Episode 20 Caught Red Handed


Episode 20

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Transcript


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Thieves will steal our cars,

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our valuables,

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just about anything they can get their hands on.

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To cut down on crime and antisocial behaviour,

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the police and other agencies are using new tactics and technology

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so the bad guys get caught in the act.

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CCTV is gold dust.

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Great evidence for the police.

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You've got to have them stopped.

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Local councils, shops and businesses are laying some traps of their own.

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The eureka moment when you get that evidence.

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And the general public too

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can help unsuspecting crooks get their comeuppance.

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People won't stand by.

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I couldn't sit back and do nothing.

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Yes! We've got her!

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

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They might just get caught red-handed.

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Today, the curious case of the burglar on a bike.

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Minutes after committing his crimes, he simply vanishes like a ghost.

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He was disappearing very quickly, almost as if into thin air.

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Now you see him, now you don't,

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but how did this escape artist keep slipping through the net?

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Also today, putting a spoke in the wheel of bike crime.

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Police devise a hi-tech trap to track down the thieves,

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and it seems to work.

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One man takes the bait within just half-an-hour.

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We're all thinking, "That's fantastic! How quickly is that?"

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The adrenaline starts running.

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You think, "Right, we need to get there."

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And not just smash and grab, but crash and grab.

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Two reckless ram-raiders

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go on a destructive after-hours shopping spree,

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but they find themselves in a tight corner.

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Tadworth, Surrey.

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A motorcyclist pulls up outside a house as if he owns the place,

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but he doesn't live here and he doesn't have a key.

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He intends to simply smash his way in.

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He's a prolific burglar who has escaped from prison

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and is on the run.

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But he is like the Invisible Man.

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It was a puzzling and frustrating picture.

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He breaks into people's homes and steals valuable jewellery.

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I lost my grandmother's jewellery.

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It's like losing part of your own history.

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The hunt is on for this slippery customer,

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who appears to disappear straight after committing a crime.

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Surrey is one of the most affluent areas in the UK,

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so it's attractive to burglars.

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DI Richard Haycock has been policing the area for nearly 20 years.

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We deal with a range of crimes

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and a significant portion of those crimes are burglaries to houses.

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Because the travel routes are so easy - the roads, the rail -

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it's easy to come into Surrey, commit crime

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and then get out very quickly.

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And, recently, it became clear to the police

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they had a new, unwelcome visitor to their patch.

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We started to get reports of burglaries to houses

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and what we noticed was a very similar method

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of committing these burglaries.

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And it's not long before Richard gets to see some CCTV evidence

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of exactly how this criminal operates.

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It's a Friday lunchtime in July.

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A man on a motorcycle pulls up at a house in Tadworth.

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He parks the bike and rings the doorbell

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to see if anyone is at home.

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No-one answers.

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Believing the house is empty,

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he walks down the side looking for a way in.

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Then, back to the front door, he tries to kick it open.

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But it doesn't budge, so he grabs a rock.

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He throws it at the window, but it doesn't break.

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Now he seems to lose interest

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and starts to wheel his bike back to the road.

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But the homeowner is at home after all

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and, after being woken by the noise, shouts at the man,

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but this doesn't seem to bother the burglar, who just rides away.

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The house owner calls the police.

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who arrive within minutes and flood the local area hunting for the bike.

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But, mysteriously, neither the man nor his motorbike

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are anywhere to be seen.

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The person responsible was seemingly disappearing very quickly,

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almost as if into thin air.

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It was a puzzling and frustrating picture.

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One of the mysterious burglar's early victims in Tadworth

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was Angela.

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She and her partner have made their home in the village

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in a house that is Angela's pride and joy.

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At the time, Angela had been looking after her mother-in-law's jewellery.

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My mother-in-law had been ill in hospital for quite some time.

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Her hands started swelling up.

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We took her jewellery off and she gave it to me and said,

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"I want you to have this."

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I brought it home and put it in a drawer in a kitchen

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where we were keeping anything of any importance to her.

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On returning from a hospital visit,

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Angela is shocked as she walks into her home.

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Just, literally stopped in horror.

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Everything had just been thrown all over the place.

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You just freeze and then the fear hits you

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that whoever has done this could still be in the house.

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But, in fact, the burglar has left and Angela immediately dials 999.

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When the police arrive, Angela checks the kitchen drawer.

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Her mother-in-law's rings are gone.

