Episode 8 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's who's up to no good had better think twice.

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today, a man armed with a crowbar terrorises a jewellery shop owner.

He's grabbed me and he's swearing "I'm going to cave your head in."

But what he doesn't know is that his violent act is being broadcast right

around the town on short wave radio to the police, the council

and local shopkeepers.

Also today, blink and you'll miss it.

A criminal can steal a handbag in seconds.

Your stomach absolutely lurches with a complete sick feeling.

Cameras pick up a sneaky bag snatcher

but this thief doesn't realise exactly what he's picked up.

And you'd think something that's very big,

very yellow and weighs seven tonnes would be very hard to nick.

Well, best think again.

They've been so successful, they're going to do another one.

It's organised crime on a big scale, but just one tiny

piece of police technology could turn it into disorganised crime.

Scarborough, the largest holiday resort on the Yorkshire coast.

A place where people can relax and unwind.

Apart from Ricky, that is.

Because he runs a jewellery shop that's attracted

two violent armed raids.

The first time, by a terrifying robber with a carving knife.

You think is he going to stab you, slash you?

Ricky bravely chases the man by himself and ends up collapsing.

I'm thinking, "Am I having a heart attack here?"

And now, a few years later,

Ricky is attacked by a second armed robber with a crowbar.

But as we'll see,

this time Ricky will have back-up from the whole town.

I nearly had tears in my eyes because there was this huge

posse of people from the shops following this guy.

Scarborough is dubbed the Queen of Yorkshire's coast, and

as befits a queen, it has more than its fair share of jewellery shops.

Ricky started this one up from nothing over 30 years ago.

It's my life. Our main thing is customer relations.

We relate to people as people, not just money coming in.

Ricky has a close knit team of staff who work for him.

We're like one big family and if something happens to someone,

we all try to sort it out together.

Just try to run a nice business and earn a good living, really.

The problem is,

goods that are worth a lot of money can attract a bad penny or two.

There are some nasty people who want to come in and hurt you

and then take what they want.

Some years back, Ricky and a colleague

faced their first terrifying ordeal.

It started out as a quiet day in the shop.

I was actually behind the counter having a cup of tea.

Miles away, just sort of drifting.

And all of a sudden, the door burst open.

It's a masked man brandishing a large carving knife.

He'd started screaming at me, "Get on the floor."

And you think, "Is this happening? Is it real?

"What's he going to do with this knife?"

Ricky's colleague immediately dashes for the back room

and locks herself in, something Ricky has trained his staff to do.

So they can't be used as hostages, and I haven't to think,

"Are they safe?"

The armed man jumps over the counter

being careful not to leave fingerprints.

He just skipped over it.

He heads to the window display and grabs two diamond rings

while Ricky runs for the front door.

He's hoping to lock the man in.

But he's not quite fast enough.

The robber gets past.

Ricky's incensed and gives chase.

You think, well, all my life I've worked hard to get what we've got.

So I was chasing him, not thinking, "He's got a knife",

you just think, "I want my goods back."

But after several hundred yards, Ricky begins to feel ill

and has difficulty breathing.

I'm thinking, "Am I having a heart attack here?"

And I just went down.

The robber escapes.

Ricky later finds out his collapse was brought on by a

severe adrenaline rush.

The adrenaline was going a bit funny and my breathing was going.

I didn't know if I was going to start to feel like

I was going to cry or something.

It's not a manly thing to say but you don't have a choice, it happens.

But Ricky's bravery in the shop had an effect.

He'd panicked the armed robber into making a mistake.

As he came back and saw me going out the door, I think

he needed a bit of assurance to get me quick.

And he put a handprint on the counter.

That handprint,

together with the CCTV footage,

leads to the man being caught by police.

He's sentenced to six years in prison.

Unfortunately, the jewellery isn't recovered.

That incident, several years ago,

has led Ricky to improve his security.

We've had special glass fitted front and back.

We have to use special locks now.

He's upgraded his CCTV system and he joins a brand-new

type of community scheme, a short-wave radio network.

That means shopkeepers and security staff from different

shops in the town can be in constant radio contact.

This Shopwatch, what actually happens,

you have a link to everybody in town.

Everybody who's on it can hear what's going on.

