Episode 15 Street Patrol UK

Our lives are blighted by antisocial behaviour.

-Whether it's nuisance neighbours...

-Will you let us in, please?

..graffiti on the streets, or too much booze.

You need to make your way away from here right now.

This is the story of the police officers...

This is the police. Are you in here?

You've been drinking a bit today, haven't you?

..council wardens...

This is antisocial behaviour because it affects everybody.

..and local volunteers whose job it is to keep it off our streets.

Let's go do some good!

Welcome to Street Patrol UK.

Today, what the Met Police discover when they track down

a suspected money launderer.

SHOUTING

He's thrown something out of the back window.

We recovered a cricket-ball size of what looks to be crack cocaine

and a golf-ball size of what looks to be heroin.

The Welsh enforcement officers

getting stuck in to deal with the worst possible kind of waste.

It could be dog faeces, human faeces.

I'm not going to go into the bag to check.

And the local residents

determined to keep criminals out of their communities.

It was nasty living here.

Everyone you met had got something horrible.

People who sell drugs are antisocial in many ways.

Preying on the vulnerable, feeding their addiction

and attracting other criminal behaviour.

Every time the police get a dealer off the streets, it's a result.

Thank you for coming down and helping us do these warrants today.

It's 7:00am in Islington, North London.

The Metropolitan Police are preparing to raid the house

of a man known to them for several years.

The warrants are in relation to

a job that started on 6th January 2014.

DC Jenkinson from the Met's Criminal Finance division briefs the team.

This subject and another male were stopped in a vehicle

with cannabis and a large amount of cash.

And it's the cash that has prompted further investigation.

Between September 2013 and March 2014,

he spent almost £12,000 on hire vehicles,

which is excessive by anyone's standard.

Police know that hire cars are often used by criminals

to try and remain undetected.

This, along with the man's remarkably healthy bank balance,

has rung alarm bells.

He only receives housing benefit and council tax benefit.

The only other income he has is £20,000 of unexplained cash deposits

going into his account over the past two years,

which flags up that he's certainly involved in something

and laundering money... of those proceeds.

So today, they're paying a surprise visit.

The police don't yet know if they will find anything at the property,

but are looking for any evidence of money laundering.

That is money obtained illegally,

disguised as legitimate money or goods.

It's a challenge that DC Rob Burrow

from the Criminal Finance team is all too familiar with.

Generally, it's about trying to hide the money

or trying to conceal the money, even trying to spend the money.

Cash is the hardest thing to follow because once it's gone,

you don't know where it's gone, where the next stage is.

Armed with heavy equipment for breaking down doors,

the 13-strong squad get into position.

An element of surprise is all-important.

Outside the front door, they need to keep quiet

so as not to alert the suspect.

BANGING

Police! Face down!

YELLING

The suspect is at home and quickly apprehended.

But not before a suspicious package

lands on the ground outside the flat.

It would appear that he has thrown something out of the back window.

So someone's gone into the back garden and is looking around there.

Getting that back first. Don't know what it is yet.

The police don't know who threw the package,

but the contents seem to confirm their suspicions.

There's quite a bit.

A golf-ball size and a cricket-ball size of what he thinks is crack.

Have they got him?

Yeah. He lobbed it out the window.

Officers have recovered a cricket-ball size

of what looks to be crack cocaine

and a golf-ball size of what looks to be heroin.

We can't say officially, technically

what it is until we get the stuff analysed,

but it looks like we've got two large packages of drugs.

At this stage, it's all suspicion,

but it's enough to indicate that it's more than personal use.

That, plus the fact that

the circumstances around why we're here at all,

which is lots of cash that we've noticed going through accounts.

A systematic search now takes place

in an attempt to find any more drugs or evidence of money laundering.

And it's not long before an indication of plenty of cash

is discovered in a cupboard.

Dozens of boxes of expensive designer footwear.

You can see all the shoe boxes that are being pulled out.

He's on benefits, but can afford to spend hundreds of pounds

per set of trainers, of which there's a whole cupboard full.

Things like trainers are things he can buy and remain under the radar.

You start buying other items, houses, cars,

obviously, you come onto the radar a lot quicker.

We obviously knew he was linked to drugs

and then with things like the trainers that we see,

again, it all sort of tallies up with the information

we gathered in our investigation prior to coming in here today.

