Episode 10 Caught Red Handed

Thieves will steal our car, our valuables,

just about anything they can get their hands on.

SIREN BLARES

To cut down on crime and antisocial behaviour,

the police and other agencies are using new tactics and technology,

where the bad guys are getting caught in the act.

The CCTV was vital.

You can see they are definitely the people there.

-The camera doesn't lie.

-Local councils, shops and businesses

are laying some traps of their own...

There's a eureka moment when you get that evidence.

..and the general public, too, can help unsuspecting crooks

get their comeuppance.

-People won't stand by.

-I couldn't sit back and do nothing.

Yes! We've got her!

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

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today, an unarmed police support officer bravely draws

a violent man with a knife away from other people.

We're just taught to use whatever is at hand

and that's why I picked up a wire basket.

But a shopping basket isn't much of a shield.

Also today, a thief who's not so much light-fingered as light-footed.

He would use his leg to hook someone's bag

from underneath their feet.

His technique means he's like the invisible man.

-WOMAN GASPS

-I can't believe I'm not aware

that he's even doing it. It's frightening, it really is.

And this little piggy wants to stay at home,

but this big bad wolf has come to get him.

But there's a twist to this little piggy's tale.

The sleepy village of Shrewton, Wiltshire.

A man with a knife bursts through the doors of a local shop

and a police community support officer has to make a snap decision.

I've never been in a situation like that before in my life.

Face-to-face with a knifeman,

with only a shopping basket for protection.

I actually thought that I was going to get stabbed and that would be it.

The county of Wiltshire is mainly rural

and most people stay the right side of the law.

Shrewton village is on Will Todd's patch.

He's a police community support officer.

I've be a PCSO in Wiltshire for ten and a half years

and I just decided, working for the bank,

that I wanted to do something a bit more interesting.

PCSOs are especially important in rural areas,

where small villages are spread out.

Our job is to be the eyes and the ears of the police officers, really.

Years ago, everyone will remember that the village bobby

knew everybody and everybody knew him.

Obviously times are different now, so we're expected to be spread

a little bit more thinly but still have a good contact with people

who live in the community, who work in the community,

and grow up and retire in the community.

Carol and Brian both live in Shrewton.

Will's great. He's always knocking about doing something somewhere.

He's a great, friendly fellow.

His role is invaluable in this day and age.

I truthfully believe because they don't have powers of arrest per se,

they have to be more diplomatic.

There's nothing better to get something resolved

than by actually talking to people.

And Shrewton isn't a place that gives the police much bother.

We pride ourselves in Wiltshire as having one of the lowest crime rates

out of the whole 43 police forces.

I think we're always in the bottom two or three,

but that means when something does happen in Shrewton,

I think that it has that much of a greater effect on the community.

And early one Sunday evening, something bad does happen.

It was in February and it was dark

and I was out on routine patrol with my PCSO colleague, Shona,

and we heard a job come in over the radio for a domestic incident

at the other end of Shrewton Village.

Other officers are already on their way to a house where it's reported

a father and son are having a serious argument.

Shona and I realised that we knew the lad

and he'd been one of the lads that had grown up,

played football for the village.

I'd seen him around and watched him grow up, really.

Moments later, a radio update tells them that the son

has left the house and is now heading towards the village shop.

As they're near, Will and Shona go straight there,

and as they pull over, they spot the young 6ft 3 man

leaning against the postbox outside the store.

He appears in control...

at the moment.

We got out and my colleague, Shona, started talking to him

and he appeared a little bit upset, a bit tearful.

As Shona was talking to him, he seemed to relax.

Perhaps he had been drinking

but certainly Shona seemed to have quite a good rapport with him.

The man seems calm, so Will turns away to radio in an update.

But suddenly everything changes.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement

and I heard Shona say, "Drop it."

At that point, I saw he had a knife out, a large knife,

and he pushed past her and past me and went into the shop.

At that point, it all went a bit mental.

What happens next is shocking.

The security CCTV shows the man with the knife

running into the store and straight towards staff at the till.

Will is close behind.

Immediately I pressed my red button,

the emergency panic button on my radio.

I've been a PCSO for ten and a half years

and I've never pressed that button.

