Episode 1 Fightback Britain

Across Britain, you're capturing the evidence.

I felt enough was enough.

You're setting the traps.

She took the first possible opportunity that she had on that day

to come and steal money from my wallet.

And you're even confronting the bad guys.

There's no time to think that you have to stop him.

There's no other way, really.

This series is all about the part you,

the Great British public, are playing in the fight against crime.

It's someone else's phone. Put it back!

Whether it's catching car thieves or exposing career criminals...

And immediately the till's open and he's taken the money.

The audacity to do that.

..we'll show you how you're turning the tables on the law breakers.

And helping the police catch the crooks.

Welcome to Fightback Britain.

This week a gang of armed robbers are taken on by OAPs not once, but twice.

As he was going past at speed, that's when I grabbed hold of him.

The team carry out a prank on me to see if I cut the mustard

as a witness to a bag snatch.

We'll get them. We'll find them.

You're OK, basically. You're fine.

And Shane from Boyzone - yes, that is the former boy band star -

seeks help when his 80 grand supercar is nicked.

Within 48 hours, we had 25,000 new followers

just looking for the Subaru.

Now, it's understandable that not all bystanders get involved

when they see a crime, because of the risks involved.

And we would always recommend following police advice.

But that doesn't stop some folk risking their own safety

or even their own lives.

Paul Read and Adrian Couzens were managing two bike stores

in St James's Road, Croydon.

A street full of bikes, bikes and more bikes.

It's kind of a community place for bikers to come and meet up and...

and chew the fat, really.

We all work together

and help out each other when and where we can.

But last year community spirit was tested to the limit

when they came under attack.

It started on a warm Monday afternoon,

when Paul was about to shut up his shop.

Six lads turned up on sports bikes, which is nothing unusual.

They come in, crash helmets on.

Wouldn't take them off, which kind of put my back up a little bit.

Just hanging around the sports bikes and the Panigales especially.

There was a kind of sense of unease

because we don't normally get en masse

and they won't take the crash helmets off.

You normally get a couple, but not en masse like they were.

When they left I felt a bit of relief because they'd gone.

I'd hoped it'd be the last I'd see of them,

but obviously as events transpired the next day, it wasn't.

The following day, it was business as usual.

It'd been a reasonably busy day.

A few lookers would come in near the end of the day,

so I was just getting a fax off the fax machine.

But at quarter to five, Paul's customers from the previous day

were back, and today they'd come with a shopping list.

Heard the door buzzer go, voices.

Stuck my head round the door

and there's two guys helping themselves to two Panigales.

It was obvious that they wanted the bikes

without putting an order in first, really.

With no-one on hand to help, Paul's best option was to let them

leave with the goods.

But with a rush of blood to the head,

he single-handedly tries to stop the gang of six.

I just had to act.

It was just purely a case of, "I've got to get involved.

"This isn't happening. Not today."

The odds weren't looking good.

But events hadn't gone unnoticed by Adrian in his shop across the road.

I looked over and I could see that the front wheel was

starting to come out.

My first thought was, "Where's Paul?"

Adrian sensibly triggers an alarm to the police

and then sets off to help his friend.

The next thing I know I see a flash of white come running past

the door with an arm out, which was Adrian coming to my rescue.

It was just a reaction

and there wasn't really a thought process behind...

"This could happen, that could happen,

"they could be carrying weapons."

Cos then I noticed a guy sat on the forecourt on the scooter.

I started to push him off the scooter to try and keep him here

while the police are on their way.

With Adrian coming running across there was a kind of...

"Good, I'm not on my own. Maybe we can sort this out.

"Maybe we can handle this."

But that wasn't the end of it.

That's when the hammers and metal bars came out. So it was, er...

We're unarmed, they're armed.

I kind of, like, stepped back to try and, you know,

not get our heads beaten in.

At one point when the guy comes at me with a metal bar

and you see me back off, the reason I went to where I did was

because I knew there was an alleyway that I could get down.

Paul and Adrian were now in serious danger.

But watch the top left of your screen.

Two guys from a third bike shop sprinted over to lend a hand.

When I saw them coming I did feel relieved,

cos we're back to three, four people on our side

against the six of them,

and some of them have already started to flee the scene.

As the gang make their escape, and with still no sign of the police,

Adrian tries to slow them down.

