Episode 12 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.

-We want to make sure we've got a concrete case.

Enough evidence to convict at court.

Local councils, shops and businesses

are fighting crime with their own tricks and traps.

It's just unbelievable that she thinks she can get away with this.

And the public are using secret cameras to make sure the crooks

-get their comeuppance.

-Fair means or foul, I was going to get rid of him.

I thought, "We've got her."

And I was so happy!

-SHE LAUGHS

-Thank God.

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

they might just get caught red-handed.

Today, Dean and Leanne are puzzled when money goes missing from their

newly formed business -

and they're shocked when they discover who's taking it.

I just let out this big cry, scream.

I was just heartbroken.

But the identity of the thief is only the start of it.

There's another surprise in store when they find out the reason

he's stealing the money.

Also today, John runs an antiques centre

protected by hi-tech security.

He's even put up a "thieves beware" sign,

but it's not working on this woman.

She's come to steal, despite having a little boy with her.

You wouldn't take a child to commit a crime.

-It didn't make sense.

-The woman takes some expensive lamps,

but she doesn't realise the spotlight is on her.

Also later, this innocent-looking young man is responsible for a spate

of thefts in Hull.

Robert's pet store and its collection for sick

and abandoned animals is the thief's next target.

I was absolutely furious.

Atrocious thing to do and this man had made a habit out of doing it.

There's a well-known saying,

keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.

But sometimes they can be one and the same thing.

When a friend, someone you trust, lets you down.

In the village of Monkton near Pembroke in Wales,

there's a sports and social club that's recently been rescued from

demolition and restored to its former glory by married couple

Dean and Leanne.

They wed in 2014 and were happy, apart from one thing.

Dean's job as a health and safety consultant meant he had to travel

away from home for months at a time.

Every job seemed to be further and further away.

I didn't want to go away, she didn't want me to go away.

They started looking for a local business that could provide enough

income for Dean to stay at home.

Then he got a tip-off from his dad.

We went to a friend of his who's a trustee of the football club

and they explained that, you know, the clubhouse wasn't getting used,

it was run-down, it needed a lot of maintenance.

The Monkton Swifts Social Club was in such a bad state financially,

it was on the way to being knocked down and replaced with housing,

but Dean had different ideas.

Dean came home and he said, "I've got something to tell you."

I said, "OK. What's that then?"

He said, "I have just bought a pub."

-I went, "Pardon?"

-Being a Monkton boy, growing up in Monkton,

this is my childhood, you know, it's...

Anyone who grew up in Monkton will say Monkton Swifts is a huge part of

-their childhood.

-So I agreed and I said,

"On your head be it if this goes Pete Tong!"

I could never let this club fall to the ground.

It's too big a part of the community to let it fall down.

Restoring the derelict club was no easy task.

Dean, his dad and builder friends put in hundreds of hours of unpaid

work in their free time.

Along the way,

Dean recruited a local young man to help with the labouring.

He'd previously worked for a friend of mine as a labourer and he gave

a good feedback, so we thought, "Yeah, we'll give him a shot."

He became a big part of our work family and my home life as well.

The whole family sort of said, "You know,

"he's a guy maybe you want to look to once the bar is open."

They decided to give their new friend a job in the club.

When it opened, everything seemed to be going well, until Dean and Leanne

began to suspect they might have a thief in their midst.

It's a weekday in January and a month after opening the club,

the couple start to notice their accounts don't quite add up.

Some weeks it might just be £40.

-Other weeks it might be £20.

-So I thought,

"Maybe I've miscalculated, maybe I've miscounted.

"I've never done this before."

A few weeks later,

Dean gets a visit from the police on a totally unrelated matter.

The officers ask to look at footage from the club's exterior security

cameras because they might have captured a car passing the club that

the police are interested in.

We've got fantastic CCTV coverage of the building

and all its surroundings.

Basically, 16 different screens come up on one screen,

so while we were looking, I couldn't help noticing in the corner of my

eye that the room where we keep all our money kept coming on.

The camera that faces the room where money is kept only records when it

senses motion

and the amount of times it was triggered raises Dean's interest.