I think I said, "Male's got a knife."

The man has a large blade.

He demands money, then leaps at the shop assistant, who tries to run away

but the knifeman follows.

Will has to act, and fast.

At this point I genuinely thought that the member of staff

was going to be stabbed or hurt by this lad.

We're just taught to use whatever is at hand

and that's why I picked up a wire basket.

Using the basket as a shield,

Will shouts at the knifeman before he can get to the shop assistant.

He seemed to be distracted and turned and actually faced me out

with the knife, and at that point I really feared for my own safety.

Will has distracted the knifeman, allowing the shop worker to escape,

but now Will has another problem.

I realised that my colleague, Shona, was still in the shop.

I really had genuine concerns about her safety.

The lad has still got the knife, still waving it around,

still shouting and he was really in a very agitated state,

VERY agitated state.

But then, a stroke of luck.

Angrily swiping at a stack of baskets,

the man trips over them, which gives Shona the chance to get out.

Back on his feet, the man flies into a rage,

but thankfully a police officer has arrived who's armed with a Taser.

He shouts, "Taser," and, "Drop the knife,"

-and the lad didn't drop the knife.

-So the officer fires the Taser.

It hits.

Which instantly delivers 50,000 volts

and the lad went down.

The electric current causing spasms.

But now disarmed, the man can't hurt others or himself.

And he's very, very upset and almost crying on the floor.

I don't think we'll ever know what was going through

his mind on that night.

The man is arrested and taken into custody.

And a little later, there's a chilling discovery

when forensic officers at the crime scene discover

an even bigger knife dropped by the postbox

right where Will and Shona had been talking to the man.

When I think that Shona and myself were stood outside

with nothing to protect ourselves out there,

what could have happened, it does bring it home to you.

I'm pleased with the outcome

and happy with the way that nobody got hurt on that evening.

Pleading guilty to attempted armed robbery,

the 22-year-old man is sentenced to three years in jail.

And Shrewton's residents aren't going to forget the courage of their PCSOs.

Will's actions were unbelievable.

I don't think I could have managed what he did,

especially with someone with a large knife.

I did have a thought of whether I could have actually tried to get

the knife off of him, but I realised that actually he's

6ft 3, in his twenties, and I'm well into my fifties with a dodgy ankle,

and there would only have been one winner in that contest,

but I don't think I'll forget that night.

Fortunately, burglaries are not always successful

and sometimes thieves make a right pig's ear of it.

This man is not a cat burglar.

He's not a cattle rustler or a horse thief.

He's a different sort of animal altogether.

You could call him a pigsty pirate

because he's set on bringing home the bacon.

In the early hours of the morning he creeps into a barn

and steals a squealing 60-pound baby pig from its pen,

before running out to his accomplice, who's waiting in a car outside.

But later, the thieves make a pig mistake,

when the piglet somehow manages to hoof it.

Luckily, it's found by a kind rescuer,

who then sees the crime on the news

and the little porker is trotted wee-wee-wee, all the way home.

The thieves are identified after a social media campaign.

Convicted, they are given community service.

But if they ever do it again,

the courts may go the whole hog and it'll be the burglars,

not the pig, that'll be for the chop.

Coming up, a strange clue that something hairy's been happening

at the scene of a burglary.

A large clump of hair was found on the third floor.

Police combed the streets for a brace of bald burglars

who've been letting their hair down.

I asked them, "Where did you cut your hair?"

Sharp-eyed thieves are always on the lookout for when we're

not looking out, especially when we take our eyes off our bags.

London's Square Mile, and there's a highly active thief at work.

Over five months, he steals scores of bags.

Causing thousands and thousands of pounds worth of loss

to various different people.

And leaving a trail of distressed victims.

It was a really horrible, sick feeling in my stomach

knowing someone had actually gone in my bag.

This thief works in a particularly sneaky way.

The bag getting stolen in such close proximity is something

that I would never have considered happening.

The police need to find a way to expose this elusive thief.

We knew that we were going to have to up our game to get him.

London's Square Mile is crowded with workers, residents and tourists,

who can also be a magnet for thieves.

Detective Constable Mike O'Sullivan works

with the City of London Police crime squad.

