Episode 14 Caught Red Handed

Thieves will steal our cash, our cars, our valuables.

Just about anything they can get their hands on.

But now the police are using cutting-edge technology to catch

the bad guys.

CCTV is gold dust.

Great evidence for the police.

Got to have him stopped.

Local councils, shops and businesses are fighting crime

with their own tricks and traps.

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

And the public are using secret cameras to make sure crooks

-get their comeuppance.

-It makes me feel so angry.

He's paid the price. He's being dealt with.

Yes! We've got her!

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

They might just get caught red-handed.

Today - teenager Jordan is enjoying his first-ever full-time job.

Until the day an armed robber fires a gun at him point-blank.

But Jordan bravely fights back.

I was so scared, my adrenaline was going.

The violent attacker runs off,

but clever police work and camera footage

combine to catch him, quite literally, by the seat of his pants.

Where the tracksuit bottoms had slipped down,

you could see blue and white Bermuda shorts.

Also today - after his father died in a tragic accident,

Stephen suddenly had to take over the family business.

But then, a theft in broad daylight threatens his family's livelihood.

This guy just decides to take our stuff,

the stuff that's paying the staff's wages.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Then the thief comes back again, so this time they're going after him.

And a rubbish dumper gets a shock

when he's caught doing his dirty deed.

But when officers analyse CCTV footage,

they realise there's more to this case than meets the eye.

Morriston is on the outskirts of Swansea.

Jordan, who's 19, works at one of the town's convenience stores.

55p.

He's delighted to have finally landed a job,

following a long search for employment after leaving school.

I was out every day looking for jobs,

because I left school early.

I've got no qualifications, so I was over the moon.

I couldn't wait to start.

Jordan's mum Emma is proud at how he's turned things around

for the better.

He's a typical 19-year-old.

He used to get into trouble.

You know, he used to get in trouble here and there.

And we haven't always seen eye to eye,

but he has grown up a lot lately.

He's got his own house, so he's getting money to decorate it,

got the steady job that he's settling down with,

so he's really self-sufficient.

Thank you.

It's not easy for young people to find employment in the area and

Jordan is happy to have a proper job at last.

But his new life is about to become violently disrupted when an armed

robber invades the shop and attacks him.

It's early afternoon on a weekday in winter.

CCTV cameras dotted around the shop show that it's quiet.

Jordan's working on his own, filling shelves in the stockroom.

But suddenly, he's not alone.

A hooded man bursts into the shop.

He'd come in, he had a massive scarf, I think, over his face,

a hat on.

He says, "You open the till, open the till."

It's so bizarre.

At first, Jordan thinks it's a wind-up,

but soon realises this is no joke.

Because as the man gets closer, he pulls out a gun.

I'd never seen a gun, so I didn't know if it was a real gun or not.

I just panicked.

Jordan pushes the man away.

Obviously, he got more angry.

And then, an extraordinary and horrifying moment.

The man fires the gun at Jordan from close range.

And he feels something sting his cheek, but Jordan realises it can't

have been a full-size bullet and the robber may have a BB gun that fires

pellets rather than bullets.

But even so, they can pierce skin and fracture bones.

I didn't want to give him the money because it weren't my money to give away.

I felt I could fight back, like, I had a chance.

But the robber threatens Jordan again and follows him into the stockroom.

It was like I was cornered, so I stepped back and I picked up a can.

Jordan hits the attacker hard with a drinks can.

The pair start a desperate tussle.

The man hits Jordan over the head with his gun.

I was so scared, like, I didn't feel anything.

My adrenaline was going.

Jordan uses all his strength to force the attacker back.

I said, "You're not having anything, best to leave."

And he ran and it was over.

He feels the top of his head as he goes behind the counter.

That's when I realised I could feel something on my head and my hand was

-covered in blood.

-Dazed by what's happened and the sight of the blood,

his first thought is to phone his mum.

I was just in so much shock, it was the first person I wanted to see.

He was really panicked.

Well, my heart just sunk because I just thought, "Oh, my God,

"he's been shot," and obviously, I just thought the worst then.