I went back after the guy that had got back onto his scooter

and pushed him off for a second time.

Unknown to me, the first time I'd actually pushed him off

I broke my wrist.

And as they're leaving, I get a metal bar thrown at me,

which hits me across the back of the shoulder

and the back of the head, which knocks me down, basically.

The boys from the bike shops had prevented the theft of £50,000 worth

of motorcycles. But it could've ended in tragedy.

It wasn't until later that you kind of get a sense of,

"I've actually been lucky here.

"Someone's been looking out for me here cos it could've been me

"in a hospital bed somewhere or being fed through a tube."

The boys know their actions were risky, but they're grateful

they could count on each other when it mattered most.

I would definitely stick up for my friends again. No questions asked.

There's not many bikers around,

but you do get a sense of they'll all help each other,

whether it's at the side of the road with a puncture

or whether it's trying to stop some thieving little oiks.

Just to be clear - we're not advocating swinging your handbag

or walking stick at armed robbers.

In fact, there is an equally valuable and infinitely safer way

to help, and that's by being a good witness for the police.

But just to show you how hard it can be to make the grade

as a good witness, I'm going to use Julia as a guinea pig.

I'm playing a prank on her.

She thinks she's here to film a link,

but actually she's going to witness a crime.

She just doesn't know it.

Unfortunately for her, everyone in here is an actor.

And this guy is about to snatch a handbag right in front of her eyes.

So, will Julia be any good as a witness?

Standing by.

Everyone's briefed. The crew and actors get into position, and...

Action.

The criminal justice system simply cannot work without witnesses...

While Julia delivers her piece to camera here,

our would-be bag-snatcher hovers directly in her eye-line

and is about to give her a bit of a shock.

..A reliable eye-witness statement can make the difference

between a criminal getting away with it and a criminal...

WOMAN SCREAMS

No!

Great. Julia's taken in hook, like and sinker.

-Are you all right?

-No!

This bloke just came up to us and snatched her bag.

My husband's not here and my keys are in there.

-My car keys and my house keys.

-We'll get them. We'll find them.

You're OK, basically. You're fine.

Very impressive, Julia.

Clearly a woman who can handle a crisis.

Time to put her in the picture.

Hi there, you join us at a bad moment.

-You're lost for words?

-Why?

-Are you OK?

-I'm fine.

-Are you sure?

-Yes, I'm fine. Is it...

Are we being set up?

Oh, well!

-A confession to make.

-No, you have not!

-There has been no crime.

-You are such a little...

There's been no crime.

It was all a big set up.

I'm pleased that she's all right!

We did it for a bigger purpose,

and that was to find out what kind of witness you're going to make.

Later in the show we'll see

if her description bears any resemblance to the bag-snatcher,

and discover how you can be a better witness yourself.

We all hope that if we were unfortunate enough to find

ourselves a victim of crime, a Good Samaritan would come to our aid,

from a passer-by calling the police,

to a witness remembering key information.

But as our next story shows, some of you go way beyond the call of duty

when it comes to helping others.

Our story starts one February morning in Northampton.

The town centre was busy with Monday morning shoppers when this happened.

Ben Jacobson happened to be filming for a documentary

when he caught this robbery on camera.

The robbers were trying to

smash their way into the jeweller's window with sledgehammers,

and three more were waiting on mopeds as getaway.

My instinct was to press record...erm,

primarily to help the police out with their enquiries.

But as Ben continued filming from a safe distance,

a flash of red in his viewfinder showed that not everyone

had decided to hold back.

What happened next was a complete surprise to everybody.

A lady with red hair

and red coat coming running across the street and getting involved.

Grandmother Ann Timson had seen red

and let loose with her handbag.

My understanding was that she was mistaken as to what was going on

and she thought it was some youths attacking some other youth.

Erm...

But I guess once she was there

she kind of had to deal with it and she tried to push them away.

Tried to swing her handbag at them.

Whilst others watched on,

71-year-old Ann forced the gang to abandon their smash and grab.

But as they made their escape, one of the robbers fell off his scooter.

The last one left and was right next to Ann,

and when he turned around he almost lifted his sledgehammer to hit her.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd of passers-by

who had obviously stopped.

PEOPLE SHOUTING

And at that moment, they got involved.