Businesses across the town centre will know straightaway

if there's trouble brewing. And what's more,

the local council's CCTV control room can also listen in.

So if I say a lady's just gone out of here with a checked

shirt on and she's this size and brown hair,

the cameras are straight onto it and they can see it.

But despite all these new security measures,

Ricky's shop is attacked again by another robber who's ready to

use brute force and terror to steal some jewellery.

It's just gone 5:00pm on a winter's day when a man buzzes at the door.

He gets lucky. There's a new member of staff working with Ricky.

Inexperienced and trusting, she lets the caller in.

She actually thought it was a workman at the door. She let him in.

And he walked very quickly towards the back of the shop.

This man is an armed robber.

He pulls out a heavy crowbar and shows he's prepared to use it,

smashing the desk in front of the assistant.

And he made a great big hole in the desk.

Then he swung it round, smashed here,

and then he actually smashed down here again.

The raider now crosses the shop to threaten Ricky.

Screaming and shouting and swearing.

And threatening, "I'm going to come down and if you don't do

"what I want, I'm going to smash your head in."

The robber briefly turns back towards the terrified woman

assistant, but she escapes into the panic room.

But this robber has a surprise coming.

He doesn't know it yet,

but right now he's broadcasting on short-wave radio.

A hidden transmitter means the crime can be heard all over town.

Unaware, the robber yells at Ricky,

demanding expensive watches from the display.

He forced me over to this bit here.

He tried to push me in the window but then he forced me

over here like this, with his crowbar here behind me.

And he was taking watches out of the window and putting them in this bag.

The man then tries to escape,

but another security device has automatically locked the front door.

Ricky heads for safety in the panic room.

I'm trying to get in the back door but meanwhile the lady, who

doesn't normally work with me, is on the police phone, has locked me out.

It's a terrifying moment for Ricky.

He can't get out. He's furious. He's come down here, he's raging.

Swearing like mad at me.

There's butterflies and all sorts of things going on.

He's grabbed me and he's swearing, "I'm going to cave your head in.

"I'm going to get out of this BLEEP door."

He is forced to open the door.

The violent man dashes out of the shop and makes a run for it.

Well, he can run but he can't hide.

The robbery has taken just seconds but neighbouring shop staff

and the police are already racing to the scene.

This time Ricky has the help he needs.

Everybody in town knew what was going on.

So when I actually followed him through the alleyway,

by the time I got to the other end of it

nearly every detective who works in all the shops,

not the police ones, the other ones,

were actually running down after him and there was a huge group of them.

It made me swallow with pride, it was brilliant.

Chased down, the robber is soon surrounded by the police

and a posse of shop workers.

I nearly had tears in my eyes,

because as I got there, there was nearly every police vehicle

apart from a helicopter, all the lads from all the shops,

the store detectives were there.

It was just amazing.

When Ricky gets back to his shop, accompanied by security staff,

he finds even more police waiting.

Their response time was two and a half minutes.

That was in the shop.

The end of the street and the town was cordoned off in less time.

So, I mean, you try to match that. That is totally mind-blowing.

The robber, 40-year-old Leon Littlechild,

pleads guilty in court.

Not much choice, really. He's put away for four and a half years.

Ricky's stolen watches are returned.

Since then, it's been business as usual at the jewellers.

Not surprisingly, Ricky is a fan of Shopwatch,

and thinks that shopkeepers in other towns could benefit.

If they haven't got the Shopwatch, they should have it.

The first one was a getaway because we didn't have it,

and the second one we did and it's as simple as that.

It was just amazing. Just amazing what was going on.

I've never in my life seen such a quick response.

Coming up, antisocial scooter riders who are riling the residents

and refusing to buzz off.

But a fed-up neighbour has got their number

and finds a way to get the last laugh.

And big-time criminals move off with £1 million worth

of earth-movers and diggers.

The bigger the crime, the harder they fall.

But first, this CCTV picture is from a carriage of an inter-city train.

We're about to see one of the passengers in these seats

lose £2,000 worth of property.

Just there. See that?

We'll take a closer look in a moment because most likely you missed it.

Just like everybody else in the carriage missed it.

Including the sleeping victim.

She's just had her handbag stolen.

When she wakes, she's in for a shock.

