Episode 5 Fugitives

-Come on!

-On the run.

-Get back here!

-And over here.

Hands out now. Hands out!

When foreign criminals flee their home countries, many hide out in the UK.

-Give me your hands.

-But if they think they're safe, they're wrong.

They know they're wanted.

A lot of these people are waiting for that knock on the door.

But the traffic in fugitives isn't all one way.

Across Europe, there are hundreds of British criminals also trying to escape justice.

From the sun-drenched Costas, where the villains seek a life of luxury...

..to the busy streets of the Dutch capital,

where many continue their life of crime.

We join the crack teams hunting them down.

When you take the risk to come to Amsterdam as a criminal,

there's a high chance that we'll get you.

When it comes to justice, borders are no barrier.

You're under arrest under the Extradition Act 2003.

This is how the police take down the fugitives...

Police officer.

..both at home and abroad.

If you're thinking of running, don't.

We will find you.

We will bring you back.

Coming up on today's programme...

It's an early start for the Metropolitan Police's extradition team,

searching for a vicious man hiding from the law.

He is wanted for an assault back home in Lithuania.

There's a big knife there. You just never know what's going to happen,

so you've just got to be aware of what's around you.

In Leeds, the family man guilty of petty theft.

Three offences of shoplifting.

Having to face the fact that crime doesn't pay.

Quite a tragedy for that family, but he brought it upon himself.

And officers with superpowers

spotting wanted men and women on Dutch and British streets.

We are really, really good at actually finding these people

and bringing them to justice.

Over 12,000 fugitives from other European countries are thought to be hiding out in the UK.

Many choose to live amongst London's population of almost nine million.

Catching them is the work of the Metropolitan Police's extradition unit,

a dedicated team of almost 30 detectives.

We don't want criminals thinking

that the UK is a safe haven for them to come to.

And, of course, if you've got somebody who's committing burglary

or robbery or a serious sex offender, the likelihood is

they're going to be committing that crime here in the UK.

Today, like every day, detectives from the extradition unit

have a long list of European arrest warrants to serve.

On the early shift, DCs Jamie Darby and Dave Salmon

are on their way to Newham in East London.

The first fugitive they're after, Jose Trigo Raul,

has already been found guilty of a violent crime.

I think he's from Angola originally.

He's wanted by Portugal for a European arrest warrant.

Armed robbery and assault with a knife.

And he's got a six-year sentence to serve.

The wanted man has been found guilty of 11 offences,

many of them violent.

The officers need to be careful.

When they arrive, Jamie deploys his team to cover all the exits.

Tom, this is the address just here on the corner.

Number 2. If you don't mind, would you stand on the corner?

-Yeah.

-If you hear anyone come out the back,

Officer Willis is just going to be just here.

-Just give us a quick shout.

-Yeah, sure.

We're going to knock on the door, me, Dave and Ed,

and we'll see who comes to the door and take it from there, OK?

-Okey doke.

-OK.

A lot of foreign national offenders,

they are up and out very early in the morning.

So we have found that doing a very early morning call

enables us to often get people in.

Whereas if we go later during the day, they're not going to be there.

In this case, the early start pays off.

It is 5:50am in the morning and there's obviously someone at home.

Morning. Police officers.

-Oh, hi.

-Who lives here, my friend?

-Me and my son.

-The man who answers isn't their target.

He's only recently moved in...

..but Jamie spots some letters addressed to the fugitive.

Who are the letters for? Can I have a look? Do you mind?

-Yeah.

-Has anyone ever come round to pick any letters up or anything?

-No, no.

-The officers seize the letters,

hoping they'll provide vital information about Raul's location.

He obviously lived there at some time because he's got lots of post

in his name, so it's obviously an old address.

The officers that I have in the extradition unit

are very, very experienced and I think over the years

they have learnt that if you go in

and treat people with respect in the way that they should be,

you get a much better response from the occupants of the building.

And it means that they will cooperate with you as well,

more often than not.

Often you'll get some information that will give you new leads,

so that we're able to progress that investigation.