One of the common problems they face is bag and purse theft.

We investigate every single bag theft,

every single theft from a coffee shop, every single theft from a bar,

mainly because it causes a lot of hardship.

People carry around their whole life in their bags.

It's a crime that's easy for a single thief to commit many times in a day.

And over a few weeks in the autumn, the city police realise

one of these prolific thieves is at work on their patch.

We started to get in a lot of CCTV images from different offences.

And every time, the same man pops up.

He's wearing a flat cap.

It's clear that this was a one-man crime spree.

Police need to discover the identity of the man in the cap.

His image is checked against the police database

but there's no record of him.

His identity is a mystery and he leaves behind few clues.

It's going to be hard to catch him.

Mike and the team study the CCTV footage.

The thief seems to be able to hide in plain sight.

He uses his phone to disguise what he's doing.

See, now he's making a fake phone call and you'd be amazed

about how many people don't pay attention to someone walking around

on their phone, just because it's the natural thing to do.

Unnoticed, the thief has chosen his target.

He'll settle on an individual and he'll bide his time,

wait until the time is right.

The camera shows his trademark technique.

He would sometimes use his leg to hook someone's bag from

pretty much underneath their feet, slide it out.

He uses his coat to cover the stolen bag, then briskly walks off,

leaving behind someone who has no idea their bag's been stolen.

Sam works in the city.

She knows what it's like to be a victim of the flat-capped thief.

It happens one day when she's out with some colleagues.

One of my friends was having a bit of a bad day so we said to her,

"Let's go and have some lunch,"

just down to one of the local sandwich shops.

She can be seen here sitting upright with her back to the window.

I just chucked my bag down the side mainly cos

I was sitting on the outside of the booth chitchatting like girls do,

probably moaning about men and work.

The man with the cap walks in.

He spots Sam's bag.

Pretending to be a customer, he sits as near as he can to Sam's table.

He waits for the right moment...

..stretches out his foot...

..kicks down Sam's bag and starts drawing it towards him.

It was as close to me as it could have been,

just a chair leg width apart, really.

I thought it was in my peripheral vision but it obviously wasn't.

Sam's friend sitting opposite doesn't see a thing.

This time, the thief doesn't steal the whole bag.

He hooks his foot through the strap, lifts the bag up,

then rifles through it under his coat.

He takes Sam's purse.

She only finds out later on.

Knowing somebody had actually gone in my bag,

invaded my privacy, stolen my things...

It was a really horrible sick feeling in my stomach.

Sam has to cancel all her bank cards.

Her house keys are in the purse, so she's forced to change the locks,

and the purse itself is irreplaceable.

I bought it in New York for my 40th birthday just last year

so I loved it and it was my memory of my birthday and my trip.

Photos of her children are also lost.

The City of London Police are on the lookout for the thief

but his face is just one among millions.

They work out a plan and analyse the crime reports

to look for any pattern to the thefts.

We were able to establish that the majority of offences

were occurring on the Thursday and Friday evening.

We also noticed that there was a pattern of particular locations.

These were the north sides of Southwark Bridge and London Bridge,

which enabled us to focus our resources.

Undercover officers stake out both bridges.

Pictures of the thief are circulated to hotels',

clubs' and restaurants' staff. Someone may recognise him.

In the meantime, reports of thefts are still coming in.

It was frustrating cos we knew we were close but every night

that we didn't get him there could be another six or seven victims.

One of those victims is Andy, just back from his honeymoon.

I'd just been over to the Caribbean to get married.

I was feeling on top of the world, really.

I had a brilliant holiday.

Like Sam, Andy's out for lunch with his workmates.

After choosing his food, he hangs his laptop bag off a chair.

If I put it down next to a colleague and opposite my manager...

But Andy's bag has already been targeted.

Watching through the window is the flat-capped thief

and while Andy goes to pay for his lunch, the man makes his move.

He takes a seat and whips the bag strap off the chair,

even as Andy's colleague sits down opposite him.

He hides the bag in his coat and leaves.

When Andy discovers his bag and laptop have gone,

he also remembers his wedding photos were in there.

My first thoughts were, "Are they actually gone?

-"Are they replaceable?"