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And the thought that she had just given me the rings,

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it was just horrible.

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Then we walked around the house

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and saw that the bedrooms had all been turned upside down.

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There are other items of jewellery missing

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which, for Angela, are irreplaceable.

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I lost christening bracelets, 21st birthday presents,

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my grandmother's jewellery.

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It's like losing part of your own history.

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It was to be especially heartbreaking because,

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shortly after the burglary, Angela's mother-in-law health deteriorated.

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The biggest impact I think on me was losing my mother-in-law's jewellery,

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purely because she died so soon afterwards.

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That was the worst part.

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Richard is determined to catch this callous crook

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before he strikes again.

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It's one of those crimes that the police take personally.

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They have been into someone's house, they have violated their privacy.

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A heinous crime.

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So we are really fired-up around making sure that justice is served.

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And he gets an immediate lead.

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The police forensic team find a discarded cigarette end

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in Andrea's front garden.

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Cigarette butts are great for recovering DNA,

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so that cigarette butt was taken.

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It was submitted for examination

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and DNA was found from the cigarette butt,

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which then starts to put our criminal at the crime scene.

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The DNA results unmask the man as Adam Yaroo,

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a convict on the run who has recently absconded

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from Sudbury Prison, near Derby.

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What became apparent was the trail of crime.

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From the absconding from prison, we had offences in Derbyshire,

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Oxfordshire, Kent, Sussex,

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down to really his stamping ground, South London,

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and his offending area in Surrey.

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And the burglar's motorcycle is not his only means of transport.

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It's part of an elaborate story he uses

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if he meets a homeowner in the middle of a break-in.

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That story was he had been involved in or was a witness to an accident

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that occurred the day before involving a motorbike

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and he was looking for witnesses.

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So, they know how he operates and who he is,

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but Richard and his team now need to find the escaped prisoner.

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Now you are on a manhunt and at that point everything gears up.

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Richard's team pulls together every piece of information

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they can find about their suspect.

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We start to build a profile around that person

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in terms of family, associates, locations they are likely to be in,

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so you really try and get inside the mind of the criminal

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and try and think, "If I was them, where would I be?"

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And then, the burglar appeared at another address in Surrey.

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Here we see him arrive at this premises.

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You can see the patterns are played out time and time again.

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With his cover story ready, Yaroo rings the doorbell.

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No-one is home and he commits another burglary.

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The stuff is in the rucksack.

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Away he goes.

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And, once again, he seems to simply vanish from the Surrey roads.

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Police are frustrated.

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The burglar must have a way of hiding himself and the bike.

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It feels like you're in a chess game,

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but with very high and very real stakes.

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And, at some point, you want to make the checkmate move

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that brings the person into custody.

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And that's just what Richard does.

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They get a breakthrough when they cross-reference information

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about the burglar's known associates.

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That led us to an address in Clapham,

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which we put under observations,

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which led to the break in the case.

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Early one morning, we see this guy come out of the house

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and he is arrested.

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And it soon becomes clear just how Yaroo

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has managed to disappear into thin air after a crime.

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Police believe he has a van.

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He was travelling to the areas he was committing crimes in in the van

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with the motorcycle in the back.

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He was unloading the motorcycle, doing the burglaries for the day,

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then quickly putting the bike back in the van and staying in the van.

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A load of police activity would go on around him

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and when it had all died down he would drive away.

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But it's the end of the road for Adam Yaroo.

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In court, he pleads guilty to four counts of burglary

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and two of attempted burglary,

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with a further 36 offences to be taken into consideration.

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He is sentenced to five years behind bars.

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When you get that sort of result,

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the amount of time and effort and sleepless nights

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and sweat and machinations that you put into it is all worth it.

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It was nice to know that justice was done and he was caught.

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I think the police have done a fantastic job.

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Angela never got her precious jewellery back,

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but she was determined to create some new memories

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that could never be stolen.

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Not having anything to pass on now to the children and grandchildren

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really is a horrible thing,

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so when we got the jewellery paid for,

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my whole family went to Sri Lanka on holiday with it.

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So, in a way, they got their inheritance in that way.

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Now, people sometimes say they are going to "hit the shops".

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But not like this!

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It's nearly 6.30 on a Monday morning

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when two men in a stolen car

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smash through the doors of a shopping centre.

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The driver avoids a children's toy ride,

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but then sets off crashing into everything else in sight.