Although this fugitive remains on the run for now,

the team already have another criminal in their sights.

Next on the list is a wanted man who has fled from Lithuania.

It's a gentleman wanted for theft and actual bodily harm.

We have some intel from the Department for Work and Pensions that he's...

So we're going to give it a knock.

Lithuania have sent over an image.

The fugitive, Lithuanian Eligijus Petrikonis,

has been found guilty of fraud and assault back home.

So he's got a remaining sentence of two years and three months to serve...

..and it looks like he was sentenced in his absence.

So he's fled Lithuania...

..and he's popped up over here.

From the information on the warrant,

it looks like another potentially dangerous job.

You just think about who's going to be in the flat.

You can knock on a door and there can be one person in there,

or you can have about six or seven people come out of different rooms.

Especially when we knock on the doors,

there's normally only two or three of us,

so you've got to be aware of who is going to be at the address.

You go and knock on the door of someone who's wanted for GBH

or a robbery where a knife's been used,

you think a bit more about it.

Later, the team face a race across town during rush hour

to get to Petrikonis's last-known address before he leaves for the day.

He's got to know that he's got this prison sentence to serve back in Lithuania,

so he's going to be anxious to not be caught.

Amsterdam. The Dutch capital with its bars, cafes and canals

has long been popular with tourists.

It's also a magnet for criminals and fugitives from British justice.

But Dutch police are fighting back.

The serious and organised crime team in the capital is headed by this man - Jeroen Poelert.

Amsterdam is a very nice place to live and to visit,

and we are proud of that.

And Amsterdam for criminals,

it's also a capital for the organised crime.

Sometimes they have guns, sometimes they have problems between each other,

so our main thing is that we worry about kidnapping and murders.

That's why we have a strong focus to catch them.

Amsterdam is a favoured bolthole for criminals on the run from the Liverpool area.

One dangerous fugitive who took that route was notorious Merseyside gangster James Taylor.

Taylor was known to the police. He had some convictions.

He had minor convictions for theft.

He had convictions for possessing an imitation firearm,

public order, and threatening behaviour.

His nickname amongst Liverpool's criminal fraternity was Pancake,

due to his habit of flipping out.

He is known across Merseyside and because of the nickname,

there is this myth around him in terms of...

..who he was and what he was about.

In October 2010, Pancake Taylor lived up to his nickname.

With the help of two others,

he carried out a vicious revenge attack on a rival he'd fought

while in prison.

Taylor and his gang stormed a Liverpool kebab shop,

armed to the teeth and ready to cause carnage.

The victim tried to hold the gang off,

but they forced their way in and chased him upstairs.

James Taylor is the second male up the stairs.

And they are going after one individual.

It's a cowardly attack, three against one.

They clearly know who he is and what they want to do to him.

He received laceration wounds.

He was lucky that he didn't get more serious injuries.

During the frenzied attack, Taylor's hood fell down, revealing his face.

This myth around how good these people are as being organised criminals,

well, actually, it's that arrogance that ultimately led to us identifying him.

Merseyside Police launched a manhunt for the gang.

Although they captured one of his accomplices,

there was no sign of Pancake.

A number of search warrants were executed.

He wasn't at his home address.

He wasn't at his family addresses.

There was no information, no sightings of him,

nothing to suggest that he was still in the Merseyside area.

So all that points towards the fact that he'd gone, he'd left, he'd fled.

Pancake had seemingly disappeared.

Merseyside Police made a number of public appeals to try and locate him,

but it was a chance encounter 1,000 miles away,

which would provide a vital lead.

We had a number of Merseyside Police officers who were away on holiday in Spain

and they thought that they'd possibly sighted him.

That obviously then prompts me and the investigative team

to do a number of enquiries with that country.

Now the hunt for Taylor spanned borders,

his case became a priority for the National Crime Agency.

Rob Bennett is the operations manager at the agency's International Crime Bureau.

In the case of Taylor,

he was spotted by two Merseyside Police officers in Spain.

So for them and for law enforcement as a whole,

it was a valuable spot of Taylor because A, we knew he was abroad,

but B, we also knew that he was in Spain.