At the time, I was concentrating so much on making sure

I was capturing it as evidence, as interesting footage, whatever.

The full extent of how strange an event it was

didn't really dawn on me till a few hours later.

Ann's impulsive actions put an end to this extraordinary robbery,

and one of the gang was even arrested on the spot.

She became a global sensation, and in an interview said...

A brave, if pretty risky, thing to do.

But this story wasn't over.

Three weeks later, another part of the country.

Another street full of shoppers.

But this time in the market town of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

70-year-old retired sales manager Michael Graver

and his wife Penny were out shopping for a family wedding

when they became the focus

of the next stage in this extraordinary tale.

It began as they approached the corner of High Baxter Street.

Two scooters with four men on board came roaring up,

nearly knocking Penny over.

I was quite angry.

-To ride recklessly at her like that, that was...

-He did stop.

He did stop in the end, but it was close. It was very close.

So that got me very angry.

Events now take a dramatic turn.

One scooter rams the jeweller's door,

while the others smash their way through the shop.

We don't expect that sort of thing on a Monday morning in Bury,

so it takes a moment or two of shock to realise there's a robbery

going on right under your nose.

That was when it became very serious and something had to be done.

Without realising these were hardened criminals,

an already enraged Michael decided to act.

The scooter was right along beside me,

so I pushed really hard to try and dislodge him,

push the scooter over, but they weren't having any of that,

so that's when I turned and thought I'd get into the shop.

Michael tries to enter the shop,

but comes face to face with a sledgehammer.

He held the sledgehammer up and I thought, "Oh, it's brand new."

And I was thinking, "I really would like a new sledgehammer."

As the confrontation spills out onto the street, a horrified Penny

watches as Michael dodges hammer blows.

It was so menacing to have the thought of him

being bashed with a sledgehammer. I was quite terrified.

As Michael continues to sidestep the sledgehammer,

the final robber flees the shop with his loot.

As he went past that's when I tried to grab hold of him.

I sort of got his arm,

but as he was going past at speed my hands were just slipping down.

The only thing I could get a grip on was the bag.

Remarkably, Michael snatches the bag and the robbers flee empty-handed.

Inside are watches worth over £20,000.

-We were standing there in the doorway holding the bag...

-Oh, yes.

-..and we suddenly thought, "Police."

-Oh...

-"Statements."

-"Bang goes my shopping trip."

-"There goes the morning."

But what was most remarkable was that Michael had actually stopped

members of the same gang that fellow pensioner Ann Timson

had thwarted three weeks earlier.

Thanks in part to the actions of these pensioners,

who have a combined age of 141,

ten gang members were jailed for more than 60 years

for their part in these robberies.

Earlier in the show, I played a prank on Julia.

She thought she'd seen a bag snatch,

but it was all a set-up to see how easily your mind can play

tricks on you.

WOMAN SCREAMS

Julia is about to meet Steve Curtis,

a police witness expert.

He's going to find out

if Julia can provide an accurate description of the thief.

Steve, where do we start?

What I'd like you to do is think about that person.

So, it was a male, he was white...

Dark trousers and I don't know whether they were black jeans.

Oh, dear. Julia's making mistakes, but this isn't unexpected.

He had on, I think, a white top.

A white tracksuit top.

Don't know what was underneath it.

Research shows we tend to remember colours as being brighter than

they actually are,

and it's the bright white that Julia's mind has focused on.

I didn't notice any logos on it.

It might have had a stripe down the side of the...

-It might?

-It might.

He had dark hair...

and I would describe the forehead slightly receding.

He had dark stubble.

So Julia's following type here.

Most witnesses remember the features in the top half of the face,

like the eyes and hair, better than the lower half.

But will her E-FIT resemble our bag-snatcher?

Yeah, that's about right.

You have got to be joking.

Time to put her out of her misery.

Oh, no!

Would you like to meet a friend of mine?

Hi. I didn't think you had spiky hair, you see.

-Nice to meet you.

-Hello. Nice to meet you.

You thief, you.

-Recognise him?

-I do recognise him,

but I got the nose wrong and I didn't think he had spiky hair,

but I got the hairline right.

-Chris, look at that.

-It's not bad.

-It's like a young Mel Gibson.

-How like you is that?