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Now, it may look like he's performing

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the world's worst three-point turn,

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but there's method in this madness.

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He is ramming through the shutters of this jewellery store

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and, once inside, the pair embark on a smash-and-grab raid.

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After a minute's looting, they get back in the car

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and, with difficulty, drive off back the way they came.

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Less than 24 hours later, in another shopping centre and another car,

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one of the same men is out with a new partner in crime.

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And they are looking to get more goods knocked down off the shelf

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in the same destructive way.

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But their greed and reckless demolition catches up with them,

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leaving an unexpected item in the bagging area.

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Police find DNA at the scene of the raids

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and charge a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old

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with a shopping list of offences.

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So, instead of smashing through security bars,

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they are now likely to be looking through them.

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Coming up, a city office.

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This man looks like an executive arriving for work,

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but his business is thieving.

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Thanks very much. I've got two laptops in my bag.

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He is waved through security

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and, unbelievably, even helps himself to a coffee

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before helping himself to more valuables.

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Cycling in Britain is booming

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and bikes these days are worth an awful lot more

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than the rusty old Chopper I used to have.

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But, sadly, that makes them a popular attraction for thieves.

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Derby, in the East Midlands, has had a problem with bike theft.

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A lucrative business for crooks stealing bikes

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worth from £50 to thousands.

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We've had nearly £750,000 worth of bikes stolen in the force last year.

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And it's not just the money.

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The thefts are causing disruption

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in the lives of several victims every day.

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At the time it was my only mode of transport,

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so, when it was gone,

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trips to college went from 10 minutes to an hour-and-a-half walk.

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So the police decide to put the brakes on this crime spree

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and set up a special sting operation to catch the thieves.

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Derby is home to one of the UK's newest velodromes

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and the city is gaining a growing number of cyclists.

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But where there are more bikes...

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..there are also more bike thieves.

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Sergeant Mark Preston heads up a unit in the constabulary

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tackling bike crime.

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I've been a police officer for 20 years

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and I've got an interest in bikes and bike theft.

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I like cycling myself.

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Across the UK, a bike is stolen every 84 seconds.

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In Derbyshire, police have noticed a steep rise in cases

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all over the county.

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It was becoming three or four cycle thefts in a day.

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We have had nearly £750,000 worth of bikes stolen in the force last year.

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Thieves steal the bikes to sell them on. It's big business.

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Some of the people stealing these bikes

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are putting them on online auction sites very quickly.

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You can have something sold within half-an-hour.

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People are travelling all over the country to come and buy these bikes.

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These thefts can cause real problems for victims

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like 17-year-old engineering student Jack,

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who relies on his dad's bike to get to and from college.

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The bike was important to me because, although it was not mine,

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it was my father's, it was my only mode of transport.

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Without it, I couldn't really go anywhere.

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But one Friday, Jack falls victim to the bike thieves.

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On this morning, he rides to college in Derby city centre

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where he locks the bike to a stand.

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There were loads of people,

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so no-one is going to take it with all these people around.

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Believing the bike safe, he heads into his course.

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At 3:30 we finished and we came out

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and I went to where I remembered locking up my bike

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and it wasn't there.

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I just start panicking.

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Jack searches frantically for his dad's bike.

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I was a feeling of anger and just frustration.

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But it's all to no avail.

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Jack and his dad never see the bike again.

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Because of the growing number of victims like Jack,

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Mark and his unit at Derbyshire Police plan an organised campaign

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aimed at stopping the thieves having an easy ride.

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We needed to look at how we can resolve this,

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how we can target offenders,

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how we can encourage people to think about crime prevention.

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First, Mark wants to send out a strong message

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to shock the area's bike thieves.

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And the best way to start is to catch someone red-handed,

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so he plants a special capture bike.

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It looked like just a normal bike that's parked in the right location.

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But the bike's secretly rigged with surveillance technology.

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We put the camera looking at the bike.

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Also, there's equipment within the bike

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that allows us to track the bike and where it goes to.

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On a cold December morning,

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Mark leaves the capture bike locked up in the city centre

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at a known hotspot for bike theft.

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He then waits to see what happens.

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If the bike moves,

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the hidden equipment will immediately send a message to Mark.

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And he doesn't have to wait long.

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Less than half an hour later...

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We had the activation.

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We're all thinking, "That is fantastic. How quickly is that?"

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A man walks past.

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He has a good look at Mark's bike, he walks on.