After the police go,

he flicks through the footage again and sees that the young man he'd

employed had visited the room several times.

That raised my curiosity a little bit,

but I just thought, "There'll be a good reason for that. I trust him

"and when I get round to speaking to him he'll have a good explanation."

Nothing more happens until a few weeks later.

Leanne is at the club to host one of her regular bingo evenings.

As I went into the store room to get the bingo machine, books etc,

I realised that the money was missing.

More than £500 of their bingo money

and all the staff's tips had vanished.

Leanne asks Dean to come in.

I drove up to the club and I had a look round and we contacted

the manager and she said, "No, not touched it."

The young man had been on shift earlier in the day.

Dean looks back at the CCTV recording and this is what he sees.

Once again the camera records the man going back and forth

to the cash room.

He pulls the door shut behind him.

Frustratingly, Dean can't see what he's doing inside.

But then this one time he pulls the door closed

but it doesn't quite close.

There's just enough of a gap to see what's going on.

The man reaches up to a top shelf on the left-hand side and the only two

things kept on the shelf are the containers for the staff's tips

and the bingo money. It comes as a shock to Dean.

I'm thinking, "How am I going to deal with this?"

Yeah, I was a bit crushed cos I really liked the guy, you know?

So I just went into the car and I drove up to his house

and spoke to him.

Dean's hoping his so-called friend has a good explanation.

He started off saying, "Oh, I owe some bad people money," all this,

all that, which just annoyed me even more.

So I said, "No, you just ask me for the money and I would have given it

-"to you."

-Although the man has let him down,

Dean generously offers him a chance

to make amends.

I thought, "He's 21 years old, if I go to the police now,

"that's it, he's got a record, his life's going to change."

And I didn't want that to happen, so I said,

"Right, you pay me every penny back,

"and then we'll leave it at that,"

to which he agreed and he said, "Yeah, I will."

Dean tells the man he's fired,

but decides he won't reveal to anyone outside the club

the reason why. They set a deadline for the repayment and Dean

goes back to the club and breaks the news to Leanne.

I just let out this big cry, scream.

I was just heartbroken.

I'd invited this boy into my home,

into my family's life,

tried to do good by him, be a good friend,

and I just couldn't believe that it was him and I was just floored.

I think what hurt the most was the fact that he didn't just steal

from my company,

he stole from his colleagues that he was in this venture with,

working side by side every day, working hard,

and for him to take that,

that's probably what makes me the most angriest.

Over the following weeks, Dean and Leanne and become more distraught

because the man doesn't follow through on his promise

to pay them back.

Dean gives him further chances, to no avail.

The couple eventually decide to go to the police.

And when officers arrest the man,

he finally explains why he's been stealing.

He's just come out and said, "Yes, I did take it,

"I was addicted to the gambling machines and

"slowly I was taking it bit by bit and putting it in the machines."

The man is charged with theft and decides to plead guilty.

In court, the magistrate sentenced him to 120 hours of unpaid work

and ordered him to pay back the £520 he stole

from the club on the bingo day,

plus further costs and charges.

The conviction marked the end of this whole unfortunate episode

for Dean and Leanne and they hope it acts as a wake-up call

-for their former friend.

-When you've got an addiction,

whether it be gambling or anything else,

you forget the knock-on effect of it, you know,

and I genuinely believe he didn't do anything to deliberately set out to

hurt me or my wife.

He's just tied up in an addiction that, you know,

if he doesn't get it under control,

it'll plague him for the rest of his life.

The couple are now fully focused on making the club a success.

We just have a blast.

We have a really good time behind the bar.

We love all the people that come here and choose to have their day

-with us.

-This year we're putting all the money we make back in,

so we're upgrading things,

we're investing some money now to do a beer garden and, yeah,

we're really excited for the future. I think it's going to be

a good journey.

It's Easter time

and at a market in this town square

a group of young men egg each other on

to steal a giant wooden chicken which has been put out as part of

the celebrations.

But the bulky bird is hard to steer from the rear

and their chicken run ends up in a bit of a flap.

They try taking flight in the other direction

but, as we all know, chickens can't really fly.