I was in such a panic.

Emma sets off for the shop.

Meanwhile, Jordan calls the police,

who soon arrived in force with a firearms unit,

dog handlers and many officers.

I think there was about three vans,

a car, all the way up the street.

Detective Constable Andy Davies heads up the investigation.

When I got to the shop and I spoke to Jordan,

he told me what had happened,

it was quite courageous in the way that he did fight back,

putting aside his own safety.

He was quite shaken up and I think as time was going on,

it was dawning on him the reality of what could have happened.

I kept thinking about it in my head, like, what just happened,

my lips went blue and I was shaking.

When Emma reaches the shop,

she's relieved to find that her son is not badly injured.

He was really shook up by it.

But once I had a cuddle off him, it was great.

I knew he was OK. He was going to be OK.

Yeah.

Andy and his team get back to the station to begin identifying the

would-be robber. They don't have to wait long for an answer.

After a few hours, they receive a tip-off.

We had a phone call from a member of the public telling us that

the person possibly responsible for this armed robbery

was at an address in Morriston.

Andy heads round to the address with a search team and firearms officers.

We found him hiding in a wardrobe in one of the spare bedrooms.

We could see that he had black eyes developing,

he had a cut under his left eye.

And you could see that he had recently been hit in the face with some force.

Jordan's drink can must have hit home.

Officers arrest the suspect and soon find more evidence in the house.

Other officers had found a BB gun box, which was the same size and

shape of the gun that was used that we saw on the CCTV footage.

They take the suspect back to the station.

Andy checks the CCTV to see if the robber's clothing matches items

they've seized and it does, in a rather unusual way.

Jordan's fightback had caused the man to become dishevelled.

His hood had come down and so had his trousers.

Where the tracksuit bottoms had slipped down,

you could see blue and white Bermuda shorts.

The suspect in custody is wearing the same underwear.

He's been caught with his trousers down.

He had basically no option but to plead guilty.

In court, the man was sentenced to four years in prison.

Even though Jordan was shaken, he went back to work the next day.

Support from local well-wishers has helped him to get over the ordeal.

The customers that come in, they've been lovely,

just ask me what happened with things,

just said well done.

'All the family and friends,'

everybody is so proud of him and he doesn't take compliments very well.

But, yeah, he really did well, yeah.

But from now on, his mum and his boss have insisted that he must put

his own safety first.

I know now I should have given him the money,

but that's the first time anything like that has ever happened to me.

I didn't know what to do. It was just one of those things.

Now, most thieves only care about what they're stealing,

not who they're stealing from.

But maybe this chap should have checked out

exactly who owns the beer barrel he's nicking.

He's spotted the unattended beer keg by the back door of a club

and decides to pick it up in his pick-up.

But what he doesn't realise is he's stealing the keg from a karate club.

Perhaps not a smart move,

because when the masters of the martial art see on CCTV what's happened,

they recognise the thief.

Taking a hands-on approach,

they pay the culprit a friendly visit

and make him an offer he, hm, can't refuse.

Luckily, the thief hasn't drunk the beer and decides it's best to bring

the barrel straight back.

Maybe he was afraid that if he didn't, they'd give him the chop.

Every year, 45,000 businesses are burgled.

Thieves are always on the lookout for goods they can sell on and when

they see something they want, they can be pretty brazen.

A thief steals an expensive mower from a family business.

Not exactly a major crime, you may think,

but stealing from a small family concern

can have far-reaching effects on the family involved.

Especially when the brazen thief thinks nothing of coming back

and doing it all over again.

It's a small business.

It's a week's wages.

It makes you feel...

vulnerable.

The town of Lurgan in County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

McKerr's hardware store has been in the town centre for decades.

Stephen McKerr now runs the family business that was started by his

grandfather in the 1930s,

and then taken over by his father, David, in the '60s.

As a teenager, Stephen started to help his dad out in the shop too.

It's a big thing being with my dad, I really enjoyed that.

Took me everywhere,

brought me to every single meeting that he ever really went to.

