for long.

Just watch the door.

This is a break-in.

And the size nines thumping that door belong to a burglar,

who's had his kicks here once before.

This is a burglar who hasn't learned his lesson.

It's one of those jobs,

as a police officer, that you think, "I can't believe this is happening."

Yes.

This same thief has already been caught by police

only two weeks earlier, breaking into this very same office.

That time, he left behind a trail of devastation.

Blood everywhere and just a mess.

Now, while out on bail for that crime,

unbelievably, he's come back again.

But we'll see how Andy, the gadget-loving owner of the company,

has everything in hand to put this felon in the frame.

Andy's gadgets have made this job for us.

You're there, and you can see the person there,

and you're thinking, "We're going to get him, we're going to get him."

Lisa, I've got quite an interesting candidate

I think you'd like to meet.

Andy Price started up his recruitment business

in Watford, Hertfordshire, five years ago. Their job is

to recruit staff for internet companies.

We have really worked hard to build the company to what it is today.

We've got a really good team of people working with us.

It means a lot.

It's the sort of business where computers are vital.

To have them stolen would be very damaging.

From a business point of view, it's a nightmare.

Time and money are lost. So if a business like

Andy's is targeted several times,

the consequences can be disastrous.

Detective Constable Julie Vint is committed

to catching burglars who raid offices.

There is no greater satisfaction for us,

to be able to put people behind bars who constantly do this,

who don't realise the ramifications of what they do.

Andy and his staff have already faced the aftermath of a break-in

once before, on a weekday morning.

The burglar then had damaged the office and injured himself,

leaving behind some vital evidence.

I found things hanging from the ceiling,

I found blood all over the office.

Everybody was a bit shocked.

It was a bit of a strange environment.

We weren't sure what to do, to be honest.

A moving experience, I guess, for everyone here that had

come in to find that all of their personal possessions had been taken.

During that burglary, two business computers were also stolen,

worth £1,600.

The police took away DNA samples from blood found in the office.

They also took CCTV footage from the building's foyer.

It shows a man, with a bike, wearing a distinctive bobble hat.

The man is identified from his blood

and from these pictures. It's 40-year-old Kevin Corkhill.

He's arrested and charged.

He pleaded guilty, and was then subsequently released by

the courts on bail pending sentencing for those offences.

For the moment, Corkhill remains a free man.

Meanwhile, the break-in convinces Andy

to invest in some special technical

equipment for the office, to try and prevent further burglaries.

I'm a bit of a gadget freak.

Love gadgets. I've installed cameras and in here

we can see live footage of what's going on right now.

This is more than a standard CCTV system.

The camera pictures are streamed

live on the internet to Andy's phone.

They activate when they sense motion or detect sound.

It sends an alert through to my phone to click on the link and it

takes me straight through to their app, which shows me the live feed.

It's just amazing.

Two weeks later, the cameras are put to the test.

It's Valentine's Day

and Andy's romantic evening with his wife gets rudely interrupted.

It's not exactly the surprise you're looking for.

At 10pm at night on Valentine's Day,

is an alarm on your mobile to let you know that someone's

standing in the business that you've worked hard to build up.

Andy's Valentine's evening is ruined.

He's glued to the live view of his office, where the cameras

have picked up the sound of the door being smashed open.

THUDDING

The burglar first disappears next door to a kitchen area,

then re-emerges with some black bags and one yellow rubber glove.

Andy can't believe it.

He recognises the burglar as the

same man who broke in two weeks ago, Kevin Corkhill.

I immediately thought, "He's come back for more."

Sickening feeling. He's going to go for the lot.

He's going to go for everything, so I must stop him.

Andy calls the police.

Within four minutes of the call being made to us, we had officers

at the building, containing the building, surrounding the building.

Corkhill, blissfully unaware that police have the building

locked down, carries on stealing computer equipment,

wearing one yellow glove on his right hand.

Maybe he's trying to avoid leaving another trail of blood,

like he did on his previous visit.

He has probably thought, "I'm going to be canny this time,

"and I'm not going to get caught through my forensics."

I'm not quite sure why he only put one rubber glove on.

Yes. There's a small flaw in his plan.

He's still leaving finger prints with his left hand.

Meanwhile, Andy is on his way to the office.

I arrived at the office to find the building completely

surrounded with police vans, dogs, cars.

A unique set of circumstances has developed.

Upstairs, there's the burglar, who is oblivious to the police presence.

Outside, downstairs, there's Andy and the police, watching

live pictures of the burglary happening in front of their eyes.