Obviously, you get a sense of satisfaction out of it.

He's been arrested for the money laundering,

so all in all, it's a fairly good job.

It's been a successful raid for the police.

Now it's back to base to continue their investigation.

Later - the audacious organised gangs

making farmers' lives a misery.

You don't feel safe walking around your own yard

because you never know who's around the corner.

Fly-tipping affects communities up and down the country.

Now, it might not sound too bad if you're not affected,

but if people are using the area where you live as an unlicensed dump

and even dumping toxic waste, then it becomes a serious problem.

And some local councils are determined to stamp it out.

Llanelli, south-west Wales.

This town of about 35,000 people sits on a picturesque estuary

and is surrounded by beautiful countryside.

But there's no shortage of people willing to spoil it.

By fly-tipping.

Last year, the local council spent £250,000

cleaning up anything and everything dumped by the public.

It's a huge problem. And the vast majority of offenders

are never even seen, let alone caught.

Carmarthenshire Council enforcement officers

Paul Morris and Martyn Jones

are part of a team dealing with fly-tipping

and all sorts of other antisocial behaviour across the county.

Antisocial behaviour has a wide spectrum.

It could be anything from dog fouling, litter, fly-tipping,

youths congregating on corners.

It could be balls hitting the fence next to your property,

and we deal with the whole of that spectrum.

Today, they're out on patrol

investigating the latest mess left by fly-tippers around the town.

For our point of view within the town, it causes a vermin issue,

it's unsightly, it detracts from inward investment,

and it costs the authority a lot of money to clear.

The council gets 1,500 reports of fly-tipping a year,

and each one has to be checked out before it's cleaned up.

So this is an incident that's been reported to us.

Builder's sacks have been left in quite a nice area.

It's just outside of Llanelli and it's used by dog-walkers

and people come out for a bit of fresh air in the countryside,

and then somebody's gone and dumped some, er, ton sacks of...

it looks like builder's waste.

Disgusting as it may seem, Paul and Martyn have to delve into every

bit of rubbish they find to search for clues of who dumped it.

What's in here, it's just hardcore.

No, that's not hardcore, it's a nice bag of faeces.

Yeah, it is.

It could be dog faeces, human faeces.

I don't know, but obviously I'm not going into the bag to check.

The smell is, er...

awful.

And a newspaper for when they were having a read

while they were doing that!

There's a lot of white cider there, too.

There's one, two, three, four, five bottles of that.

Every discarded bag of rubbish poses a health hazard

for the council to clean up.

But Martyn then discovers something truly worrying.

Asbestos.

By law, asbestos can only be disposed of in designated tips,

and users must pay for the service.

Cos of the costs of disposing of it properly, people are just

dumping it now, rather than pay and be out of pocket, you know.

And this is a huge lake here, which has got a lot of wildlife in,

and you've got asbestos on the peripheries of it, you know?

Asbestos contains microscopic fibres, which, if inhaled,

can cause fatal lung disease.

A specialist team needs to be called in to remove it safely.

It's a common problem.

It's out of the main town, out of sight, out of mind.

People drive in, dump whatever they've got on the back of the van

and off they go. No consequences, no witnesses.

Convenient for them, you know?

But the antisocial fly-tippers don't restrict their dumping

to the outskirts of town.

Llanelli is criss-crossed by a network known as the Back Lanes,

and they, too, are popular places to illegally dump rubbish.

You see everything and anything gets thrown out.

-What is it, fish?

-Yeah.

Well, this is a walkway that will be used by children

on their routes to school, it's used by residents.

You see there's parking areas,

and the smell that's emanating from that is horrendous.

It's rotting fish, at the end of the day.

It's well-rotted, I would say.

That's where you want smell-o-vision.

I don't think anybody would want smell-o-vision with this.

It stinks.

Then, Paul makes another shocking discovery -

a huge pile of building rubble, laced with asbestos.

Well, this looks like the remnants of a garage roof, shed...

And he has a good idea how this might have got here.

What happens is there'll be a contractor or a man and his van

who will come along, they will do the job

and charge the price, and then they could well include

the tipping in the price, which would give them extra money.

That money then is in their back pocket,

although the householder may think this is going to an approved site,

when it is in effect being dumped in the public domain.