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But then he comes back for a second look.

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He must think, "That looks like a nice set of wheels",

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because, a minute later, he is back a third time

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and heads straight for the bike.

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He wrenches the bike free from the lock, jumps on and cycles away.

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For once, Mark is pleased that a bike's been stolen.

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Proud of ourselves for doing it, but we now need to recover the bike.

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It's the excitement, the adrenaline starts running

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and you think, "Right we need to get there."

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Thanks to the technology hidden in the bike,

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Mark and his team track it to an address.

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Knocked on the door, the door was answered.

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Completely denied any knowledge of what it was all about

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and what we were there for.

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As we were searching, the bike was in a cupboard.

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We arrested the offender and it was happy days for us.

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The man is given a Community Order

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and Mark hopes that word will spread around to all Derby's bike thieves.

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He's got friends that are probably doing the same offences.

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He's telling them, "Watch out, watch out, the police are about."

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And to reinforce the message, Mark advertises the police operation

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with a selection of eye-catching, colourful bikes.

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It gets people talking about it, gets it on social media,

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saying Derbyshire police have capture bikes in operation

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and that sort of cascades all the way through.

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In the coming months, the level of bike thefts go down.

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Mark's message appears to be getting through.

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But there is one thief in particular who seems a bit slow on the uptake.

0:18:190:18:23

CCTV footage of a bicycle being stolen arrives on Mark's desk

0:18:230:18:28

and he spots a familiar face.

0:18:280:18:30

It's this same man who stole the capture bike.

0:18:310:18:35

We know instantly who that offender is.

0:18:350:18:37

There he is down at the lock, fiddling about with it,

0:18:370:18:40

and he's cut the lock.

0:18:400:18:41

Within five seconds he has taken £500 worth of property.

0:18:410:18:45

The man is arrested and this time he is going behind bars.

0:18:450:18:49

In court, he pleads guilty to 17 various offences,

0:18:520:18:56

including bike theft.

0:18:560:18:57

He is sentenced to 48 weeks in prison.

0:18:570:19:00

Mark's high-profile bike theft campaign

0:19:020:19:05

goes on to have a remarkable impact on Derby's crime statistics.

0:19:050:19:09

We see a 50% reduction in bike thefts in the city

0:19:090:19:12

and also the surrounding areas.

0:19:120:19:14

For me, and for the team that was involved in it,

0:19:140:19:16

we have achieved something here.

0:19:160:19:18

Mark's campaign has been a huge success,

0:19:180:19:21

but, unfortunately, it can't bring back the bike

0:19:210:19:24

that had been stolen from engineering student Jack,

0:19:240:19:27

But Jack mounted a campaign of his own

0:19:270:19:29

to find out if anyone had seen who had taken it.

0:19:290:19:32

And asking around the nearby shops, he struck lucky.

0:19:320:19:36

A customer had filmed it on their phone.

0:19:360:19:38

It's a short clip, but it shows three people around Jack's bike

0:19:380:19:42

just before it was stolen, snipping the security chain.

0:19:420:19:46

It was obvious what the three people were doing.

0:19:460:19:48

You could clearly make out the faces,

0:19:480:19:50

so I thought if I put it online, hopefully, they would be recognised.

0:19:500:19:53

Jack posts the video on the internet and soon gets replies

0:19:530:19:56

suggesting the name of one of the thieves.

0:19:560:19:59

He passes the information to the police.

0:19:590:20:03

When I got the call saying that there had been an arrest

0:20:030:20:06

and a prosecution I was quite happy because something had been done.

0:20:060:20:10

Justice had been done.

0:20:100:20:11

Police officers like Mark do the best they can

0:20:160:20:18

to track down the thieves and return stolen bikes.

0:20:180:20:22

But there are things we can do

0:20:220:20:23

to try to stop our bikes being stolen in the first place.

0:20:230:20:27

If it's at all possible,

0:20:270:20:28

try and leave your bike in somewhere that's covered by CCTV,

0:20:280:20:32

or that's perhaps well-lit and a really busy area

0:20:320:20:35

that people are constantly passing by.

0:20:350:20:37

The best thing you can do is secure it with a lock,

0:20:370:20:40

but two locks is always better than one.

0:20:400:20:42

Especially when the locks are different

0:20:420:20:44

because they may have to bring two different types of tools

0:20:440:20:47

to break the locks.