I loved the people,

I enjoyed the social aspect of serving people

and looking after them.

I got a taste of what work was like

and I thought it was cool.

Having run the store for over 40 years,

Stephen's father, David, was a pillar of the community.

I looked up to my father a lot.

He was a great man

and had lots of really...

nice attributes that I wanted to have, you know, when I was older.

But Stephen's dad was killed in a road accident nine years ago.

He was knocked off his bike and...

it was a tough time, but...

I suppose it was a time when you saw...

customers in a different light.

Dad's funeral, like, was massive.

It was about 600 people standing outside the church,

they had to set up speakers and everything outside.

At the age of 27, Stephen took over the business,

wanting to make a success of it for his father and to support his mother.

He was helped by Nigel,

the store's general manager and his dad's trusted right-hand man.

David McKerr, he was close to me and Stephen,

I look at him as a younger brother,

I watch out for him and look out for him.

We can fight sometimes, but we're like brothers and that encouraged

me to keep going.

You know, not to give up.

And Nigel will prove his worth once again when a thief threatens

the family business.

It's a Tuesday in March, nearly 5pm.

As usual, all the larger lawn mowers the store sells

are out on the forecourt.

But not for long.

The store's entrance camera picks up this man going to

look at the most expensive lawn mowers outside.

He moves one of them closer to the front of the forecourt.

But he's not trying it out.

Checking nobody's watching him,

he stoops to lift the mower up and over the wall.

After one glance back, he simply walks away with it.

We didn't notice until the next morning.

Bringing the stuff out as normal and this lawn mower's missing,

so we checked with all the staff members.

Next protocol was to have a look on the cameras.

Stephen and Nigel can't believe what they see.

It was a bit of a shock because somebody had actually had the nerve

and the gall to do this in broad daylight.

It was about £460, this lawn mower cost.

As a small business, it's a week's wages for someone.

And it was a hard pill to swallow, it was at bitter pill to swallow.

When you've got a family at home and my mum doesn't work in the business

any more, but she's still dependent on it, it makes you feel vulnerable.

The police collect the shop CCTV recording and take it to surrounding

stores to see if anybody's seen anything.

This has an immediate result.

Someone had witnessed that the mower had been taken.

What's more, this witness knows the mower thief's identity.

Now it's just a case of the police tracking him down.

A few weeks later, the police came and said, "Yeah,

"we've caught up with him and he's been charged."

Sadly, there's no sign of the lawn mower,

but it's some consolation for Stephen that although the thief is on bail,

he will soon be going to court.

I thought, "Right, that's it, done and dusted."

But two weeks later,

Stephen and Nigel are about to get a nasty surprise.

I was stood in the shop and the next thing a customer comes running in

and says, "Someone just run down the street with one of your lawn mowers."

I was, like, "You're joking. This cannot be happening."

This time an even more expensive mower has been taken.

This is £1,000 this time.

Just thought, "Right, I'm going to go.

"Try and get this guy." Adrenaline took over.

As Stephen is with a customer,

Nigel rushes outside and finds the thief has left a trail.

As I went round the back of the shop,

I've seen the grass box laying on the ground,

so I grabbed it.

That's good, but unfortunately,

the grass collector is the least valuable part of the lawn mower.

Nigel searches behind nearby houses in the hope he can find the rest,

and success.

He probably left it there,

thinking that he'd come back later and lift it.

So Nigel hasn't got his man, but at least he has got the mower.

I was delighted.

It was a good feeling to get it back

and it means it was something that we could sell and we hadn't lost it.

They wonder who the culprit is this time,

but when Nigel and Stephen check the CCTV footage,

it's a shocking case of deja vu.

Unbelievable, it was the same guy.

He's still on bail for the first offence, but this thief has come back.

I just can't get over the brass neck on the guy.

You know, he's just so brazen.

Obviously no remorse in him at all.

I think there's a bit of a nerve and there's a bit of stupidity as well.

As before, the thief goes to lift the mower over the wall, but this time

he's seen by the driver of this red car, who pulls up immediately.

A customer actually spotted him.