So it was useful for both Merseyside and obviously us,

because we then knew where we could target our searches in the first instance.

But Taylor wasn't hanging around to be found.

NCA officers began to suspect the fugitive had moved on

and was now hiding out in Amsterdam.

There was various pieces of intelligence that suggested that,

but real corroboration was given to that when we looked at the travel of his girlfriend, of his partner,

who was travelling over to Amsterdam quite regularly.

There was some indication he was in other countries,

so we did look into those links as well,

but it was the Netherlands that kept on coming through

as the likely contender as to where he was.

By now, Pancake Taylor had been at large for three years.

With all signs showing he was somewhere in Europe's fugitive capital, Amsterdam -

it was time for the Dutch police to join the hunt.

But would they be able to track him down after so long on the run?

In West Yorkshire, large towns and cities like Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield

attract their fair share of foreign offenders on the run.

Finding them is a priority for the police.

The people who try to evade justice in Europe

by hiding in the communities of West Yorkshire

are a risk to the people in West Yorkshire.

Those offenders do not come to West Yorkshire

to resettle and rehabilitate.

They come firstly to escape justice in the country where they are wanted

and then they come to West Yorkshire as an unknown commodity,

but proficient in committing crime.

Tonight, police officers Dave Lockwood and Tom Allen are looking for a man

wanted for relatively minor crimes.

His name is Tomas Dzurko.

He was caught stealing several packs of batteries and other goods

from shops in the Czech Republic on three separate occasions.

He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but went on the run instead.

So this lad we're looking for, he's from the Czech Republic.

Wanted for three offences of shoplifting.

The intelligence that links him to this address was from...

..15th of January 2016.

They head off to Leeds to see if the man they are after is at home.

This one with the light, I think.

Lass looking at us out of the window.

When they arrive at the property,

they're met at the door by a woman who is clearly heavily pregnant

and a man who looks very much like their fugitive.

-Hello.

-Hello, are you OK?

-What's your name, pal?

-Tomas.

-What's your date of birth, please?

-14.03.

Yep. What year?

1980.

OK, Tomas. I can see you've got your missus and child here with you,

but I've got some bad news for you, I'm afraid.

There's a warrant been issued for your arrest from the Czech Republic.

OK? Do you know about this?

Do you understand what I'm saying to you?

-Why?

-Why?

The Czech Republic are saying you've committed three offences

in 2012, OK? And they'd like to see you extradited

back to the Czech Republic for them.

Chill out, all right?

We're not going to rush you straight out of here.

We'll let you take care of things that you need to take care of.

Talk to your missus, OK?

But you're now under arrest for a European arrest warrant for three offences of shoplifting.

So you do not have to say anything...

The arrest is clearly a shock for Tomas Dzurko.

He thought he'd made a new life for himself,

his pregnant wife and young son,

but now the crimes he committed back home in the Czech Republic

have caught up with him.

-I know it's...

-I go from prison here?

-I don't know yet.

You're going to be coming with me tonight to the police station, OK?

-You're going to be going to London tomorrow.

-London tomorrow?

To court. And I don't know what is going to happen after that.

-Hello.

-You, you, you...

Neither the wanted man, nor his pregnant wife, speak much English,

so a friend is called to translate.

-Have you got some ID, please?

-But Dave needs to check who he is, too.

-My

-ID? Yeah. If I'm going to start talking to you

and explaining what's happening, I want to know who I'm talking to.

-What happened?

-I'll tell you in a minute, once I've got your ID, OK?

With her second child due imminently,

the shoplifter's wife now faces an uncertain future.

The time you give me for my wife and my son?

Five, ten minutes is reasonable, yeah?

What's happened is Czech have issued a warrant for your arrest, OK?

-Explain this to him.

-Can I... Speak slowly, yeah?

The Czech Republic have issued a warrant for his arrest.

As his friend explains,

the wanted man starts to realise that he's in real trouble.