Amazingly, they still don't give up their attempt to steal this chunky

chicken. One of them tries slowly walking it away while locals look on

unimpressed. And once again he ends up with egg on his face.

Eventually the gang realise they'd run out of cluck and go home.

But because they've been caught on CCTV,

their bird-brained behaviour soon comes home to roost

and the police catch up with them.

They must now regret their little hen party that fell "fowl"

of the law.

An antiques centre has been suffering from thefts,

so they have installed a high-quality security system...

..though nobody's expecting any trouble from this woman,

who's walking around with a young boy.

But she's about to set him a very bad example.

In the town of Bridgnorth, Shropshire,

John runs an antique business.

He's been in the trade for 47 years.

His career began when, as a youngster,

he and his brother were asked by their mother to get rid of some

paintings that were cluttering up the family's garage.

There was a great big painting.

We thought it was a reproduction because it was painted on hardboard.

We phoned up a couple of local art dealers.

Some lady came along and she offered us £500 for it.

And we thought, "This antiques business is really easy."

And we were very, very happy.

Until we found out that less than 12 months later it was sold in

Sotheby's for 32 grand, cos it was the original.

We got that one wrong!

So... But we thought, "Yeah, the antiques business

"is somewhere to go," so we started dabbling a little bit.

Nearly half a century later,

John runs an antiques centre that allows 34 separate dealers to sell

their goods, all under one roof.

It makes it a very good, interesting collection of things.

This amount of stuff in one place you don't see very often.

But recently the business has been attracting

the wrong sort of attention.

We've had two serious break-ins

and a couple of instances of shoplifting.

We've lost a couple of dealers in the past because things have been

stolen and it has been too expensive for them.

To protect the expensive antiques,

John has invested in some 21st-century technology.

As well as bars and roller shutters on the windows,

he's added special alarms and high-definition security cameras.

It's our responsibility, if you like,

to do everything that we can to keep them safe.

And the antiques centre's new security measures are soon

put to the test by yet another visit from a thief,

someone who to look at you'd never suspect.

It's lunchtime on a weekday in summer.

The antiques centre is open to the public

and its cameras are running...

..when a young woman with a little boy comes in.

She's carrying several bags

and spends the next few minutes browsing.

Nothing seems to take her fancy...

..but then her attention's drawn to two sculptural table lamps.

They looked as if they were made out of large industrial bolts welded

together in a human form,

so they were very unusual lamps indeed.

After waiting for the coast to clear,

the woman steps behind the display cabinets,

right past a sign saying "thieves beware".

The boy, maybe thinking she's playing a game of hide and seek,

joins her.

But what she's actually doing is unplugging the lamps

from the extension lead they're attached to.

Crouched down, she waits for another customer to pass

before coming back out.

With other people constantly coming in and out of the room,

she has to wait another ten minutes before she's alone with the lamps.

Then, when no-one is looking, she gathers up the power cables,

picks up one of the lamps and then the other.

They're worth £280.

The woman goes off, lamps in hand, to the ladies' toilet.

And when she reappears moments later, the lamps have disappeared.

But as she walks out of the store

it's noticeable those bags she's carrying...

are looking a lot bulkier than they were earlier.

It's a couple of days later

before it's discovered the lamps are missing.

One of our stallholders came in and said,

"Oh, have you sold my big lamps? They're not on me sales sheet."

So we looked at it and no, we hadn't sold them.

Realising the lamps have disappeared,

John decides they need to review the security footage.

He enlists the help of Becky, who works in the store.

She's the one who understands how to get things out of our DVD.

What we did then is jump through the CCTV by the hour.

So, you'd say, "OK, well, they're there, there, there... Oh, gone."

Watched that hour's worth of CCTV to track down where they are.

When they spot this young mum on the CCTV around that time,

they're certainly not expecting her to be the culprit.

Because she'd got a little boy with her,

she really didn't look like the sort of person who...

You wouldn't take a child to commit a crime.

It didn't make sense.

It's not until you actually see her do it that you think,

"Damn, that's cheeky. I can't believe you actually did that."