-Andy can't remember

if the master disc for the photos was in the stolen bag as well.

That was pretty scary for me.

What am I going to do when I go home

and actually discover that the backups are gone as well?

Obviously it's going to cause some upset because it's...you know...

..a special day, isn't it?

Police are determined to put an end to the trouble this thief is causing.

And then they get a breakthrough.

Circulating the images of the thief to businesses pays off.

A security guard from the hotel recognised the male

and gave us his name.

The man under the cap is 39-year-old Mario Bustamante-Leiva.

From that identification,

we were able to establish an address in South London.

A team go to arrest him but frustratingly, the suspect has moved

and no-one knows where he's living.

The only way we're going to catch him is to

more or less catch him in the act.

Mike and the undercover officers try a new tactic - to flush him out

and drive him their way.

We deployed uniformed high visibility police officers

into various locations in an attempt to displace him

to locations where plain-clothes officers were waiting.

But he remains out of sight until Mike himself,

staking out one of the thief's known haunts, finally spots him.

All of a sudden, there he was in front of me

walking round the corner. I knew it was him.

There's only one person that looks like him.

Mike keeps track of Bustamante-Leiva and calls for backup.

Within minutes, my colleagues had arrived

and we went straight in and took him out.

He's arrested.

In total, we identified him as being responsible for 22 offences

over a five-month period and I have no doubt that he was probably

responsible for many, many more.

The evidence from the CCTV is overwhelming.

By the time Bustamante-Leiva gets to court,

he pleads guilty to all 22 offences.

He is sentenced to three years in prison.

The day that he pleaded guilty, I was ecstatic.

It makes such a difference for these victims

to not be put through the ordeal of a trial.

Yeah, I was pretty pleased.

Sam is also glad that the thief's been caught.

This is the first time she's seen how her purse was taken.

No-one else is even looking his way to see what he's up to.

I can't believe I'm not aware that he's even doing it.

It's frightening, it really is.

SHE GASPS

How does my friend not even see that?

And there's good news for Andy and his bride.

When he gets home, he finds the disc with the original copies

of their wedding photos on it.

It wasn't in the stolen bag after all.

I was so thankful and relieved for that and that was the point

I wish I'd told her that the actual printed ones got stolen.

But it was OK, we can just print them again, so that was really good.

Andy and Sam had no idea their belongings had been stolen,

so is there anything that can help us

stop thieves getting their hands on OUR stuff?

Always keep your bag close to you at all times.

If you can't physically have it on your shoulder

and you're seated at a table, then put the strap around your leg

or hold it close to your thigh so you can feel it

and it's there at all times.

Don't necessarily rely on your friends

if you've nipped to the loo, to say, "Look after my bag,"

cos if it's a social setting, they'll be distracted,

they'll be laughing, joking, having fun.

They won't necessarily be standing guard over your property.

Use bag hooks which can attach themselves

to a restaurant table or the pub table

and you can actually hang your bag within your line of sight.

Something we have locally is a bell that you attach

to the zipper on the bag and then if anyone tries to remove the bag

or open the bag, the little noise goes off

and you're alerted straight away that something's moved in your bag.

It's a case of hair today, gone tomorrow.

The actions of these next two burglars are downright bizarre.

One night in Wisbech town centre, Cambridgeshire,

police have a mystery on their hands.

Two charity shops have been broken into.

We raise money for a good cause and all they did was help themselves.

But at one of the crime scenes the burglars leave something unusual.

A large clump of hair was found on the third floor.

And two bald men walking into a kebab shop catch the eye of owner Jack.

I asked them, "Where did you cut your hair?"

Police hope some camera footage will give them some answers

and identify the burglars.

Wisbech is a market town in the Fens of Cambridgeshire,

and in its town centre there are several charity shops.

Dawn runs one of them that supports a local hospice.

What we raise goes towards taking care of people

with life-shortening illnesses.

We rely on the donations that come through the door,

whether it be furniture, clothes, shoes, bric-a-brac.

To help, Dawn has a team of volunteers.

We couldn't run the shop if it wasn't for them.

They don't get paid to work here. They do it out of compassion.

It's hard work but we enjoy it. We love it.

But not everyone is as compassionate as Dawn and her staff,

as she finds out early one weekday morning.

It's her day off but she gets a phone call telling her

the shop's been broken into.

Your heart just sinks.

It usually takes me about 20 minutes to walk to work

and I did it in record time. There was just glass all over the place.

I noticed the charity box had gone, the takings had gone,

the petty cash had gone.

In total, around £700 has been stolen.

It was disheartening to come into it. It's my baby.

Ooh!

Dawn has to close the shop for the day

so the police can examine it for evidence

and it turns out that another of the town's charity shops

has also been burgled.

Detective Constable Mark Yendley sets out to investigate.

Charity shops are set up to help people,

and to rob from people who are willing to do that...

I think it's just disgusting. It's despicable.

Although money was stolen from Dawn's shop,

more random items were taken from the other store.

Nothing too expensive, like jars of coffee, staff cups,

a keyboard and even some tubs of Smarties had gone missing.

Then crime scene officers make a really odd discovery.

On top of the third floor, a large clump of hair was found.

Why there's a pile of freshly cut hair is puzzling, to say the least,

but fingerprints are also found on both stores.

All the evidence is sent for forensic analysis. In the meantime,

officers go to examine the town centre's CCTV recordings.

Both the operator there and the PCSO did a wonderful job

checking through all the town footage.

At around 1am, they spot these two men on the CCTV.

They're picked up again on another camera walking towards

the charity shop where the hair was found.

They kick the door in and disappear into the shop

but they are not seen coming back out.

Scouring the town's camera footage covering the next

three quarters of an hour, the officer and camera operator

eventually spot two men walking along carrying bags.

Different men, they think because one of these is bald,

the other is wearing a hat.

The guy who's wearing the hat scratches his head

and he's got no hair when he takes the hat off.

Ah, so BOTH men are bald and a hat like this was stolen from the shop.

In his left hand you can also see he's got a bag for life.

A bag for life was also stolen.

Despite the disappearing hair issue,

Mark is convinced these two are the burglars.

He circulates their images around the force

and soon someone identifies one of them.

Both are arrested but they deny everything.

They are eventually released on bail.

While waiting for the results from forensics,

Mark continues his investigation.

On a hunch, he retraces the men's steps from where

they disappear off-camera.

Just round the corner, there's a late-night kebab shop owned by Jack.

I asked him had he got any CCTV and lo and behold, he did.

Mark rewinds the shop's recordings

until he gets to a time before the burglaries were committed.

His hunch pays off.

The two suspects walk in, but at this point,

they have full heads of hair.

They also have some electric clippers,

and it seems to Jack a strange request.

He's shaving off his hair with the hand.

He said, "I'm cutting my hair."

I said, "No. Impossible."

I said, "How come it's possible you're cutting your hair

"inside my shop? This is a food shop. You can't."

Are they serious? Who knows?

And Jack's too proud of his five-star food hygiene rating to find out.

The men leave but nearly an hour later the cameras show the pair

are back at the kebab house, now with a bag, but without any hair.

-It's a surprise for Jack.

-I said, "What did you do?"

I asked them, "Where did you cut your hair?"

He said, "Do you know the town centre?"

I said, "How can this be possible?"

With the before and after footage

and the pile of hair left in one of the burgled shops,

there's little doubt who the culprits are,

and when the forensic results come back from the lab,

there's no doubt at all.

We couldn't get anything off the hair that was recovered

because hair really has to have the roots at the end

before you can get any DNA from them

but what we did get a lot of was fingerprints,

and that put both of those defendants at both of the scenes.

It's unknown why this pair got it into their heads

to shave their heads in the middle of a burglary,

but the bald truth is, they heartlessly stole from two charities.

In court, one is sentenced to four months

in a young offender's institution.

The other is given four months in prison, suspended for two years.

He also has to carry out unpaid work.

And thanks to the kindness of local people,

Dawn's shop has managed to get back on its feet.

The customers after we got broken into were marvellous. Marvellous.

They generated a lot more stock for us

just to replenish and so we could make more money.

It was great. It boosted us. It did boost us a lot.

That's it for today. Join us next time when police and the public

catch more criminals red-handed.