-PAT CASSERLY:

-People are responsible for their actions and there are consequences,

and the consequence of Tomas's criminality

and absconding and failing to present himself

answerable to justice means that at some stage, he gets caught.

There's never a good time, and on this occasion, yeah,

quite a tragedy for that family,

but he brought it upon himself and that's a consequence for Tomas.

Telephone number 101.

If tomorrow night you're worried he hasn't come home, OK,

we'll be able to tell you what's happened.

Right, we're going to go to the police station now.

-Are you happy we've got everything?

-Yeah.

-Right, come on then.

Say your goodbyes, OK?

Dzurko's taken to the police station in handcuffs,

leaving his wife at home.

Just take a seat here, Tomas.

What started as a petty crime has become a very big problem

as he faces being sent away from the UK and from his family.

6am in East London and detectives Dave Salmon and Jamie Derby

are on their way to arrest a Lithuanian man.

Eligijus Petrikonis was convicted in his home country

for a serious assault.

He's also used his mother's financial details to commit a fraud.

He's been sentenced to two years and three months back in Lithuania.

He's got to know he's got this prison sentence to serve back in Lithuania,

so he's going to be anxious to not be caught.

Although it's still early in the morning,

London's traffic is starting to build.

The detectives have a 30-minute drive across the capital

to get to the wanted man's last-known address

before he goes out for the day.

The clock is ticking.

Finally, they arrive at the property.

The house they are looking for is in darkness.

No-one seems to be home.

But when Jamie rings the doorbell, it's answered quickly.

-Oh, good morning. Sorry to bother you. Police officers.

-Good morning.

We've got to speak to the people in there.

Can I come in and knock on the door?

-Just going to have to speak to the people who live here.

-All right.

Where do we start - upstairs? Is there anyone in here?

He's at work, I think, now.

What's his name?

The house is shared by several people,

and whoever lives downstairs has already left for work.

Time to search upstairs.

Hello?

-Hello, sir.

-Good morning.

Good morning. What's your name?

Have you any ID? Passport, anything like that?

Your date of birth?

They've found the man they're looking for.

We've got a warrant here from Lithuania.

It's to do with theft and an assault.

I'm arresting you in relation to this European arrest warrant.

But Jamie spots potential danger.

Anything you do say may be given in evidence...

..cos there's a big knife there.

I'm not going in there. Yeah, go on.

All right.

Petrikonis, with his history of violence,

is kept well away from the serrated blade and other knives and tools spotted in the wardrobe.

He's handcuffed, just to make sure.

You go first.

'When you go into like a small bedsit like that,

'you've got to be aware of what's around you.'

Because obviously you don't know who they are,

they've never come to notice before.

Obviously, he's wanted for an assault back home in Lithuania,

so you just never know what's going to happen to you,

so you've just got to be aware of what's around you.

It's been a good morning's work.

A fugitive with a violent past has been safely arrested.

Petrikonis is now on his way to custody,

facing an appearance in court and a journey back to prison in Lithuania.

Another dangerous criminal with a history of violence,

Pancake Taylor, topped the list of Merseyside Police's most wanted

after a vicious attack in a Liverpool kebab shop,

which left his victim severely injured.

But after more than three years on the run,

police tracked him via Spain to the Netherlands.

We don't like people who are here with bad intentions.

And...

that's why we are very focused on especially the British criminals,

who like Amsterdam for a safe haven.

And we catch a lot of people.

British intelligence sources sent their colleagues in Amsterdam

an image of Taylor.

In response, Dutch police deployed officers around the city

who specialise in facial recognition.

One of those officers spoke to us.

We can't reveal his identity because he is still undercover

and active in the city.

Once he'd seen a picture of Taylor, the hunt was on.

This officer spent the next two years scanning every face he came across

before he finally spotted the British criminal

he'd committed to memory.

After more than three years on the run,

they finally had a confirmed sighting of Pancake Taylor.

The next problem for the Dutch police was how to safely arrest

this dangerous and vicious gangster.

Police in the Netherlands have long known that a natural ability to

recognise faces is critical in the fight against crime.

Officers with this ability are deployed

on covert patrols of Dutch cities.

