Episode 9 Caught Red Handed

Thieves will steal our cars, our valuables -

just about anything they can get their hands on.

SIREN WAILS 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.

CCTV is 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!

SIREN WAILS So, anyone who's up to no good

had better think twice.

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today, a woman steps between rival football fans to try to stop a fight.

There's a gap in the middle.

I looked at it and thought, "I could probably calm this down."

But she's only five foot two, and with tensions rising,

she's in danger.

Something was brewing up to happen. You could feel it.

Also today, a robber with a gun demands money,

but surprises his victims by asking nicely.

And he, actually, is quite polite,

and he says, "Please open up the cash register."

But there's nothing nice about what he's doing.

And a plan to steal a £4,000 electrical generator

comes unplugged, thanks to people power.

Lime Street station, Liverpool.

It's just gone 7:30pm on a Sunday evening.

A football match between Liverpool and Manchester City ended hours ago.

Most of the fans have made their way home.

All is calm.

But suddenly, everything changes,

as groups of rival fans start to build up at the station.

There was just an atmosphere. You could just...

You know when you can just feel something in the air?

And some of them are intent on causing trouble.

It was intensifying,

and I've never seen anything like this happen.

Cameras capture what's happening,

and police race to the scene to stop the troublemakers.

Completely unacceptable.

It's going to be intimidating and frightening for people.

But police need to get there before the jostling and scuffles

turn into a full-scale fight.

Lime Street is Liverpool's largest and oldest train station.

Thousands of people pass through here every day.

Can you get the job sheet, please?

Rachel is a shift station manager.

Basically, I'm in charge of the day-to-day running of the station.

'I enjoy my job because it's something different every day,

'and keeps me busy, keeps me on my toes as well.'

Some of the busiest times are during the football season.

On match days, we expect a lot more people in the station,

travelling to and from.

The majority of fans are well behaved

but sometimes a small minority try to cause trouble,

so the British Transport Police escort fans

and keep a close eye on them.

Policing football fans is a massive part of what we do

on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis.

Chief Inspector Malcolm McKinnon has over 25 years of experience

dealing with football crowds.

The preplanned organised violence we found in the '70s and '80s

still happens, but not to the degree it once did.

What we've found now is

it's changed to low-level antisocial behaviour.

Often the chanting, the use of swearwords.

Really, the sort of loutish, boorish-type behaviour

that's intimidating and frightening.

And there's always a danger that rowdy behaviour can turn violent,

and cameras help police to identify the culprit, so they can bring

charges against them and impose football banning orders.

And we get tremendous evidence from CCTV.

The cameras at Lime Street cover most of the station,

and one Sunday evening in April, they prove how useful they can be.

Rachel has just started her shift.

It's normally quite quiet of a Sunday,

and I've worked about the station for ten years,

and I've never seen anything like this happen.

A match between Liverpool and Manchester City

finished four hours ago, after a home-side win.

The police have already escorted the crowds safely away,

but small groups of rival fans have hung around in the city

and arrive at the station much later.

Just after 7:30pm, they come face-to-face at the station entrance.

Innocent bystanders are fearful

when fans inside the station start to taunt the rival fans outside.

And they were just swearing at each other, shouting at each other.

They're starting to be intimidating, antagonistic,

but very rarely does it escalate into actual violence.

Police are on their way, but the situation very quickly deteriorates.

It was brewing up.

On the station concourse,

this fan in white shoes is attacked by the man with grey sleeves.

The head-butt leaves the victim bleeding.

Back at the entrance, a Liverpool fan walks up behind the Man City group.

Ignoring the innocent passers-by, he throws a punch.

The man responsible for the head-butt piles in.

Completely unacceptable.

It's going to be intimidating and frightening for people.

The brawl escalates and spills onto the main concourse.

Shift station manager Rachel rushes over to try

and calm the situation herself.

When I got there, it was, like, two rows of people,

like some sort of stand-off.

I was trying to reason with the fans, like, saying,

"Come on, you don't want to be getting into trouble."

But the jeering continues, so Rachel,

who is not much over five foot in height,

makes the remarkable decision to jump between the two groups.

There's a gap in the middle.

I looked at it and thought, "I could probably calm this down."