It's one of those jobs that you think

you were never actually going to get.

You're never going to actually find someone actually in the building, and

it's such a wonderful feeling,

knowing that you are going to catch your man.

Just after Corkhill raids Andy's desk, he moves

across to the left-hand side, and finally looks out of the window.

He obviously sees the blue flashing lights outside and realises the game

is up and that's when you see him panic and run, complete with bags.

Corkhill runs upstairs.

Moments later, the police dog teams arrive.

We let the dog unit go in first, because we want to get a track.

We don't want to go in there and all he'll be able to smell is us.

They pick up the burglar's scent and head up after him.

Our dog unit has tracked him to the fifth floor,

where he's hiding behind a door.

The dogs entered that office and I believe they bit him

as they arrested him.

They've got their man, but there's no sign of the stolen goods.

They start a search.

Next thing, we have one of the officers shout, "Bingo!"

They find it in the ceiling of the first-floor gent's toilets.

We got back our computers

and all of the equipment that he tried to steal.

So it was fantastic.

This time, not surprisingly,

Corkhill is not released on bail, but kept in custody.

He's given two years in prison.

Gadget-mad Andy's hi-tech security system

has certainly paid off.

It's all very well having CCTV and then you suddenly, you know,

maybe you would have gone in the next day and you're suddenly,

"Oh, I've been broken into." But the fact is,

he had CCTV that goes straight to his mobile phone, and because

of that, he was able to phone us

straightaway, dialling 999, and we were there within minutes.

It's quite a cool piece of kit, to be honest.

Without that, we may not have caught him.

It does everything I want it to do.

I can't be more grateful for it, to be honest with you.

£150 and we caught the guy red-handed.

How stupid was that burglar,

returning to somewhere that he previously burgled?

Well, it seems, he's not alone.

Burglars do sometimes return for a second bite

at your apple.

Or Samsung, or Dell.

If you've been a victim of burglary,

most thieves know that the first thing you're going to do,

once you get your insurance money, is to go out and replace those

goods, so think about, if you do replace those goods,

what are you doing with the boxes?

Are you leaving them outside your address?

Because that is an advert for a thief that actually you've

got the new laptop, new TV, so think about where you

dispose of that rubbish and don't make your house be a target again.

You don't have to live in Fort Knox and be a prisoner in your home.

What you can do a simple little things to stop you being

a victim of crime again, and that could be a gravel drive,

so you can hear the person coming up the drive toward your house,

it could be a motion sensor light,

to scare them off once they come into your property,

or it could be a CCTV camera, even in a dummy box,

something that makes them think we are here and we're waiting for you.

Now, one group of offenders who repeatedly return to the

scene of the crime are the fly-tippers,

spoiling the street, dumping their rubbish on the rest of us.

But the councils are beginning to catch them doing their dirty deeds.

If you go down to these woods tonight,

you'll definitely be sure of a big surprise.

Well, you'd surprise this guy anyway,

because he's illegally dumping rubbish.

But what he doesn't realise is that he's being filmed doing it.

Salford City Council decided to hit back at fly-tippers

by installing multiple covert cameras

at known hot spots.

It's dubbed operation Pandora,

and the first culprit,

out of the box with a box of rubbish, is this man.

After shutting the boot...

I mean, you wouldn't want to get the car wet on a rainy night,

he gets yet more junk from the passenger seat.

Another night and he's back,

badly parked to dump even more waste.

Bag after bag after bag of it.

He scatters the contents of this one all over the ground,

and brings the empty bag back to the car to recycle it, maybe?

No. Most likely to bring even more rubbish.

Salford Council understandably take a dim view of all of this

and track him down.

Pleading guilty to fly-tipping,

the man bags himself a fine for his rubbishy behaviour.

Maybe now he'll clean up his act.

Back to Leeds, where at the Ship Inn, a terrifying robbery by four

armed men is under way.

The landlords, Steve and Vicky,

are being held captive in different parts of the pub,

but what Steve doesn't know is

Vicky has managed to escape and is hiding.

When I was in the cupboard, all I kept hearing was shouting.

They were obviously shouting for me. I didn't know where Steve was.

I didn't know where the customer was.

I didn't know what had happened to the barmaid.

In fact, Vicky's husband Steve plus a customer

and a barmaid are all being held at knife-point in the living room.

The robbers have already stolen £1,000 from the one safe,

but they believe there's more cash somewhere else. They question Steve.

They asked me where the rest of the money was,

and I said I had dropped it in the night safe.

They then said, "Where's today's takings?"

I said, "Still in the till, we were open."

That's when three of them escorted me downstairs.

With no chance of getting

at the money in the bank's night safe,

the gang's last hope is to raid the till behind the bar.

It's the opportunity that Steve's been waiting for, to lead the most

dangerous members of the gang away from where

he thinks Vicky's being held.

The three that came downstairs were the three that were mainly armed.

So both knives at this time and the hammer are downstairs.

First, he tries to distract them.

He hands over a tin, which contains about £300 in change.

The gang make a grab for the cash.

The other one who was supposed to be keeping an eye on me,

was that interested in how much they were getting,

he actually walked past me, leaving me next to a catering kitchen.

Steve seizes the opportunity.

They didn't even notice me go into the kitchen and pick up two knives.

Now armed himself, Steve's looking to scare off the attackers.

It was just a case of that

if you fight back, they're either going to do something, or they're

going to run. The other thing is, I'm probably dafter than they are.

We can't show you all the footage

because of the level of violence in the brief struggle that follows.

Steve charges in for maximum shock value.

And it works.

Now, it's the robbers' turn to be desperate to escape.

They pile out of the door.

Even the man from upstairs,

who's seen Steve in action on the CCTV monitor, makes a run for it.

Steve immediately calls the police.

So they're saying, "Keep on the line, keep on the line." I says,

"No chance, I'm looking for my wife."

He's desperate to find Vicky.

I didn't know where she was,

whether she'd been took by them or anything else.

He, the barmaid and customer frantically search.

Hiding in a cupboard, Vicky's unaware of what's

happening downstairs. She still believes the robbers are in the pub.

I heard Steve shouting me

and I thought, "They're making him shout me.

"They've got hold of him.

"They can't find me, they're making Steve shout me."

Vicky finally emerges ten minutes later,

when she sees police in the hallway.

My legs went to jelly.

I just was in shock.

Just wanted to be sick,

asking where Steve is.

An officer tells her the good news. Steve's safe.

I just went straight down.

The reaction of his face was just sort of

drained from him, as though, "I'm OK."

And mine was with him, when I saw him, and I just thought,

"We're OK. We're all right. Yeah."

When she actually came down, and she was all right, I just thought,

"Thank Christ for that."

After the immediate relief that their ordeal is over,

the next priority for the police is tracking down the gang.

The case lands on the desk of Detective Constable Rob Finn,

of West Yorkshire Police.

The robbery was particularly violent.

I can only begin to imagine how terrifying an ordeal it was

for the landlord, his wife, and the members of staff present.

Steven makes his own decisions

in how he's going to defend himself and his property.

While his actions are very brave, the advice from myself and

West Yorkshire Police would be to

maintain personal safety at all times.

The identity of the robbers is a mystery.

There is no evidence to go on, apart from the pub's CCTV footage.

After several months of painstaking investigation, DC Finn

and his team tracked the gang's route through the city centre.

We worked backwards, using various sources of CCTV based within

the city centre to piece together the movements of the people.

They link one of the robbers to a taxi.

Then discover his cab had been booked by phone.

From there, we were able to identify

the caller and this gave us a name and address.

A 37-year-old man called Glen Hossack lives at that address.

The police search the house and discover evidence,

including a jumper with buttons on it, exactly the same as this.

He is arrested.

In court, Hossack is sentenced to six years in prison.

But what about the other three robbers?

We established the identities of the other three people involved.

Subsequent enquiries showed that they're already serving

lengthy sentences in jail for other offences.

This meant that it wasn't in the public interest to pursue any

charges against them in relation to our enquiry.

With all of that time behind bars,

hopefully they'll work out that crime doesn't pay.

Steve's been doing his sums.

All in all, they got away with about 600 quid a piece.

So they got £100 for every year in prison.

I do my maths every day!

Since the raid, Steve and Vicky have upgraded their security with

more CCTV cameras and steel gates.

It had to be uprated for my wife to feel safe.

The couple are soon back at the helm of the ship.

Hopefully from now on it will all be plain sailing, but they will

never forget how Steve managed to scare the armed robbers away.

Once I look back on it, on CCTV, I probably thought, "You idiot."

It wasn't the brightest moment I've ever had, but...

..at the end of it, they legged it.

He's my hero.

My hero, when I saw him, and I thought, "I'm glad he did."

Because if he hadn't, what would have happened?

That's it for today.

Join us next time,

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