They often work undercover.

We have police officers who are very good in recognising faces,

with a beard or no beard.

When we see you, we catch you.

Most people can remember thousands of faces at any given moment.

However, over time, details and features start to blur together.

But there are a select few who never forget.

They can remember faces perfectly, even years after seeing them.

These people are known as super-recognisers.

And they've been the secret weapon in the hunt for British fugitives

hiding in the Netherlands.

Professional fighter Adam Hart, seen here in the blue and white shorts,

is one of those brought to justice by a keen-eyed super-recogniser.

He was a cocaine smuggler who fled from the UK to hide out in Amsterdam.

But all the ducking and diving stopped

after a photo of Hart was given to an undercover officer.

Two weeks later,

the officer spotted Hart as he walked into an underground car park.

The fugitive was arrested as he tried to leave the car park.

In custody, he tried to eat the SIM card from his phone

and officers found 5,000 euros hidden in his underwear.

The drug smuggler was returned to the UK

and sentenced to six years in prison.

The success of super-recognisers means police forces in both the

Netherlands and the UK are keen to recruit more officers to do the job.

Dr Josh Davis is a forensic facial identification specialist.

He's working with British forces to identify which officers have

exceptional recognition abilities.

To be a good super-recogniser in the police,

they must be highly meticulous.

They must inspect the images that are released daily by police forces.

They must sometimes have to view hours and hours of footage of CCTV.

Most of it's of no interest whatsoever

but they're just trying to get that one person in that small clip from the images.

Andy Pope from West Midlands Police reckons he has an excellent memory.

He's come to meet Josh today to find out whether he is, in fact,

a super-recogniser.

In his day-to-day duties with West Midlands Police,

Andrew is well-known for his ability to spot faces.

I do have people from the force that know of me that will send me stills

specifically just to see if I can help them out.

It may be a case of I've already met that person

or encountered that person,

in which case I can positively identify them from that still,

or if I don't know who they are, I just try and commit it to memory

and then go outside on patrol and try and find them.

To measure what's happening in his brain when he recognises faces,

Andy is being prepared for an EEG scan.

Sensors are attached to his head,

which will read the electrical activity in his brain.

This information is then sent to a computer,

which analyses the data to reveal just how good his memory is.

If I was a super-recogniser I'd be absolutely over the moon,

yeah, yeah, so really excited.

Find out later if Andy has got what it takes to become

an official super-recogniser.

-Hello.

-In West Yorkshire, a minor crime

has caught up with a man at the worst possible time.

It's bad news for you, I'm afraid.

There's a warrant been issued for your arrest from the Czech Republic.

Tomas Dzurko has been convicted of shoplifting

after stealing batteries and cosmetics

in three separate incidents back home in the Czech Republic.

His wife is heavily pregnant with their second child

and due any day now.

Although it may seem a minor crime,

there's a European arrest warrant with his name on it.

And he's taken into custody.

If you commit an offence, you are in jeopardy,

you've put yourself in jeopardy, of being punished

and if that means the punishment is within the UK

or in another country in Europe, that is the choice of the criminal,

not the choice of the police officer.

We're going to be sat here a while because it's really busy in custody.

Once he's been processed here...

..Dzurko faces being extradited back to the Czech Republic

to serve an 18-month sentence for the crimes he committed in 2012.

Do you read English at all?

No. It's in Czech as well, so if you read all that,

it tells you exactly what's happening

and why the Czech want you.

OK?

A bit chaotic at times, bit intense, but that's obviously because

they were worried and the language barrier,

we just had to keep repeating the information.

It's quite busy in here. There's a bit of a queue,

so we're just currently waiting to book Tomas in to custody.

Dzurko fled from the Czech Republic to dodge the law

but it's finally caught up with him.

Would you like us to contact your partner and tell her that you're here?

TRANSLATOR SPEAKS CZECH

HE SPEAKS CZECH

Now he's facing a 1,000-mile trip

back to prison for a handful of stolen batteries.

A bit further apart. That's it.

I'm going to be leaving you there

and I'm going to be going to do the paperwork, so it's...

You're probably not going to see me again tonight,

so if you've got any questions, you need to ask me now.

He'll spend the rest of the night in the cells

before being taken to London in the morning,

where a judge will decide his fate and whether to deport him.

In Newham, East London,

officers Jamie Darby and Dave Salmon

have just arrested a Lithuanian fugitive.

Two hours ago, Eligijus Petrikonis was fast asleep in his bedsit.

Now he's waiting to be checked into custody at Charing Cross police station.

He was in bed, so it was easy. He'd just woken up so...

..he wasn't too aware of what was going on at first,

so by the time he realised he was under arrest...

..you know, we'd put him in handcuffs. Straightforward, really.

This is the European Arrest Warrant. You need to keep that with you

for court and then give it to your solicitor there.

The Lithuanian part is inside, OK.

Petrikonis is given time to study the warrant issued for his arrest in Lithuania.

As he examines the details, reality kicks in.

We're just going to finish booking him in,

take all his property and search him

and then we're going to take his fingerprints, photograph and DNA

just to make sure he hasn't committed any further offences

here in the UK, while he's been here.

When you take the fingerprints, they come back quite quickly,

so if he has done anything else, it should come back quite quickly.

He's going to ask you some questions now.

He was arrested this morning at 6:25am.

Dave knows he can't afford any hold-ups.

Criminals who are subject to a European Arrest Warrant

must be fast-tracked through custody.

It does put my officers under a considerable amount of pressure

but they're really experienced in what they do and

they know how to express to the custody sergeants

the importance of getting someone through the custody process quickly,

so that they can actually get them to court on time.

To avoid seeing the case thrown out of court,

Dave and Jamie work as fast as they can

to get the fugitive in front of a judge as soon as possible.

We're just finished in custody,

so we're just on our way to Westminster Magistrates' Court now,

where we're going to drop him off into the custody area...

..where he'll see the duty solicitor for extradition matters

and there will also be a Lithuanian interpreter for him.

So once he's seen his solicitor,

he will then go up in front of the judge.

The rules are strict. Cases can be thrown out if the judge

doesn't believe police have acted with all speed.

They have to be taken to court within the 24 hours,

but if we arrest someone in the early hours of, say, a Wednesday morning,

then we need to have them in court by the Wednesday afternoon.

Otherwise we risk the courts actually saying

that we've abused the process

and they could be dismissed.

Just three and a quarter hours ago,

Jamie and Dave knocked on this fugitive's bedroom door.

If the judge agrees,

he could be on a plane back to Lithuania in a matter of days.

When Adam Hart, kick boxer and cocaine dealer,

was spotted on the run in Amsterdam and arrested,

it was all because of one undercover policeman's ability

to remember a face.

I recognised his face. I had his face still in my memory.

And I was sure it was Adam Hart. And he was wanted.

There are a small number of people who have this special power -

the ability to remember and recognise faces,

sometimes years after seeing them.

Now the race is on to find more super-recognisers in the UK.

Andy Pope from West Midlands Police has been singled out by his bosses

as someone who remembers faces better than most.

I wouldn't say I remember every single face that I see...

..but specifically ones job-related,

I try and remember them as best I can,

and some I'll remember two years later, some I won't,

so I don't really know how it happens.

He's here at the research centre in Greenwich

to find whether he has what it takes

to be a fully-fledged super-recogniser.

But how much is known about this phenomenon?

Doctor Ashok Jansari has been studying the brain

and how memory works for over 30 years.

Super-recognition in scientific terms is incredibly new.

Our understanding of the brain is literally in the infancy

and we're crawling around in the dark.

And so the first paper in super-recognition

was only published in 2009,

which is literally a droplet in the ocean of science.

So, yes, we're completely at the beginning of our understanding.

So far, scientists have established that there's a difference

in the way we see everyday things compared to how we see faces.

The way we see other objects is by a kind of visual jigsaw.

We put together the bits of information that we're seeing.

So, for example, this chair has got a flat part, a back part,

some things sticking down - and those together we work out is a chair,

but we don't believe that that's how human faces are processed.

What we think is that we actually see the face as a whole,

so rather than seeing a left eye, right eye, nose, mouth

and working out who someone is, we actually see the whole.

Back at the lab, and Andy is halfway through the tests

set by Josh and his team.

He's shown a face, which he must memorise.

Five.

Then another screen pops up with seven more faces,

and it's up to Andy to identify the correct one in the line-up.

The test gets harder as it goes on, and lasts for about an hour.

We're hoping to see that Andy scores

exceptionally highly on some of our tests -

that he recognises some of the faces,

and they are really hard to recognise.

It's not an easy test.

And if so, then we can classify Andy as a super-recogniser,

which matches his ability to recognise criminals from CCTV.

Andy completes the test and the results are in.

You DEFINITELY achieved super-recogniser classification

for this experiment on our test that we decide this, so well done.

-And how do you feel about that?

-Absolutely over the moon.

Andy scored exceptionally highly today on one of the tests,

and that puts him into the top 1% to 2% of the population.

Back in the Netherlands,

officers from Amsterdam's serious crime unit

launched a major surveillance operation

after a dangerous British criminal was spotted by one of their super-recognisers.

This undercover officer, who we've agreed to film anonymously,

identified notorious Liverpool gangster Pancake Taylor

coming out of a local gym.

Known as Pancake for his history of flipping,

this thug was wanted for a long list of violent crimes,

including this frenzied attack,

which left his victim with nasty injuries.

As Taylor was known to be dangerous and possibly armed,

Dutch police had to patiently plan how they'd carry out the arrest.

First, they secretly followed him and the people he associated with.

You want to do other things than just arresting people

because we know that those people are not only hiding here,

they're also in business,

and that's the main problem of those people -

they're still dealing in drugs, for example.

Detectives tracked Taylor to an expensive apartment

in an upmarket area of Amsterdam.

They also discovered where his closest associates lived

and planned coordinated strikes with the elite Dutch SWAT team.

Police patiently watched the house for three days

until the SWAT team observed Taylor cycling home from the gym

and decided it was the perfect strike opportunity.

A dramatic moment the police managed to catch on camera.

The most sensible place to arrest him was on his bike,

in broad daylight, where he would have no access to firearms,

no access to other individuals who could assist him,

so for them it made perfect sense, really,

to take him out in such a public way.

With Taylor under arrest,

the Amsterdam police called their colleagues in Merseyside

to let them know the operation had been a success.

To get that call to say, "Yes, we've identified him, we've got him,

"he's in custody in Holland", was fantastic, fantastic news.

As a cop, as a policeman, that's the type of news that you want to hear.

A search of Taylor's apartment

and of the homes of three of his associates

revealed more evidence of their criminal lifestyle.

We did a house search and we found weapons, two weapons,

and also drugs - cocaine -

and a lot of money, and that is typical for those people.

And when you look to the whole picture, those friends,

they all had apartments and in total the four of them paid

about 10,000 euros a month to rent a house,

and in total we seized about nine firearms.

With the mountain of evidence against him,

Taylor was extradited back to the UK to finally face justice.

Do you know what? Law enforcement across the world,

we are really, really good at actually finding these people

and bringing them to justice.

So there was that real sense of pride of a job well done

and doing something that the community in Merseyside

expect us to do.

And for most of us, that's why we come to work.

It might take a few months, it might take a few years,

but eventually we will catch up with you

and we will bring you back to justice.

In court, the judge took a dim view of James "Pancake" Taylor's attempts

to evade justice.

He was finally sent to prison for nine and a half years.

At his hearing, shoplifter Tomas Dzurko

was granted bail by the extradition court.

He absconded but was then arrested for assaulting a child on a train.

After pleading guilty, he fled home to the Czech Republic

before he could be sentenced in the UK.

He was arrested by Czech police in February 2017.

And just three weeks after his arrest in East London,

violent fraudster Eligijus Petrikonis

was sent back to Lithuania,

where he'll serve the rest of his jail sentence.