Thanks so much to that guy who come in and let us know that, you know,

this guy was stealing a machine.

It doesn't take the police long to find the man and charge him.

In court, he pleaded guilty to two counts of theft and was sentenced to

three months in jail.

It was a huge relief when we heard that he'd been actually put behind

bars and we knew that, for a little while at least,

we're hopefully safe.

Just to be sure, the lawn mowers outside are now chained up.

Other than that, it's business as usual for Stephen at the family store.

I just hope to keep it going and, you know, obviously make it better,

improve it and always keep its character.

It's not easy. Doing what he's done after the death of his father,

to keep the business running,

Stephen's dad would be very proud.

We can't just rely on the police to fight crime.

We all need to do our bit too.

Sharp-eyed citizens can help stop criminals up to no good if we know

what to look out for.

Lookout for suspicious activity.

So, for instance, somebody coming out of an address with boxes

and you don't believe that person's moving out.

It could be a neighbour,

somebody trying to card doors as they walk down the street,

somebody checking the doors of garages.

Those are not normal behaviours.

Offenders will wear winter clothing, such as a winter hat, winter coat,

gloves, during the height of summer.

Mainly because it's to protect their identity,

perhaps there's CCTV in the area.

And if you do see something, then don't sleep on it,

ring us straightaway and not only could you help us catch them for

that crime, but you also could've prevented

a number of other crimes from occurring in the future.

Give as much detail as possible, particularly descriptions.

We need to know what people look like, so we can trace them later on.

Think about the direction they're going in.

Were they in a vehicle or on a bike?

Every piece of information you give us, helps us build that jigsaw.

It's roll-out the barrel day today.

We've already seen a fellow who was foolish enough to try to steal beer

from a karate club.

Well, here's a thief and his accomplices who also get into a barrel of

trouble when they go on a roll at a winemakers.

After snipping through the wire fence,

they steal 17 barrels used to store wine,

worth thousands of pounds.

But the burglars make a schoolboy error

by advertising them for sale online.

The owners see the advert and go to the location mentioned in the ad,

where they find the barrels.

There's no sign of the burglars, but at least the winemakers have their

property back and the CCTV evidence means that when the police catch up

with the thieves, they'll have them over a barrel.

Fly-tipping can be a scourge on our countryside, but all over Britain,

there are teams hard at work to stamp it out.

You don't not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you

do not mention when questioned something you that you later rely on in court.

Hidden cameras can provide vital evidence.

And sometimes, the most straightforward cases have a twist in the tale.

You do get quite a little bit of an adrenaline rush, because you know

these people are literally caught red-handed.

The countryside near Peterlee in the north-east of England is renowned

for its beautiful scenery.

John Butler's job means he's lucky enough to have seen a fair bit of

our wilder areas.

He works for The Woodland Trust,

which strives to maintain and enhance natural habitats.

The best bits I look forward to is walking through the ancient

semi-natural woodland.

They're really important for habitat,

for wildlife, for wellbeing.

It's really nice to walk through them and see all the flora and the

different trees.

But sadly, anyone setting out to enjoy the fascinating flora and fauna here

is likely to be shocked to find something far less pleasant.

Parts of the local National Trust site Warren House Gill have been

spoiled by fly-tippers dumping rubbish.

The fly-tippers, they just don't care and they don't realise what

they're doing to the environment. They don't understand the costs involved.

It's quite devastating to see.

There's a constant battle raging throughout the country to prevent

the illegal dumping of rubbish.

But as we will see, here in County Durham,

they're having some success setting fly traps to catch the fly-tippers.

Ian Hoult of Durham Council heads an anti-fly tipping unit.

It causes a problem

for the wildlife that live here,

it causes a problem for the people that use this area as well.

Not to mention the fact that it costs money to remove it and,

of course, it's just an absolute eyesore.

Kendra is part of Ian's team.

This place is quite historic with regards to fly-tipping, because it's

secluded. You haven't got passing traffic.

Ironically, there's a recycling centre just 200 yards from the entrance

to the gill.