Like, if someone wants to listen to me -

there's normally one normal person in that situation.

But it seems this bunch don't want to listen to reason.

As I seen a punch, like, coming over me, I thought,

"That's it. Get out of the way."

And Rachel is determined to

keep members of the public out of harm's way.

I was shouting to the public, and some other staff,

to just get out of the way. I didn't want anyone involved.

More punches were being thrown. It was, like, coming from all sides.

Then, the Transport Police arrive. As they run in,

they see a man being struck with such force, he falls over.

One officer bravely wrestles the aggressor to the floor.

That fight is stopped

but the situation could still spread out of control.

This is an extremely dangerous position for officers to be in,

surrounded, and there's always that danger of being assaulted.

The officers are being pushed and shoved

but are determined to block more fighting.

As my officer is doing this, he gets punched, himself,

to the side of the head.

When more officers arrive, the fans are finally calmed down.

Fortunately, no-one was badly hurt.

The sense of relief when you're out is a good feeling.

The police make an arrest and the groups disperse.

Less than ten minutes after the violence began,

Sunday evening at the station is back to normal,

but that's not the end of it.

From that point, the investigation begins,

so we review the CCTV.

Now the police investigators get to work.

They analyse the footage of how the incident built up,

to identify and track down the individuals responsible.

That first man is a Man City fan,

and this is an offender affiliated to Liverpool.

So you've got a head-butt straight into the face - that is

one of the initiators to what then escalates into violent disorder.

The man with grey sleeves is just one of four men

they identify as the troublemakers.

There were two Liverpool-based fans and two Manchester-based fans.

So the blame is shared between supporters from both teams.

Two of the offenders instigated trouble at the entrance.

One of them was the man who punched someone violently

just as the police arrived.

The fourth punched another fan while he wasn't looking.

They are all eventually arrested and charged with affray.

The four of them entered guilty pleas, and that's really a result,

and testament to the evidence that was gathered.

Two of the men receive prison sentences, suspended for two years.

They are also given football banning orders.

They can't attend or travel to matches for three and a half years.

The other two were given community orders -

ordered to do unpaid work and to pay surcharges.

The British Transport Police is committed to

cracking down on football-related crime.

The challenge we have is that we can't let a culture build-up.

It's unacceptable behaviour.

They've set up a text service and phone number

so anyone experiencing antisocial behaviour

can report it straightaway. FOOTBALL CHANTING

What we're really encouraging is our text service: 61016.

We're trying to empower people to come forward,

report incidents as they happen, so we can respond to them

and we can do something about this behaviour.

Back at Lime Street, Rachel,

who bravely put herself at risk trying to keep her station safe,

is grateful that British Transport Police are

ready to respond so quickly.

If the police wouldn't have turned up when they did,

it probably would have escalated

and there would have been a lot more fights.

I can't believe I was standing in the middle of it, to be honest.

Rachel's job meant she felt personally involved.

Even so, she's surprised at the risk she took.

But what about you and me?

What should we do if we find ourselves

caught in the middle if an everyday situation turns scary?

Try not to intervene. It's very difficult as an individual

to calm a large group of people down.

Plan an escape route, or perhaps look into where the exits might be,

so that if you need to get there quickly you can do so.

Call the police. Don't assume that someone else is going to do so.

We would rather have a call from every single person there, because

everyone's going to have a different piece of information for us.

You might not be able to get out of the situation completely,

but crowds operate in a very particular way -

there's usually a core of individuals causing

difficulties and there'll be a lot of onlookers,

so you could position yourself on the outskirts of those onlookers.

If possible, try and record the incident as it unfolds or

take notes about what the offenders look like

and provide all this information to the police.

If you wanted to avoid suspicion, you'd think you'd avoid parking

your getaway vehicle outside a security firm

specialising in CCTV systems.

Well, not this pair.

A van parks right beneath a sign

that says, "Warning - 24/7 Filming.

"You are being recorded."

Maybe they haven't noticed it or maybe they have fake plates

and just don't care.

Whatever the reason, these two men disappear into the backyard

of a tool hire company and reappear trollying this £4,000 generator,

which they are, let's say, borrowing without permission.

When another man walks past,

they drop the generator smartish and sidle

around back of the van in a "nothing going on here, mate," manner.

But they're suspicious behaviour alerts a builder on some

scaffolding nearby.

When he shouts out to them, they decide to power off down the road.

The tool hire staff come to reclaim their generator

and their security firm neighbours find they have the whole thing

recorded and the footage is passed to the police.

A search for the van and the two men has so far yielded nothing.

Maybe they're keeping a low profile to avoid GENERATING

too much attention.

Coming up, a mysterious Christmas visitor at a family run pub.

One of Santa's helpers coming laden with gifts?

Nope, he's on his way out with them.

Someone had been in our bedroom.

We then realised that the Christmas presents were missing.

Can the cameras help catch the crook who stole Christmas?

But first, another crime in the holiday season

just after Christmas and another unwanted visitor.

But this man is armed and dangerous.

It's just gone 6am on New Year's Eve in a village shop

and post office in Surrey.

A couple are preparing for the day's trading

when a man walks in from the darkness outside.

He has a gun.

And in an instant a quiet morning turns into a terrifying ordeal.

A robber binds their wrists with cable ties

and steals what he can before switching off the lights,

leaving the terrified couple in the dark.

Detective Constable Adam Hewitt

has been in the force for nearly ten years.

He works at Reigate police station in Surrey.

We deal with any type of crime you can imagine.

There'll be a small amount of it is quite low-volume

and certainly an armed robbery is very rare.

But it can happen even in the rural peace of the Surrey countryside.

And in the early morning of New Year's Eve, it does happen.

At 7am, I was told as soon as I got into my desk that an armed robbery

had just occurred.

Adam is called to a small village post office.

It's a dramatic start to his duty.

But it's been a terrifying start to the day for the victims,

as the shop's CCTV shows.

When you open up a small store at 6am in a rural location,

pitch black outside,

the last thing you expect is to be confronted by someone with a gun.

The people in the shop are checking the day's newspapers

when the robber enters, locking the front door behind them.

The couple are horrified to see the man has a gun.

He instructs the chap to tie up his partner using the cable ties

he hands him.

The robber then also ties the wrists of the man tight with cable ties.

What happens next is unusual for a robbery.

The victims are in shock but the woman stands up to the gunman.

He then says, "Can you open up the cash register?"

The shopkeeper says, "Say please," and he actually is quite polite

and says, "Please open up the cash register."

When you rationally think about it,

you should never have responded like that to someone who has a gun,

but she just did it, it came out automatically

because obviously she wasn't thinking rationally.

She was in a state of panic.

The robber empties the till and steals rolls of

Lottery scratchcards and packets of cigarettes.

He then leaves the couple still tied up and turns the lights off.

The woman was affected badly by the ordeal.

The chap had a gun and he was demanding things from her.

Understandably, she was incredibly traumatised.

Apart from the cost of any money or goods stolen,

there's an emotional cost to the victims of robbery.

The couple here are so affected by what happens,

they'd rather not be identified.

But not far away, there's a woman who experienced a similar armed robbery

in another small Surrey post office.

Only now does Georgina feel able to describe the lasting effects

of suddenly finding herself staring down the barrel of a gun.

We ran the post office and village shop for 18 years.

It's such a small little place.

The last thing I would ever have expected is an armed robber

to tear in through that door one day.

Thankfully, their children were at school on the morning of the raid.

Georgina was in the shop

while her husband Paul was in the house making coffee.

A man came through the door holding a gun with a balaclava

over his head. He shouted, "Get on the floor!"

At which point I said, "No."

I wasn't going to go down on the floor. What did he want?

He wanted the money from the post office.

Georgina's first impulse was to try to escape.

I ran through the door to the house,

hoping to cut him off and shut the door, but he pushed it open.

At that time he had the gun actually pointing right between my eyes.

There was no question about disobeying him after that.

The gunman forced her to open the safe

and escaped with thousands of pounds.

Georgina survived the ordeal but it certainly took its toll.

One thing that really haunted me was all of the circles - the circle

of the gun and the circle of the eyes where the balaclava was cut.

Often I would wake up in the night and see circles.

The greatest fear is whether it's going to happen again,

particularly with children sleeping under the same roof.

That's your biggest fear.

The man who robbed Georgina was never caught.

But back at the village shop in Surrey, DC Adam Hewitt has

high hopes of catching the armed robber who terrorised these

two people on the morning of New Year's Eve.

He's just finished reviewing footage of the armed raid

when he gets a breakthrough.

A member of the public has found the robber's gun

a few hundred yards from the shop.

Our witness was walking along the road on his way to work

and he just saw it lying in the bushes and he comes up to us

and says, "I've just found this gun." We think, bingo!

It's an encouraging start for the investigation.

The gun is sent off to forensics for analysis.

The other useful evidence Adam has comes from the high quality

CCTV footage.

That's a still image. The best image of his face.

You can see him clear as day.

The man's face is circulated to offices in the Surrey force,

hoping someone can identify him. But after a couple of days...

It becomes obvious no-one knows who this person is.

And results come back from the forensic lab about the gun.

It turns out it's an airgun and provides no further evidence.

Adam decides to widen the investigation.

He makes an appeal to members of the public in the local media.

He also starts looking at crimes committed in other areas.

There were a few unusual things about this robbery that may mean

he's been noticed elsewhere.

It's unusual that he was quite a polite robber, in a sense.

He does say, "Please tie up your partner. Please open the till."

He also used cable ties and wore a distinctive hat.

Adam finds similarities in a couple of other armed robberies

to the north, in the Croydon area of London.

Things started to show parallels - the politeness,

the clothes that he wore were very similar in every single one.

And we decided it must be the same person.

But those robberies are still unsolved and Adam is no nearer

finding the man's name. He decides to spread the net even wider.

We decided we do a national media appeal.

We got lots of high-quality images of his face at different angles,

that if you knew that person, seen that CCTV,

you'd be able to point him out straightaway.

Adam's national television appeal pays off.

Several people phone in and put a name to the face.

It's 28-year-old Daniel Brady.

It's a huge relief.

That's what we work for, is to know that we will eventually arrest

the right person and we'll be able to charge them in front of a court.

Brady is arrested, charged and pleads guilty to two robberies,

one attempted robbery and firearms offences.

They are such serious crimes, he's given a life sentence.

Adam is pleased to solve all three crimes.

It's an excellent result, yeah.

The CCTV was of such excellent quality

and it was better than the other two, but we were able to link

all three together because of the similarities.

Daniel Brady may have been recognised as the robber who said please, but

these shopkeepers and others are just saying

thank you he's off the streets.

Even in the season of giving,

it seems there are those who are more interested in taking,

and a publican's Christmas is almost ruined

when a couple of crooks decide to fill their stockings with his gifts.

Christmas Day in a pub in Derby.

The atmosphere is always lovely and it's just a happy time.

But later that evening, the warm Christmas cheer turns chilly

when the landlords living upstairs make a discovery.

Someone has been in our bedroom.

They'd been burgled.

And there go my Christmas presents.

But the pub's CCTV provides some fascinating viewing.

A burglary on Christmas Day is quite heartfelt, really,

so the whole team got stuck in from the very start.

Graham and his wife Janette have run the Five Lamps pub

in Derby for five years.

It's meant quite a lot to us.

We had another pub before this in the countryside, so we thought

we'd bring the country to the city, and it's gone really well.

So well, that within a couple of years they'd won an award.

Our main thing is our cask ales.

We don't have any trouble here.

And he certainly doesn't expect to have any trouble over

the Christmas season. It's the happiest time of the year for them.

My wife loves Christmas.

She pesters me in November to start putting the tree up.

She's just Christmas mad.

But this Christmas is one they won't forget.

In their flat above the pub, landlord Graham

and his family start Christmas morning in the traditional way.

My son came to visit. My wife and I and my mother-in-law,

who lives with us, opened our presents,

had a little bit of breakfast and then prepared to open the pub.

They leave the presents on their bed in the flat, then go

downstairs to spend a few hours celebrating with their customers.

It's just a happy time, an amazing atmosphere.

They close early, at 3pm,

so they can go and visit the rest of the family.

Our son collected us.

We've got three grandchildren in Derby,

so we take their presents for them.

We had a lovely dinner, a lovely afternoon, and then came home.

They are back in their own flat in the pub by 9pm.

Graham's wife decides to make a call.

My wife decided she would look for her phone to give our son a ring

and say thank you for a lovely dinner.

But she can't find her phone.

We were watching something quite interesting on TV,

so she came back and we watched it to the break.

She went back to the office, couldn't find it.

She checks her handbag.

She realised her purse was missing as well.

They are alarmed and search the whole flat.

We then realised that the Christmas presents were missing from where we'd left than that morning.

Someone had been in our bedroom.

Graham had an array of security cameras fitted

when they first moved in.

He watches back his recorded CCTV to see if he can work out what happened.

I took it right back to the beginning of the day

because we didn't know at what stage anything had gone missing.

And I realised it was at the stage

when we were just closing up from the lunchtime session.

It's just a few minutes before closing.

Graham and Janette are clearing tables.

A man and woman walk through the pub's outside seating area

and up to the door that leads inside.

The man takes a look through the door but doesn't go in.

They come on to this bit, which is our outside area.

She stays out there rolling a cigarette and he goes inside.

He goes through the door and straight into the gents'.

He's in there for 30 seconds and then he comes out, but then

checks out the ladies' toilet, looks inside, realises the same thing.

He sneakily peers over the bar.

Just trying at this stage to see who was around

and obviously spotted me at this stage.

He walks back out to the woman.

The man heads around the front of the pub to the other side.

The woman is close behind.

And I just see him walking along towards the back gate,

through the gate, across our small service yard.

The kitchen staff would normally see anyone crossing this yard,

but the kitchen is closed for Christmas.

And then through the door and from there,

it's upstairs to our accommodation where we live.

A few minutes later, the man rushes out with his hands full.

There he goes.

There are my Christmas presents and my wife's phone and purse.

It's a nasty surprise to discover someone's been in their home.

We were hurt and upset that someone had actually been into our own...

private accommodation.

Mine was more a feeling of anger.

One, at myself because the door being open,

but two, it was just, how dare they?

Even more upsetting is the realisation that Graham's wife

and mother-in-law were upstairs at exactly the same

time as the burglar.

My wife had gone upstairs to give my mother-in-law a call

to go for dinner.

So the chances are at that stage he was probably in our bedroom.

It's sheer luck she didn't come face-to-face with the thief.

Graham calls the police.

They were very sympathetic, took all the details, watched the CCTV.

Keen to get the intruder caught quickly,

Graham catches some still images from the camera footage.

The policeman asked me if I could e-mail them to him

so he could put them out on the morning watch.

Which Graham does.

First thing on Boxing Day morning,

Detective Constable Tony Fox arrives at work.

He sees the crime reports.

A burglary on Christmas Day, you know, it's quite heartfelt, really.

And you can relate to it yourself.

It's a time when it should be a happy day.

So it's obviously a good investigation to work on

and one that the whole team got stuck into from the very start.

Tony looks at images of the burglar and recognises a familiar face.

I knew straight away who it was.

I recognised it to be someone I'd dealt with numerous occasions.

They head straight round to the man's address.

Time is of the essence. We need to make the arrest as early

as possible in the hope of recovering any stolen property.

The man and woman are shocked to suddenly find

the police on their doorstep.

They didn't expect to see police quite

so early on in the morning and especially on Boxing Day.

We found items of clothing which matched what

they were wearing on CCTV,

and also we found items of property which belonged to the victims.

Unfortunately, some items, like Graham's wife's phone

and purse, are missing. But the other Christmas presents are rescued,

less than 24 hours after they were taken.

By nine o'clock we'd got two under arrest for the burglary

and recovered some stolen property, so quite a swift time.

In court, the man and woman plead guilty.

He is given an 18-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months

and she is given eight months, also suspended.

Graham has now improved security at the pub, including a keypad lock

on the door to the yard.

So everyone can still get out easily

but anyone not knowing the code can't get in.

Hopefully, when the tree next goes up, in November,

it will be the start of a Christmas that is happier than this year's.

We are hoping that next year we can go back and try to put behind us

what happened this year, because we just love Christmas Day.

That's it for today. Join us next time

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