It can have a devastating effect on people, initially.

Panicking, searching through the carriage looking for her bag.

A bag-snatch only takes seconds to commit,

but the consequences for the victim can last a long while.

When we pack our bags and catch a train,

the last thing on our mind is the worry that our fellow

passengers might not be on the straight-and-narrow.

PC Allan Fernie works for the

British Transport Police in Lancaster.

We investigate any crime which is on or connected to the railway.

You've got to bear in mind that every day

there are millions of people travelling by train.

So, the amount of thefts that there are in comparison

are quite small but it does happen.

Allan and his colleagues police a stretch of track on the main

route between London and Scotland.

It's beautiful countryside,

and passengers' eyes are likely to be gazing at the view.

But all the while, a thief could be gazing longingly at their luggage.

There is some outstanding scenery, so people can become distracted

and people do have a tendency to nod off and when they get off,

the handbag, it's disappeared.

And it can be a serious loss.

Not just of money, but of precious items, like phones, glasses,

keys and bank cards.

People do lose items which are very sentimental and can't be replaced.

Christina knows how distressing it is to have a handbag stolen.

Hers was taken late at night on a train.

Your stomach absolutely lurches with a complete sick feeling.

And I had everything in it, so it was awful. Awful.

Christina gets off the train and is now stranded at a station.

It does make you feel very vulnerable

when you are without any money or phone or keys or anything.

It's a horrible feeling.

You're locked out of your life

because you haven't got any of the stuff you need for that.

Christina eventually begs a bus driver to let her travel home for

free but the loss of cards, phone and keys affects her for weeks.

I think the people who do this think this is not a violent crime,

it's no big deal.

It doesn't make much difference, it's only material stuff.

Well, it isn't only material stuff. You do feel violated as a woman.

I'm lucky I haven't carried that feeling of being

unsafe around with me but I can easily see why someone would.

It's a horrible thing to do to someone else.

Back in Lancaster,

PC Allan Fernie of the British Transport Police sees bag-snatching

as a serious crime, and he's on a mission to catch the snatchers.

But it's not an easy task.

With so many passengers leaving the average train,

witnesses are hard to come by.

Unfortunately, people are moving around.

They're moving from different parts of the country.

And very hard to trace.

Thankfully, there's one eyewitness that's always on watch -

the CCTV camera that's usually fitted inside a train carriage.

And here's the proof of how useful it can be.

A woman who's been at a business meeting in Glasgow is

heading back down south.

She was obviously tired, as we can all relate to,

travelling on trains, it's easy to nod off.

A man walks down the carriage.

There are plenty of seats available,

but that's not what he's looking for.

It appears that the offender is looking for an opportunity.

Looking for property that's laying on tables or unattended.

He takes a seat opposite the victim.

The woman has a bright orange handbag that's easy to spot.

After some minutes, the man crosses the aisle

and sits opposite the sleeping woman.

The train now approaching the station, people are now getting up

and the offender, there, has knelt down and taken the bag.

We can see it in his hand.

It takes just a couple of seconds for the man to steal the bag.

No-one else has noticed a crime has been committed.

The thieves are very quick and very clever.

You have to be very sharp-eyed to catch it.

The thief gets off at the next station

and the train pulls away again.

When the woman later wakes up, she searches frantically for her bag

but eventually realises, to her horror, it's been stolen

and calls the guard.

The case is passed to PC Allan Fernie.

He starts his investigation by gathering evidence from all

available CCTV cameras.

We then obtained CCTV from Oxenholme platform.

And we could see the offender get off the train

and go into the gents' toilets.

And when he came out of the toilet, he didn't have the handbag.

The thief has abandoned the bag in the gents.

Good news, because this is no ordinary bag.

It's worth £1,000 in itself.

Luckily, the thief's only taken some cash and small items.

This was reunited with the victim on the night.

With clear pictures of the thief's face,

the next step is to track him down.

Allan believes that the man might live near the station where

he got off, so sends the images to local police.

The local police officers instantly recognised the offender.

Bingo.

In court, the 32-year-old man has to pay compensation

and is sentenced to a 150-hour community order.

Let's hope that will put him back on the right track.

It's a good feeling when you get a result.

Particularly when you inform the victim.

People are pleased that the police have been there to help

and get a result.