Possibly due to the fact either maybe the skip site's closed,

or there's possibly a queue,

they end up just driving down here and dumping the waste.

But some tippers would do better to turn around and drive back home with

their rubbish, because they're about to get their comeuppance.

It's a mid-summer's day and Ian's team has placed a covert camera into

the undergrowth.

We always put a sign up in advance.

It's important to let people know that they could get videoed

and that's often a deterrent in the first place.

The camera starts recording when it senses motion.

We look at the angles that we've got,

we look at making sure that we can pick up registration plates,

pick up the people who are doing it.

Sometime later...

..Kendra and a colleague are out on one of their regular patrols

of the area, near the site of the covert cameras.

We came travelling down the bank,

we saw a vehicle pulling under the bridge and over to the site.

My colleague actually said to me, "Let's follow that vehicle,"

and his hunches are usually right.

As well as the fixed hidden cameras,

the team also have body cameras to capture evidence that can be used in

court. Kendra's colleague has switched his camera on.

There are two people in the suspicious car they've seen,

a man and a woman.

We came under the bridge and at just the exact time, a male was taking

items out of his boot and throwing them over the hill.

As Kendra's colleague approaches,

the man sheepishly puts a large bag back into the boot of his car.

When we are witnessing it happening there and then,

you do get quite a little bit of an adrenaline rush, because you know

these people are literally caught red-handed.

So you know why we are here.

You do not have to say anything,

but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when

questioned something which you later rely on in court.

Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?

-Yeah.

-You're also being recorded on CCTV, OK?

I just have to get a few details off you.

The man's partner is sitting in the front seat.

As far as we were aware,

the female wasn't fly-tipping at all in this incident.

The male's reaction was, he just went along with it.

He knew he'd been caught, he knew he couldn't get out of it.

You do realise it's an offence, fly-tipping? Yeah?

He told us that he'd just moved into his house with his girlfriend

and was clearing out all old stuff that they no longer needed.

Carpet, cardboard, an old vacuum cleaner and household debris

have all been dumped onto the verge.

The woman says she isn't involved.

Her partner claims he only did it because the nearby recycling centre

-was shut.

-There's no excuse.

He could've easily just saw that the skip was closed,

left it in the car and came back the next day and brought it back to the

-skip site.

-Did you put anything over there?

-Sorry?

-Did you put anything over there?

No. What will happen?

-You'll have to go to court.

-Go to court?

-Court?

-Yeah.

-Really?

Yeah. If it was littering,

then it would be a fixed penalty from ourselves.

-Right.

-But because it's fly-tipping, it carries a harsher sentence.

You can understand why.

Couldn't tell you, it's up to the courts to decide.

Once they've got his details,

Kendra and her colleague let the man go and they return to their office.

Kendra came back and said, "You'll never guess what's happened today.

"I caught somebody fly-tipping."

There's a certain buzz that goes around,

finding out that that's what's happened.

It's highly unusual to catch a fly-tipper in the act and in this case,

there's some more surprising evidence still to come.

Remember that hidden camera?

Our fly-tipping team went back and pulled the cameras back in and we

actually had caught the whole incident from him pulling into the area.

It makes for interesting viewing.

At the time, it was the man that was fly-tipping.

Of course, what a surprise when the footage was reviewed,

actually they were both involved.

The female, she'd also been helping take the rubbish

out of the boot of the car.

When she heard Kendra's vehicle arriving,

the woman had quickly got into the front seat of the car.

The man then returned his bag of rubbish to the boot.

They were both fully aware they'd been rumbled

and were trying to hide it.

So myself and my colleague went to the property of where the young

couple lived and her reaction was, basically, hands up,

"I've been caught also."

In court, the fly-tippers were ordered to pay £408 each

in fines and costs.

The couple now also have criminal records.

It's a tough lesson, but the countryside needs protecting and publicity

from the case sends out a message that fly-tipping won't be tolerated.

It's the environment, it's part of our life.

We don't want to cause any damage to it and we don't want to lose it.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place.

We really do need to take care of it.

That's all for today.

Join us next time to see some other villains

who've been caught red-handed.