Erm... We could be brothers, I suppose.

Would that be useful? Would that be helpful?

Well, I believe that that's not a bad impression at all

and I think, actually, you've done quite a good job there, Julia.

It's clearly not a spitting image, but Julia's actually done

quite well with the shape of the face and upper features.

And women tend to be much better at remembering faces than men...

so I dread to think how I would have done.

The crucial things to remember are,

focus on permanent details, like height

and skin colour, rather than temporary ones,

like hairstyle that can easily be changed.

And only give details you're absolutely sure of.

Witnesses can be very eager to help and when they do,

sometimes they provide information which is a bit off-track.

It's not actually what happened.

They sort of fill in the gaps themselves.

They fill in the gaps, trying to please, and that can...

That can be false and it can mislead.

You're a nasty man. That poor lady. They were her keys.

She was really upset.

I might just give you a clip round the ear.

Love it or loathe it, the world

now spends an enormous amount of time chatting online.

Many of us social media to stay in touch with friends and family,

but also at the tap of a button you can send a message to a whole

community at lightning speed.

It's also proving to be a fantastic tool in the fight against crime,

as motor racing enthusiast and former boy band member Shane Lynch knows.

Shane Lynch of Boyzone, here on the left

sporting an enormous white collar,

swapped showbiz suits for oily rags and the buzz of motor racing.

If you walk around, what you can see is blood,

sweat and tears in all of these cars.

You can see every last wage packet going into every man's car.

This is their life.

Shane drives this car in drift races for motor team Japspeed.

The team had been exhibiting their cars at a drift racing

event at the Santa Pod Raceway.

The guys in the team had gone for a debrief with the show

organisers, left the car for approximately 20, 30 minutes.

Unbelievably, in broad daylight, surrounded by thousands of fans,

thieves had managed to start the car, drive it off the stand

and out the front gate.

I think a lot of people thought in the beginning it was a joke

because it's such an unheard of thing to do,

to take a car off the stand at an event. It doesn't happen.

The complete disbelief when we found out the car was gone.

They had no fear with getting in that car and driving it

straight past the stewards, and onto the road and down the motorway.

They could have been caught at any point.

It didn't even have any number plates.

These cars are complete one-offs, custom-made,

irreplaceable vehicles, and we had no option when it was stolen.

We had to get that car back.

This £80,000 car that had taken four men

six months to build had disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Paul called the police, but they needed help

if the car was going to be seen again,

so he turned to the social networks.

Obviously, our Facebook fans follow us at these events,

so the immediate thought was to use those fans to help us try

and find the vehicle before it had left the area.

Paul posted that the car had been nicked and within minutes,

keen motoring bloggers spread the word.

Everybody was copying and pasting, re-tweeting on Twitter

and everything. We were getting in touch with different car clubs,

different areas like the Northwest, down in London, up in Scotland.

Usually on the online forums when a post goes up,

whether it's a car sale or something,

you can expect to get ten, maybe 15, posts.

In this particular case, within hours,

the post count was in the hundreds.

Word had spread so fast, it was on forums

that we had never heard of, but they were still there

trying to help us find the car.

Posts were flooding in and soon there were a couple of sightings.

It must have been literally an hour after the car

had initially been stolen,

the reports of it heading south towards Windsor, down the M4.

Within 48 hours, we had 25,000 new followers

just looking for the Subaru that got stolen.

The biggest breakthrough came from petrol head John Singleton.

I was driving home from work on the M25

when I looked in the rear-view mirror and there was this car,

this orange and black car coming out of nowhere,

going at a fair old speed.

And I thought I would get my phone out and record it for a little bit.

# I need a hero... #

This is the stolen Subaru that Paul filmed speeding along the M25.

The video went viral, the whole country knew about the stolen motor

and car fans across Britain had their eyes peeled.

This hot rod was now such hot property

that the thieves would stand little chance of being able to move it

around the country or even sell it on.

Knowing this, Paul decided to lay a sting

and now offered a £10,000 reward for the return of the car.

Out of the blue, Paul gets a phone call.

They said that they knew where the car was

and, with the reward, they would help us get the car back.

The team arranged a meeting with the informant at a service station.

What he didn't know was that the police were in tow.

As soon as the money had been exchanged,

they took us to the garage where it was being held

and caught the gang red-handed.