0:20:470:20:48

There are examples where we've found up to 35 bikes

0:20:480:20:50

and we've struggled to get them back to their owners

0:20:500:20:53

because there's no unique identification for them.

0:20:530:20:55

Personalise and security mark your bike,

0:20:550:20:58

so that if it is stolen and the police do recover it

0:20:580:21:01

we can identify that and get back to you.

0:21:010:21:04

Thieves rarely look like baddies from movies.

0:21:080:21:11

Sometimes they just blend in and look like

0:21:110:21:14

just another face in the crowd.

0:21:140:21:16

The City of London.

0:21:220:21:24

As an important financial hub,

0:21:240:21:26

the Square Mile's high-rise office blocks

0:21:260:21:28

are filled with valuable hi-tech equipment containing sensitive data.

0:21:280:21:32

This man is not bothered about data, though.

0:21:320:21:35

He's just after the equipment.

0:21:350:21:37

He sneaks into offices to steal expensive laptops.

0:21:370:21:41

He was so brazen and acted with extreme confidence.

0:21:410:21:45

He blends into the office buildings,

0:21:450:21:47

wearing a suit and looking just like any other worker.

0:21:470:21:50

He takes laptops to sell for cash,

0:21:500:21:53

but even though he has no interest in what is on them,

0:21:530:21:55

for the victims, the information that is lost can be crucial.

0:21:550:21:59

If anything happens to any of our data, it affects the whole business.

0:21:590:22:03

He strikes time and time again,

0:22:030:22:05

going in and out of many different buildings.

0:22:050:22:08

Just extremely frustrating. He was being really elusive.

0:22:080:22:11

He needs to be stopped.

0:22:110:22:13

Over 300,000 people commute into the City of London every day.

0:22:180:22:22

Raj is one of them.

0:22:240:22:25

He works for an IT company.

0:22:250:22:28

It's up to me, as an IT manager,

0:22:280:22:30

to ensure that all the IT works and ticks as it's supposed to.

0:22:300:22:33

But one Thursday evening, Raj comes across a different kind of gremlin

0:22:330:22:38

from the sort he normally comes across in computers.

0:22:380:22:41

It is just after 6.00pm.

0:22:410:22:43

Raj and a colleague return to their office after a works do

0:22:430:22:47

and come face-to-face with a man they haven't met before.

0:22:470:22:50

Me and my colleague are fairly new to the company

0:22:500:22:53

and I'm not familiar with every single face.

0:22:530:22:55

So I walked in, said "Hi" to him

0:22:550:22:57

and he acknowledged that we were here.

0:22:570:22:59

It did not look suspicious at all.

0:22:590:23:02

They assume the man works for the company and leave him to it.

0:23:020:23:05

We come out of the server room and he was gone.

0:23:050:23:07

The next day, Raj is shocked to discover

0:23:090:23:11

two important laptops are missing and,

0:23:110:23:13

after a check on the building's CCTV,

0:23:130:23:16

he realises he had seen the thief.

0:23:160:23:19

I thought, "Oh, my God, he was literally within hand's reach."

0:23:190:23:23

I'd just literally walked past him

0:23:240:23:26

and did not suspect anything until the following day.

0:23:260:23:30

Thankfully, all the data is password-protected and encrypted,

0:23:300:23:34

but, even so, losing the laptops is a worry.

0:23:340:23:38

If the thief, whoever he sold it to, can unlock it,

0:23:380:23:41

then it could be a massive impact to the organisation.

0:23:410:23:44

The laptop theft is reported to the City of London Police,

0:23:440:23:47

where it joins a pile of similar reports

0:23:470:23:50

on the desk of Detective Sergeant Richard Peacock.

0:23:500:23:53

There's as been a spike in this type of crime.

0:23:540:23:57

Richard and his team suspect that it is the work of just one thief,

0:23:570:24:01

but, so far, he has evaded capture.

0:24:010:24:04

Richard is frustrated when he sees this latest report.

0:24:040:24:08

Your heart sinks, really, because now another crime is committed

0:24:080:24:11

and you're wondering how many more there are going to be

0:24:110:24:14

before we apprehend him.

0:24:140:24:15

But several weeks of intense investigation

0:24:150:24:18

has revealed some clues.

0:24:180:24:20

This is CCTV footage

0:24:200:24:22

of the man's first attempted office burglary in the City.

0:24:220:24:26

It's March, early evening, and a security camera shows him entering,

0:24:270:24:31

looking like a businessman deep in conversation on the phone.

0:24:310:24:34

He thinks that if he shows that he belongs there,

0:24:350:24:38

then no-one is going to question him.

0:24:380:24:40

He flashes a pass at security and heads upstairs in a lift.

0:24:400:24:45

The CCTV camera shows he spends half-an-hour

0:24:450:24:48

wandering around the building looking for something to steal,

0:24:480:24:51

but this time he leaves empty-handed.

0:24:510:24:54

He walks around the corner to another office block.

0:24:540:24:58

The reception cameras there show how, when one of their employees

0:24:580:25:02

lets himself out of the locked main door, the thief nips smartly in.

0:25:020:25:06

He waited for the door to be opened by that member of staff.

0:25:070:25:11

The thief pretends to be on the phone again

0:25:110:25:14

and walks through to the office areas.

0:25:140:25:16

When at one point he is challenged by a member of staff,

0:25:160:25:19

he is ready with an answer.

0:25:190:25:21

She said, "What you doing?",

0:25:210:25:23

and he said, "Well, I'm here to do an audit."

0:25:230:25:25

He went about his business counting up the work stations

0:25:250:25:29

and all the electrical hardware and helped himself to a few.

0:25:290:25:31

The light-fingered laptop thief

0:25:310:25:33

gets away with four more stolen machines in his backpack,

0:25:330:25:37

but the next day when Richard goes in to investigate, he gets a lead.

0:25:370:25:41

This time, the thief has made a mistake.

0:25:410:25:44

He may have left behind some DNA evidence.

0:25:440:25:47

He was walking around with a clipboard.

0:25:480:25:50

On the clipboard, the witness had told us were some papers,

0:25:500:25:53

but he stupidly forgot to take those with him.

0:25:530:25:56

The paperwork is sent for forensic analysis.

0:25:560:25:58

Richard also has the CCTV images.

0:25:580:26:01

We produced a couple of close-up stills from this

0:26:010:26:05

and circulated them.

0:26:050:26:07

Some officers think they recognise him and put forward a name.

0:26:070:26:11

Darren Harriot.

0:26:120:26:14

The DNA results back from the lab confirm it is him.

0:26:140:26:18

We had a number of addresses for the suspect.

0:26:180:26:21

But all their leads turn out to be dead ends.

0:26:210:26:23

Harriot is in hiding.

0:26:230:26:25

They continue their hunt, but the next time they see him

0:26:250:26:29

is a few weeks later on CCTV after another crime.

0:26:290:26:33

He walks straight past the front desk and waves at the staff.

0:26:330:26:37

He was so brazen and acted with extreme confidence.

0:26:370:26:41

He even helps himself to a hot drink.

0:26:410:26:44

He appears to have obtained a coffee from the premises.

0:26:440:26:48

And he waves on his way out too.

0:26:480:26:50

Thanks very much, I've got two laptops in my bag.

0:26:510:26:54

Over several weeks, Harriot strikes again and again,

0:26:560:27:01

managing to evade capture.

0:27:010:27:02

It's extremely frustrating that you know who is doing it,

0:27:030:27:06

but you can't actually get hold of them.

0:27:060:27:09

Patrols are increased in the early evening period around offices

0:27:090:27:13

and we're doing everything we can with all our contacts

0:27:130:27:16

to find out where he is.

0:27:160:27:17

The team check out every lead they can find, no matter how small.

0:27:170:27:21

We came upon a tiny, tiny snippet of information.

0:27:210:27:26

I just wanted to get it bottomed-out straight away.

0:27:260:27:29

This small scrap of intelligence points to an address

0:27:290:27:32

where Harriot could be hiding out.

0:27:320:27:34

I went round to the address.

0:27:340:27:36

Much to my surprise, he opened the door.

0:27:360:27:39

And, finally, after all of their hard work,

0:27:390:27:42

police arrest the elusive Darren Harriot.

0:27:420:27:45

His business suit and mobile phone just seized,

0:27:450:27:49

Richard compiles all the evidence for the court case.

0:27:490:27:53

Harriot is found guilty

0:27:560:27:58

and sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison.

0:27:580:28:01

I'm really, really pleased that he has finally been put behind bars.

0:28:030:28:07

That's it for today.

0:28:110:28:12

Join us next time when police and the public

0:28:120:28:15

catch more criminals red-handed.

0:28:150:28:17

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