Thieves often target people when they're relaxed and off-guard,

like Christina. But obviously, we can't all be on edge

every minute of the day that we're out and about.

So how can you avoid becoming a victim of bag theft?

It's really important to always be vigilant

and prevent this handbag from being stolen.

So if you keep it on your knee at all times,

or if it's a larger bag, perhaps put the handle through your foot

when you're a passenger on a bus,

or get one of the straps that goes right across your chest over your

head, making it even more difficult for someone to grab it and run away.

If your bag is stolen and in your bag you have your house keys

and something that identifies your home address,

that now makes your home vulnerable.

So please try and keep them separately.

Potentially, you're looking at £1,000

worth of property in your bag.

If you were carrying round £1,000 in cash,

you'd hold it an awful lot closer.

In Baildon, Yorkshire, there's a very irritating noise.

Is it a lawn mower? A chain saw? An extremely large wasp?

No. It's just these two idiots on scooters.

They're buzzing up and down this residential street,

just yards from a children's playground, annoying everyone.

One resident, tired of the racket,

starts filming them on his phone, hoping it will make them buzz off.

But rather than take the hint and scoot off,

the scooter scoundrels scornfully pull a wheelie.

But the police are able to pick out one of the number

plates from this footage.

They pay a visit to the house of a 20-year-old

and seize his scooter under the Anti-social Behaviour Act.

Now he's saddled with a recovery fee

and storage charges running into hundreds of pounds.

And let's hope, as he counts the costs,

-he realises he's been

-wheelie

-rather stupid.

Thieves particularly like to steal items that are small

and valuable because they're easy to carry off.

But just because something's large and weighs several tonnes,

doesn't mean it can't be stolen.

This huge construction vehicle is pretty hard to miss.

Bright yellow, weighing seven tonnes,

it's used to carry materials around building sites.

It's not easy for vehicles this size to disappear, and yet

recently in Hertfordshire, they've been vanishing into thin air.

This is an organised gang who go out on a daily basis

and they're stealing £40-80,000 worth of equipment each time.

Nearly £1 million worth have gone missing.

And there's another cost too.

Without these vehicles to move materials,

the builders' work grinds to a halt.

No materials, no work.

They fail to meet their contracts.

They have to lay off staff, and in one particular instance

I know of a builder that had to go out of business.

This is a major crime operation planned by a ruthless

gang of thieves who care little how people are affected.

They even dupe innocent members of the public into hiding the loot.

To my horror, what I was led to believe was house clearance furniture

turned out to be stolen equipment.

But such large scale crime attracts a large-scale response from police.

They have some tricks of their own to help them track the gang.

And this Mr Big and his cohorts are about to get cut down to size.

The construction industry heavily depends on equipment hire companies,

like this one, managed by Peter Withe.

Our machines typically feed and keep the site going.

Anything from bricklayers to ground workers

to carpenters to roof tilers.

You name it, that machine is keeping these guys going.

So when these pieces of heavy machinery suddenly start to

vanish from sight, it has immediate

and serious consequences for Peter's customers.

There was a massive increase in insurance excesses.

And typically if there's no materials for the bricklayer

to lay, for example, he will have to go home.

If he goes home, he's not going to earn any money.

The hire companies do what they can to secure the machines.

And they're fitted with hidden tracking devices.

But the thieves seem to be one step ahead.

This is a tracker that we fit in our machines.

They were finding and removing them from the machine, so obviously,

we couldn't find that machine because it wasn't being tracked.

Several months and further thefts later,

police are still looking for a lead.

The case falls on the desk of Detective Constable Jon Hancock.

There were organised criminals that were committing these crimes

and were turning up posing as builders.

We were playing catch-up, gathering the evidence for the historic crimes

whilst new crimes were coming in all the time.

Jon and his team set to work painstakingly gathering

a mass of evidence and information, and they get a breakthrough.

It's from an unlikely source.

Some poor quality CCTV from a theatre car park camera.

Off camera, the item of plant that is subsequently stolen in this

footage is about here.

What's happening is the theft of the machinery is now occurring

and it's making a noise.

That noise causes staff from the theatre to rush out and investigate.

There's not supposed to be building work going on during performances.

Off screen here, they're complaining to the builders,

the thieves, of the noise.

And the evidence she was able to give was that they were polite

and they said they were very sorry

but they had to take the machinery away for repair.

The staff go back into the theatre but a few minutes later,

this bloke enters.

Now this man here turns out to be one of the offenders.

Presumably he's come to find out how suspicious

the staff are about the activity outside.

Which to us was a bit of a gift, really.

Much clearer than the building site CCTV.

And you can see he's got distinctive tattoos on his arm and leg

which subsequently helped us identify him.

The man is 36-year-old Stacy Dunn.

It was reasonably obvious who some of the other gang members would've been.

It's not long before Jon has a fairly good idea exactly

who he's dealing with.

Stacy Dunn and some known associates.

But the evidence is still only circumstantial.

The pictures are so poor, no-one can be identified.

Solid proof is needed, and Jon sets out to get it.

He hides his own extra police trackers on the machinery.

He hopes once the thieves find one tracker,

they won't think to look hard for any more.

Now they just need someone to take the bait.

There was ironically an element inside of us that thought,

"Goodness. I hope one of these actually does get stolen."

They don't have long to wait.

This is the footage of a machine being stolen

from a building site at a school.

Down the road, the gang discard the first tracker.

But the police one stays hidden and continues to send signals all

the way to the gang's secret storehouse.

We were able to track it to this location here, this remote farm barn.

It's the major turning point for this investigation.

This Hertfordshire barn

and three others like it are central to the gang's criminal activity.

But it turns out that the owner of the barn has no idea

the building's being put to illegal use.

He's an innocent victim who wishes his identity to remain hidden.

He tells how two men had knocked on his door asking to rent the barn.

What I was told, they was doing household clearance furniture.

It seemed an ideal opportunity to make a bit of income out of it.

What actually happened was a mile apart.

Now the barn offers DC Jon Hancock the ideal opportunity

to crack this case and catch the culprits red-handed.

We've got the upper hand.

We're able to install a covert camera at this location

and record the comings and goings of the thieves.

The camera is placed close to the barn

and records the members of the gang at work.

The men are clearly identifiable as they come and go.

Also at night, flashes from welding are a clue to

the thieves' plan for the stolen equipment.

The identity of these pieces of machinery can be changed

and ultimately exported abroad.

And just a week later, the clean machine is ready for shipping out.

A driver from Eastern Europe pulls up in his lorry

and the equipment is loaded.

Because the police tracker's still working, they can follow the lorry.

They intercept it on the M25.

The driver has no idea he's carrying stolen cargo.

Meanwhile, back at the farm,

the gang have no idea they've been rumbled.

And they go out and steal yet another vehicle,

giving the police more evidence all on camera.

Not only did we have the great piece of CCTV from that building site which

showed the offenders and what they were wearing,

but we've got the covert images here showing the same offenders wearing

the same clothing, driving that piece of machinery into this barn.

Police now have enough evidence but before they have time to

arrest them, astonishingly, the gang come back with yet another vehicle.

It's like a production line.

Is there no end to this gang's greed?

Well thankfully, yes, there is.

And it comes when the police swoop and arrest all four men.

The innocent owner of the barn is shocked

at what the gang have hidden in there.

To my horror, house clearance furniture turned out to be

two JCB telescopic handlers.

The search team found paint, grinding equipment, welding equipment,

all used to change the identity of these pieces of machinery.

Jon and his team map out the movements of each

gang member in fine detail.

They even find some DNA evidence at one of the sites.

We were able to build a big

evidential picture of this conspiracy.

A very complex picture.

In court, it takes seven weeks to examine it fully.

The four gang members are found guilty of involvement

in 24 vehicle thefts.

They are sentenced to a combined total of more

than 20 years in prison.

In Hertfordshire,

everyone in the building trade breathes a sigh of relief.

It can't be understated that the efforts of Jon Hancock

and his colleagues were absolutely paramount in bringing this closure.

It was a relief all round.

The police also get quite a lot of equipment back.

The value of the heavy machinery was approximately £1 million.

And we've recovered a substantial amount of it.

I think it sends a signal that Hertfordshire police will not

tolerate organised crime.

That's it for today.

Join us next time, when police and the public

will be catching more criminals red-handed.