Just horror, really, that you think,

"What's the kid going to learn from this?"

After reporting the crime,

John and Becky start searching for a perfect freeze-frame of the woman to

send to the police.

But then something happens that gives them an even bigger shock.

We've literally got it frozen on this woman's face thinking,

"Yeah, that would be a good freeze picture,"

-and she walked in.

-And Rebecca suddenly just turned to me and said,

"That's her."

And I thought, looked at the camera,

and I looked at the girl that had just walked in and said hello to us.

Carrying the same carrier bags and things that she had on the day

that she stole these items as well.

So I went over to her and said,

"Excuse me, but I think I need to have a word."

And she just stared at me blankly.

And I said, "This is you on the TV."

"Eh?"

And I said, "I think I need to ask you to leave.

"We've reported the matter to the police."

There's nothing else I could do. I couldn't arrest her.

Short of physically restraining her,

they feel they have to let the woman go.

But they aren't going to let her get away with the crime.

They have high-quality images of her.

And after sending them to the police,

John and Becky put them on their social media page.

There's an immediate reaction.

Within about ten minutes I had a response.

First one that gave me her name, then another and another.

I think I got 58 messages back within the first day.

They pass the information onto the police,

who go round to the woman's address and arrest her.

By the time the police had got there, the lamps had been sold.

So we didn't get them back.

It happens.

But at least she won't be coming back again.

But she was going to court.

The woman pleaded guilty to the offence

and to four other counts of shoplifting.

She was ordered to pay compensation

and told to attend a drug rehabilitation course.

In the time since the lamps were stolen,

there has been no more shoplifting at the antiques centre.

All of the extra security features and everything else

that we've put in, it's helping and it's working.

That's all we can ask for, is that we can roll on and just keep moving.

And although John's in his 47th year selling antiques,

he's not intending to stop any time soon.

I'm not going to let things like this get in the way of me enjoying

my job. I'm just going to keep doing it.

They're going to have to carry me out in a box.

It must be very frustrating recognising someone you think's

committed a crime against you,

but feeling unable to do anything about it.

But are there are things you can do?

As a member of the public,

we all have a responsibility to reduce crime and

we all have a responsibility to help the police in doing their work.

As a member of the public,

you can arrest somebody if they're committing

an offence there and then, and hold them until a police officer arrives.

Your priority has got to be about your own personal safety

and potentially safety of other people.

If you have to use force whilst making a citizen's

arrest, you must only use the amount of force that's necessary

and it has to be proportionate and justified,

which is the same for police officers making arrests.

You need to inform the person you're arresting that you're arresting

them and what for, in your belief, what offence for.

This needs to be done at the earliest opportunity.

Try and maintain their position until the police arrive

and hand that individual over to the police at the earliest opportunity.

If that isn't achievable,

then the next best step would be to take them to a police station,

but this would only be as a very last resort.

In a pet shop, this man looks like he wants to have a bite of the doggy

snacks on the counter.

What he's really after is this charity tin for animals.

But he might have bitten off more than he can chew.

In Hull city centre,

Thearne Pet Food Store is a family-run business

that has been trading for over 70 years.

When he was just five, Robert started helping out in the store.

Now he owns it.

It was started by my grandma in the Second World War and when my dad was

demobbed he took it on and then he passed it on to me.

The pet shop's manager, Janine, is also long-serving.

She's been at the store for 34 years.

I came at 14 as a Saturday girl and I've been here ever since.

We get a lot of lovely people.

It's nice, it's a nice environment to work in.

The shop has always had lots of collection boxes

for animal charities.

I think when you make money out of the pet trade,

you should be putting something back in as well.

One of the main charities they support

is the Hull Animal Welfare Trust,

which cares for and rehomes rescued or abandoned animals.

Sue Sewell is the charity's chairwoman.

We pride ourselves on never closing the door to any animal in need.

We've had animals that have come in that have been stabbed.

We've had animals that have been cigarette burned.

We have some upsetting cases, but when we home a dog, a cat, a rabbit,

we're absolutely dancing in the streets cos we're so happy about it.

The trust was established in 1991.