The car was sat there with the gang stripping it for parts.

When we got a phone call to say they had found the car,

we were absolutely delighted. It was an emotional time,

because we really didn't think we were going to get that car back.

The thieves were part of a gang which stole vehicles

worth almost a quarter of a million pounds.

They were jailed for more than 15 years for burglary,

theft and handling stolen goods.

Without a shadow of a doubt,

if it wasn't for the kind folk of the world,

the people of the United Kingdom,

that car would possibly have never been found again.

It was a fantastic result to get the car back, absolutely,

so we were thrilled that we got it back in one piece

and that we were going to be able to bring the car back to life

for the fans that had helped us find it.

In the past ten years, burglary rates have dropped by almost a third,

but how do you protect yourself from someone you willingly

let into your own home?

In our final story, a group of neighbours

faced suburbia's worst nightmare,

when suspicions were raised about the cleaner.

I found Christina on a Gumtree advertisement,

she came with references.

Christina cleaned for Stephen and Lynne once a week.

She'd come and she'd dust the banisters

and clean inside the fridge and clean inside the cupboards.

We really, really trusted her.

They were so pleased, they even recommended her

to their friend and neighbour, Caroline.

She seemed nice,

Stephen and Lynne had obviously trusted her to be in their home

and I took their recommendation that

they had never had any problems with her.

But earlier this year, Caroline started to notice

all was not quite right.

After the first time she cleaned for us,

there was some money that went missing.

I dismissed it, because...

I just thought that we must have put it somewhere else.

We noticed a second amount of money had gone missing

and at that stage, I sent Stephen a message

just to ask him if he had had any problems with her.

Caroline raised her concerns with Stephen and Lynne that evening.

So, I thought, "We want to have a sense of justice here,

"we don't want to unjustly dismiss her,

"we want to know one way or another."

IT consultant Stephen decided to act

by setting up a hi tech trap.

Using special software, he reconfigured

his computer's 50 quid webcam to become a motion-activated spy cam.

What I used to capture the images was basically just a laptop,

a webcam and some free open-source software off the web, that was it.

On the day we actually captured the images,

just a normal day, Lynne had gone off to work at about 8:30,

Christina had arrived about 8:45.

I went off to go and have my shower.

But not before leaving some bait on the table.

I came back and got dressed and I thought, "I will check."

Unbelievably, Christina had come into Stephen's office,

picked up his wallet and removed a £20 note.

I think I sat there for a couple of minutes,

just staring at the photos, the sequence of photos,

just going, literally with my jaw open, going,

"Oh, my God, oh, my God."

I printed off one of the copies of the photos

and I went downstairs and I said, "Christina, can I have a word?"

I basically asked for the keys to the house back,

because I wanted to make sure I got the keys back.

I basically said, "How long have you been stealing from us?"

And she sort of went, "What?"

Like, sort of, "What do you mean?

"I don't know what you're talking about."

I literally just laid the photo on the kitchen table

and she took one look at the photo and she just went white.

And I just said, "I think you had better leave."

Christina collected her things and went.

Stephen and Lynne thought that was the end of it,

but felt that they should warn their neighbour, Caroline.

I felt ill, in a way.

I had been letting her into my house

every week and she had been cleaning,

but she had obviously been taking things as well.

My husband Googled her name

and up popped her eBay account, which contained a number of items

that Stephen then recognised as being his own.

She had quite a history as an eBay seller and a lot of feedback

from people that had purchased items, and going through the list,

we started picking up items that were stolen from our home.

The most important item, I suppose, that I noticed

that showed up on her eBay account was a removable hard drive.

All of the photos that I have taken over the last few years

are on that and I don't have those photos any more,

they're gone, I can't get them back.

Police investigations revealed a string of families

had been rinsed by this cleaner.

Christina pleaded guilty to three counts of theft

with a further six taken into consideration.

She was given a 12-week suspended prison sentence.

You implicitly trust the people that you let into your house

and, you know, they've got keys to your house,

they look after your pets, you see them every week.

It's somebody that you've actually made a part of your family.

Yep, it hurts.

That's it for this week. For all those criminals out there,

-you might THINK you're one step ahead...

-But watch out,

because the Great British public may well be about to catch you out.

TOGETHER: Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd