Episode 2 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 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...two workmates team up to face a frenzied robber.

He's threatening my boss - not only my boss but my friend.

The man's swinging what looks like a sock,

but what's inside it makes it a lethal weapon.

If that hits you, lights out.

Also today, this apparently ordinary couple are anything but ordinary.

They're stalking their prey and this is their next victim.

The disgusting side of it is that these people will move forward

to try and steal money from her.

And police call him the worm burglar.

He's a slippery customer with a bizarre way of getting about,

but this worm is about to get turned.

Redditch in Worcestershire.

A man swaggers into a shop.

He's got his eyes on some jewellery but he wants more.

He wants to get his thieving hands on it.

Grabbing what he can, he keeps staff at bay.

At that point, he took a swing for me.

He's armed with a vicious home-made weapon.

A snooker ball in a sock can do a hell of a lot of damage.

The robber gets away, but the staff aren't going to let it go.

This shop manager turns Sherlock...

I've always had a good memory for faces.

..and launches his own investigation.

Redditch lies just south of Birmingham.

For the past three years,

Rich has been the manager of this pawnbrokers in the high street.

With many regular buyers and sellers, the shop is well-known

and well established locally.

Redditch is a small town.

Everyone seems to know everyone here.

It's unlike any other store I've worked in.

The staff are a close-knit team.

Adam is Redditch through and through.

He's been working in this store for, you know,

as long as anyone can remember.

One of the main reasons I've stayed here

so long is that I love the people I work with.

I consider the staff here more like extended family than

-I do friends or colleagues.

-Me and Adam, we're very close.

-He's a good guy and we get on well.

-He's more of a friend than a boss.

This close relationship is put to the test one Saturday lunchtime.

On that day, I was on the shop floor near the jewellery cabinet.

One of the customers in the shop was actually Adam's mum.

She was in the shop visiting me at the time.

After saying hello, Adam's mum heads to the back of the store.

We're chatting to a colleague who was behind the sales counter.

Had my back to the front of the shop,

so I didn't think anything untoward was going on.

Rich has no warning of what's about to happen.

A gentleman walked in wearing a black hooded top.

The man stands there keeping his hood up.

Took a quick glimpse at him but nothing untoward at all.

We don't have a no hoods policy.

We get all sorts of people coming in the shop, you know,

from all walks of life, so my first thought was,

"Oh, just another chap looking at the phones."

But this man's not here for window shopping.

He puts his hand inside his top and waits for a moment.

Then suddenly, pulling out a makeshift weapon,

he starts smashing the cabinet, grabbing at the gold jewellery.

The sound of smashing glass, it's like nothing else.

It shocks you to the core. It stuns you for a second,

because you just don't understand where it's coming from,

because we've never had an incident like that in here before,

so, in no situation did we think it was someone breaking the glass.

Colleague in front of me screams.

As soon as I, sort of, get my senses back,

turn around and just see this chap

with his hand in my jewellery Cabinet.

As Rich approaches, the man takes a violent swing at him with his weapon.

He misses.

Looks like it probably was a snooker ball in a sock or something similar.

The robber then turns to grab more jewellery.

As Rich moves forward again, Adam turns up to help.

We're being robbed,

he's threatening my boss - not only my boss but my friend.

He's the type of person

that's always going to jump in and help out.

Outnumbered, the robber makes one last desperate grab.

He then violently forces his way out of the store.

So, me and Ad took the opportunity to try and grab him,

but he took a swing at Adam.

I dodged it a little bit by stepping back and then gone to move forwards

again and at that point, he just, sort of, properly pushed me.

Rich chases after the robber.

I had no plans of catching up to him.

I wasn't planning on trying to apprehend him or anything,

but I just wanted to see where he went to see

to see if there was a car involved or anything like that.

But the robber is too fast, so Rich gives up the chase.

Back at the shop, Adam's mum has witnessed the whole robbery.

She's horrified.

It didn't even dawn on me that my mum was in the shop.

If she had been close to that, what could've happened?

To actually see it must have been quite distressing for her.

Rich surveys the damage to his store.

There was glass everywhere and the few customers that

were in the shop were all a bit stunned and shaken.

Watching back on the CCTV,

Rich is also shaken at how narrowly he escaped injury.

As plenty of people have told me,

if a weapon that can destroy glass like that connects with your skull,

I'm sure that I might not be sitting here now.

Especially on the temple or something like that,

it's lights out.

I saw the reaction of my wife when she saw the CCTV footage

and she was in tears for quite a while.

I probably should've just stepped back and let him take it,

because my head is far more valuable than a bit of gold in the cupboard.

The robber has smashed and grabbed £2,000 worth of gold chains.

The police arrive and take stills from the footage

of the raider's face to help identification.

But having seen him close up, Rich is sure he's met the man before.

That point we made eye contact,

that was the point where I thought, "You know what? I recognise you."

-I've always had a good memory for faces.

-Rich has got total recall.

"Yeah, I've served him,

"I know his name, leave it with me for an hour and it'll click."

Then, did his Sherlock Holmes thing.

And after a while, Rich remembers the man.

He once bought a games console from the store.

I'm thinking it was probably a few years ago

and this stuck in my mind, because I remember it was for his birthday.

We do some things where you can put a deposit down and pay something off

bit by bit. Because of that, we take a name and address.

Rich painstakingly goes through years' worth of records

until he finds a name that rings a bell.

But he needs to see an image of that person's face to be sure.

Took the decision on myself to pop online,

use a bit of social media, see if I can find any pictures of him

that would give me enough confidence to contact

the police with this guy's name.

He types the name into the social media site and searches.

Didn't take very long. First picture that popped up,

no doubt in my mind that that was the chap.

Success.

So then, I was straight on to the police with his details.

Rich's DIY investigation has paid off.

Although he now faces an anxious wait for the police build up a case,

so they can make an arrest.

Coming to work wasn't easy, especially popping out on my lunch.

It was a bit disconcerting knowing that I might bump into someone

involved in it, round any corner.

To Rich's relief and thanks to his hard work, the robber is arrested.

In court, 19-year-old Jordan Hurlestone

is sent to jail for two years and three months.

Back at the store, staff feel much safer now that the jewellery

is behind smash-proof glass and the robber is behind bars.

I'm very proud on a personal level that my actions were very important

in getting this guy, getting him caught

and getting him justice he deserved.

I've been told that I'm wasted in this job

and I should become a detective.

Now, it's never a very pleasant thing to see a man crawling on a pub floor

and that's especially true here, because he's a burglar.

It's nearly 5am. The pub is closed

and this burglar is, bizarrely, wriggling his way across the floor.

Why? He's keeping a low profile.

Perhaps he believes this pub has Mission: Impossible-style

motion sensor beams. It doesn't, by the way.

He wants the cash from the fruit machines and turns one around,

believing it will shield him.

Of course, if there were motion sensors,

doing this would've set them off anyway. Never mind.

As it is, there's a camera capturing his every slither.

This isn't the first time this thief's done this.

Dubbed "the worm burglar" by police, he's also wormed his way into eight

other pubs, taking thousands of pounds.

But in this case, the worm's turned in

when a girlfriend grasses on him to Manchester police.

Yep, in the end, you could say it's his bird that catches the worm.

He's sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail

and he can't wriggle his way out of that one.

Coming up - cameras are carefully concealed in a nature reserve,

but not to film the wildlife.

They're here to catch some lowlife fly tippers.

It is spoiling everything.

Someone is about to dump themselves in big trouble.

If somebody told you you'd dropped a fiver

and handed it back to you, you'd be over the moon, wouldn't you?

But as we're about to see, it could be part of a scam

to get into your wallet.

As one of England's most attractive counties,

Kent is a popular haven for retired people. But for that reason...

it's also recently attracted a gang of organised criminals

with a sinister purpose - to prey on the vulnerable and elderly.

They would pick on people that couldn't defend themselves essentially,

effectively hunting them like packs and targeting them.

Stealing money from their victims with slight of hand.

We had victims that were saying it has had a real impact on their

lives, that they were not wanting to go out any more.

The police are determined to turn the heat up on these

cold and ruthless criminals.

Detective Sergeant Rik Spicer's unit specialises in catching

criminal gangs and they noticed a sudden rise in the number of thefts

affecting the elderly.

There were quite a few crime reports

that were recognised as a crime series.

It becomes clear that these aren't random thefts.

There's an organised gang at work.

The suspects would come into Kent, maybe eight, nine o'clock,

similar to office hours,

two teams in two cars,

and they would go to shopping centres or busy supermarkets

where they would just lie in wait for vulnerable people.

This is some of the CCTV footage that Rik

and his team collect from the crime scenes.

These gang members are in a supermarket.

A man and woman are targeting an unsuspecting victim

buying his shopping at a self-service till.

You can see that they're really paying attention to this man.

First they want to find out the victim's bank card PIN number.

A member of staff is asking one of the criminals to come

and use another till, so that gives them

the perfect excuse to come right up close to our victim.

Their plan is to stand behind the victim and watch him

typing in his PIN number.

You'll see them staring across his shoulder,

what we call shoulder surfing, the female has just had a look

and once they think that they've got the correct number for the card,

they will then wait for their intended victim to leave the store.

Once outside the store, the gang will try to steal the victim's card.

The trick is to get him to take out his wallet.

They'd be saying to the victim that, "You've dropped £5.

"Open your wallet so that I can give it back to you."

And then, when they're trying to put it inside,

they take the cash card off the victim.

A lot of the people were elderly and vulnerable, so they were quite

flustered and intimidated by the people that were crowding round them doing it.

At this point,

the victim is usually unaware that their card has been stolen.

But by now, the gang are already on their way to a cashpoint with

the card and the PIN number.

And, perhaps, once they've committed a crime,

move on to another supermarket.

Here, two of the gang are stalking this elderly woman.

She's typical of the sort of victims that they pick.

They can get to close to her

and she's seemingly unaware of their intentions here.

They've got her PIN number and then, as she leaves the store,

they follow her out into the car park and to any passers-by,

it looks quite innocuous, but they're basically walking

as a man and wife after the victim.

They will then move forward and use any of the techniques

of distraction to try and steal money from her.

At around five in the evening, after their despicable day's work,

the gang clock off and leave the area.

Their victims are left distraught when they realise what's happened.

We had victims that were saying that

they were not wanting to go out any more.

They were almost trapped indoors because they were scared of people,

and they didn't like the fact that

they were being targeted almost and being hunted.

84-year-old Eddie lives in Whitstable, Kent.

After living through the war and spending 12 years in the Navy,

he's had some tough experiences.

Pretty exciting.

I've been shot at, I've been bombed, been shelled.

I've had some good adventures, you know.

His greatest adventure was meeting Mary.

I have been a very, very lucky man.

We were married for 62 years.

She was a lovely lady, she really was.

After having four children, seven grandchildren

and three great-grandchildren, Eddie and Mary retired to Kent,

to be near their family.

The best move we ever made, Mary and I, was to move down here.

Then, tragedy struck.

After falling ill, Mary died 18 months ago,

leaving Eddie coping with life alone.

Mary had always loved their garden,

so when one day a fence blows down,

Eddie wants to get things back to normal straightaway.

Mary's on my mind all the time, on a daily basis.

The fence, I knew that I'd got to do that.

Eddie gets a quote from his contractors

to come and put up a new fence.

They told me how much - £500. I went to the bank.

In the bank, what happens is captured on CCTV.

Eddie is being served out of shot,

but this man, at the back of the queue,

is one of the gang members and he has picked out Eddie as his target.

He is then talking to somebody, as they come into the bank,

and this is our other criminal.

He clearly is then pointing out the victim and the two of them

will just keep an eye on Edward.

The bank teller gives Eddie the £500.

They wrapped it in an envelope and I put the money in the bag,

zipped up the zip, hung it on my arm.

You see him leave there with his bag on his shoulder,

even courteous enough to let people in, doing the decent thing.

These people will then leave very shortly after him.

It is a disgusting act, that they will then follow him

down the street, to try and steal from him.

Eddie leaves on his mobility scooter to go

shopping at a supermarket across the road.

And when he gets to the till there,

he discovers the envelope of money has disappeared.

Thinking back, he recalls a man behaving strangely.

I saw this bloke walking away, or almost running away,

and all of a sudden, he threw something away.

And the only thing I could think of was,

he threw the envelope away and took the money into his pocket.

I was shocked, surprised, but I didn't feel anything,

because all that was on my mind was getting that damn fence done.

Eddie returns to the bank, where staff call the police.

And the Kent police are now hot on the gang's heels.

That same day, there is a breakthrough in the case.

The police don't know who the gang are,

but they have spotted their cars,

and by sifting through traffic camera footage, they have noticed a pattern.

Through CCTV and other cameras, we were able to work out

where the vehicles were heading.

They are heading home, to Essex.

While the police have these cars linked to crime scenes,

it is crucial they stop the gang while they are on the move.

Officers were dispatched to that area,

where they were able to luckily find the cars, they stopped them

and you had three people in each car arrested.

The cars had pulled up outside an address

and the officers quickly identified that they were linked to that

address, so the officers went inside and there inside,

they recognised a female from CCTV that they had seen from other

offences, so she was arrested and that made the seven.

All seven members of the gang are brought back to Kent for questioning.

They were denying it, they were saying that they were innocent

and they were working and that there were no offences taking place.

But during a search of one of the cars,

an officer finds a bank card hidden behind a headlight.

It is a stolen card

and it was used by a gang member at this cashpoint the previous day.

When we got that information, it was brilliant - we were tired,

we'd been working hard on interviewing them and we weren't

getting anywhere with admissions, so to get that piece of information

and be able to go down and hit them with it, it was very good.

Rick and the team spend weeks mapping out evidence from seized

mobile phone data and CCTV footage.

Because they weren't admitting any of their offences,

it was within our powers to start looking for more to try

and put as many as we could to them.

They end up charging the gang with over 13 offences.

In court, for conspiracy to steal and conspiracy to commit fraud,

they are each sentenced to between two and three years in prison.

Every one of them got a custodial sentence and between all

7 of them in total, over 16 years,

so I'm just pleased that we were able to get them off the street

and protect the vulnerable people, and very pleased they got convicted.

As for Eddie, following his theft,

he ended up on the front page of the local newspaper.

Got in touch with the family about it

and they all thought they'd got a celebrity, a 15-minute celebrity!

And here is another 15 minutes for you, Eddie.

But Eddie's fence is now fixed

and he hasn't let the experience get him down.

I've been lucky, in the family and friends I've got,

and I just...

That's the way I see things, that's the way I look at things, you know?

The police get many different types of these so-called

distraction thefts reported to them.

There are a few things worth keeping an eye out for.

It's very unusual for a complete stranger to approach you

and offer you money or something for nothing.

So, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

If you are bumped or knocked in any way, then this could be

a sign that someone is attempting to take your wallet.

You'll see a sign saying, "Pickpockets operate in this area,"

and instinctively, people go to their back pocket,

just to make sure their wallet is there.

Now, obviously, the pickpockets are in the area,

they will see that and you've just made yourself a target.

Perhaps they'll fake an incident in the street, where perhaps

two people are arguing, which catches your attention.

People will point to something, you know, get somebody coming

up to you and saying, "Oh, I don't know how to get to Oxford Street."

And they'll ask you to look at a map, and whilst you're busy

focusing on that, you'll be losing your wallet.

So, be alert and make sure

that you are checking to see if that is the case.

Not in every situation, but just be aware.

Cameras these days are getting smaller and smaller.

Like this little one.

But small though it is,

it can be used to help solve some very big problems.

The coast of County Durham is home

to an important national nature reserve, Castle Eden Dene.

People love to come down here, all kinds of weathers.

This is an extremely special place.

But this precious landscape has regularly been poisoned by

mindless fly tippers, who choose this unspoiled coast to dump their waste.

Fly tipping here can have

a far-reaching effect on the environment.

It's spoiling the countryside.

Animals can clearly choke on it.

The direct effects are long-term and serious.

Something clearly needs to be done,

so the council start by setting small traps

with small, hidden cameras to catch the fly tippers on-the-fly.

Castle Eden Dene Nature Reserve is near the small town of Peterlee.

This 3.5 mile long gorge is officially

a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Niall Benson, Chris Evans

and Keith White work to conserve the area.

What we have in this landscape are these deep cut denes, they are the

last remnants, the last remnants of the natural landscape around here.

People love to come down here, all kinds of weathers.

During the summer, it can be a real blaze of colour down in the meadows,

we get marsh orchid and some really interesting species down there.

The nature reserve is managed by the organisation Natural England.

The habitat is protected by national and international law.

It is a unique and important place.

But it seems this area has always been under threat

from people who want to dump waste on it.

Decades ago, the two local coal mines

used to dump their debris on the beach.

The pits were tipping their waste into the sea, so you had

100 metres of coal waste going out to sea, up to 30 metres deep.

So you had the famous, infamous black beaches of Durham.

It took millions of pounds and years of hard work to restore

Durham's coastline back to its former glory,

but that doesn't seem to matter much

to people who see the nature reserve as their own personal rubbish dump.

It harks back to what was done in the coal industry -

if it was officially accepted that we could tip waste out on

the beaches, why can we not tip waste in the bottom of the dene?

I've seen transit vans come down to this point here,

bloke get out, open the back and chuck everything out.

Nearby, just outside Peterlee,

there are waste collection services and a recycling centre.

Fly tippers drive miles to ditch rubbish out here.

It's pointless! The effort to do something illegal

that is destroying the local environment. Why?

And the waste can be dangerous.

Toxic chemicals potentially leaking into the ground, streams of what

we might get dumped here would be asbestos, burnt out vehicles.

A car burns and you leave all sorts of toxins behind,

and we can show you scar marks that are there, ten years on.

It is spoiling everything.

Urgent action is called for.

Conservationists and the council team up to try to stop the fly tippers.

Ian Hoult and his neighbourhood protection team are determined

to catch the culprits.

I have no idea what people must be thinking when they think it is

OK to put waste, dump waste in a location like this, it is beautiful.

Small, modern, motion-sensor cameras are placed in strategic locations.

We want the perfect spot, so we look at where the fly tipping has been

happening before, to make sure we've got the right vantage point.

Sometimes that is low down. In this instance, it actually was high up.

The cameras are hidden,

though signs are put up to warn people they are in use.

The cameras actually work off movement,

so every time that something comes past, they are triggered,

they work, we make sure that we monitor them on an ongoing basis.

It is a surprisingly short wait before they get a result.

Within a few days, we had a new fly tip at this location.

And when they retrieve the camera's footage, this is what they see.

Their flytrap has caught its first fly - a small car pulls up.

And out gets a one-man blot on the landscape, who opens his boot

and casually flings out all sorts of rubbish.

Ian can identify the car's numberplate,

but not the face of the phantom flinger.

Hello! There's two of them! This man has a partner in grime.

He had actually got out the passenger side,

so we know that somebody else is driving,

so we are looking for somebody and their accomplice.

The camera cuts off before the man finishes his dirty deed -

and it IS dirty.

Ian and his team now have the nasty job of physically sifting through

all the rubbish, looking for clues.

You don't really know what is going to be in some waste,

sometimes it is pretty disgusting.

But it is really important that we investigate every single

fly tip, because that is the only way that we know for sure

that we've picked up on any evidence.

This time, success.

There is always a bit of a eureka moment, when you get that evidence.

Bingo - it is a bank statement with a name and address.

The team decide to pay a visit.

We arrive and we see that

the vehicle that we've got on the footage

is parked outside, it's the same numberplate

and we knocked on the door and there was no problems whatsoever.

It's a father and son team,

so Dad has been setting his lad a bit of a rubbish example.

We actually provided them with some stills

and the copy of the bank statement.

At which point in time, they hold their hands up

and say, "Yes, that was me."

Ian and his council team press charges.

Good news for the future of the nature reserve -

it's a significant prosecution.

In court, the dirty duo are ordered to pay fines and costs

that add up to just over £550.

An expensive way to dump their rubbish,

considering they could have got rid of it for free.

Actually, they've also got a criminal record now.

This is not just an antisocial type of behaviour, it's criminal,

it's criminal activity that we need to stop.

The success of this case sends a signal

to other potential fly tippers.

Once the word goes out there are people being prosecuted,

there is a great deal of reduction.

And to keep the momentum for change going,

a gate is installed at the top of the access lane to the reserve.

Glad to say that since they've put the barrier up there,

-it's made a big difference.

-It's really effective.

We are still having issues, but there is a lot less fly tipping now.

And the message goes out that fly tippers are not welcome.

We are working together and we want to stop fly tipping in Durham -

we are not interested in it coming here, get rid of it legally.

That's it for today.

Join us next time,

when police and the public catch more criminals red-handed.