It finds homes for around 1,000 animals each year.

We do rely on the general public totally.

We have no funding whatsoever.

Much of the money they raise is from donations people

put in the charity's collection boxes.

We accrue thousands of pounds from that, so whatever money is there,

large or small, we are grateful of all of that.

But the charity and Thearne's Store are about to suffer at the hands of

someone who seems far from being an animal lover.

It's 9:30am on a weekday in the summer and the store's just opened.

Robert's away on holiday, so Janine's in charge.

There was two members of staff, myself and another girl,

so she was cleaning out the animals,

you know, checking the fish and making sure they are all healthy.

I was on the till.

The shop security cameras are running as usual

when they pick up this young man walking in.

He heads to the back of the store.

I didn't think he was suspicious, I didn't have any reason to watch.

The man spends a few minutes looking at the fish tanks

at the end of the store.

But he's not really interested in the fish.

He's actually angling for something else.

Janine has been busy with another customer at the till.

When that customer leaves, the young man ambles towards the door.

And he just walked past me.

I thought he'd gone out the door.

But he hasn't. He stops and pretends to sniff at a doggy treat.

But what he's really sniffing out...

..is the charity collection tin for Hull Animal Welfare

that's chained to the counter.

He taps it to see if there's any money in there...

pushes the door open ready for a quick escape...

then rips the tin away from its moorings...

..and runs off at full speed.

Janine's had no time to react.

I heard this, like, yanking noise, pulling the chain.

Within seconds it had gone.

It was just like shock.

You know you think, "Has that just happened?!"

And I just said to one of the guys, I said, "He's took the charity box."

And I said, "Just I'll go next door, use their radio."

The shop next door has a hand-held radio that allows Janine to alert a

local organisation called HullBID -

Hull Business Improvement District.

It's jointly funded by all the businesses in the city

and was set up to help protect them against thieves.

If we have any problems, they will come, they'll help us out.

And they came within ten minutes.

The store's staff give the men from the organisation a copy of the CCTV

to take away, to see if anyone can identify the thief,

and they also report the crime to the police.

Janine doesn't know how much money was in the tin

when the man stole it.

Maybe it was three quarters full, maybe £30, £35, maybe.

It's the principle that bothers her most.

Customers will always put their odd pennies in or anything like that.

They're charity tins, that's what they're there for,

to raise money for charity,

and to do that is pretty disgusting, I was disgusted, to be fair.

When Robert hears about the theft he is appalled but hopeful that the

thief will be tracked down.

All of the shops in Hull, we're all working together,

we all share information.

We've all got CCTV and there's CCTV on the streets.

We work very closely with the police.

So whoever is regularly shoplifting, they will always get caught.

Luckily the footage the store has given to the HullBID team has some

clear images of the crook's face.

Once they'd looked at it,

they identified him more or less straightaway.

In the past fortnight there's been a series of charity-tin thefts in

Hull and CCTV from other shops reveals this man is responsible.

It's really an atrocious thing to do

and this man had made a habit out of doing it.

The thief's face is circulated around town and a few days later

he's tracked down by the police and arrested.

With such clear video evidence against him,

the man realises he's bang to rights.

The money will never get returned, but it's quite pleasing to know they

will get stopped from doing it to somebody else.

In court the 21-year-old man pleaded guilty to ten counts of theft,

to possessing a bladed article

and to breaking bail conditions.

He was sentenced to 46 weeks in prison.

Back at the pet food store,

they haven't let the incident stop them from keeping the charity

collection boxes on display.

For all the people that do things like that,

there's a lot more nicer people that come into the shop and that's what

keeps the shop ticking over.

You know, hopefully we can carry on helping and supporting the local

charities for a long time in the future and I know our customers

are going to do that as well.

Robert personally replaced the money that Hull Animal Welfare

had lost due to the theft and their charity tin still has pride of

place in his store.

There's lots of people that have supported us from the beginning

and we're praying that everybody still keeps on supporting us,

to keep us helping more animals.

That's all for today.

You've seen just a few of the thousands of criminals

who are captured on camera every year.

Join us next time to see more villains

who have been caught red-handed.