As long as these panels remain intact they are relatively harmless,

but if they are broken up, toxic asbestos fibres

could be released, exposing anyone who handles them to the risk.

If its status is bonded, then it's OK to deal with it

as we are, but you don't want it lying around here in the public

domain for too long. It needs to be cleared as soon as possible.

What we will have to do now is obtain a special waste contractor

who is trained in handling hazardous material.

The cost of actually disposing of this, it is round about £400 a ton,

and that cost then will be borne onto the local authority.

Fly-tipping asbestos is an extremely serious crime.

The worst offenders face a heavy fine and up to two years in prison.

So the person who does this takes a big risk. They could end up

in prison for maybe £200-300 in their back pocket.

And that's not the only problem caused by this reckless fly-tipping.

It may have encouraged other people to dump their rubbish

in this back lane.

These blue bags are meant to be for recycling,

which doesn't include broken glass or last night's leftovers.

You can see there's all sorts of food waste

and it's just not how the waste should be presented.

There's broken glass there for our crews to pick up in the bags.

There we are, it's just stabbed me now!

There, as you can see, if somebody else picks this up now

it could go straight through their trouser leg as they're carrying it.

Martyn has cut his finger on a broken bottle in the bag.

Luckily, it's not serious, but he knows it could have been worse.

We have syringes we've found in bags.

Ultimately we're expected to go through the bags,

regardless of what's in them.

That could have been a syringe, then, I could be facing months

of God knows what over hepatitis or anything even worse, you know?

And yet the person who's had a good night on a Friday night

with their vodka, it's no concern to them, is it?

With so much dangerous material littering the streets,

the guys don their gloves in a bid to find out who left the bags.

If we do find evidence, there is a set procedure.

We try to educate the offenders first of all,

and if they continue to offend, we have mechanisms in place

where we can serve a notice on them, and then if they again

fail to heed with our instructions then they can be fined £100.

Martyn discovers something useful in amongst the debris -

an envelope, possibly addressed to the culprit.

Yeah, I've got an address now.

So what happens now is when we get an address from the waste,

that becomes evidence,

and you see there Martyn's taking a photograph of that waste.

That envelope will be placed into an evidence bag and then be used

then in the subsequent inquiry to trace the offender.

If found, the offender will be invited to an interview

to be advised on the correct way to dispose of household waste.

So hopefully, there will be one less fly-tipper for Paul and Martyn

to deal with in their quest to clean up the streets of Llanelli.

And while they've been in the Back Lanes,

they've received some vital information - the person who

reported the waste thinks they spotted the fly-tipper.

A member of public has witnessed the vehicle,

so he's recorded the number plate.

He's not prepared to give a statement due to obvious reasons,

where he could face repercussions.

But for us it's an easy way to start asking questions, yeah?

It turns out the vehicle that was seen

may belong to a regular offender.

Paul and Martyn will interview the man,

and if he is responsible they will prosecute.

Later, we'll find out how Paul and Martyn are using the latest

technology in their battle to catch the antisocial fly-tippers.

I've been out on a street patrol of my own to find out

what bothers you about Britain today.

Heather, tell me what you've witnessed that you think is

-antisocial?

-People come up to you and say, "Can I have a cigarette,"

or, "Can I have money?" I don't know.

And I don't like all that sort of begging.

-Does that happen a lot?

-Happens to me quite a lot.

OK. What other things really annoy you?

Swiping stuff from graveyards.

My friend went to visit her mother in her graveyard yesterday

and they'd actually nicked the bowl,

-the vase that she'd put her flowers in.

-Really?

Serious.

-And the flowers as well?

-And the flowers as well.

And the chances are, they are either going to give those flowers

to someone or perhaps, I don't know, sell them?

Or put them on another grave. Sell them?

I don't know how old the flowers were!

I didn't think about that.

-Pinch flowers off one grave to put on another?!

-Another grave!

It's possible, isn't it?

-It doesn't get much lower, does it?

-No!

I'll let you get back. It's your lunch break, isn't it?

-Yes. Thank you.

-Thanks, lovely. Cheers, bye-bye.

-Zac, that's crazy hair!

-Cheers. Thanks a lot.

-I really appreciate that.

-I love it! Full respect.

-Nice to meet you. How you doing?

-Nice to meet you too, Lily.

-Hi.

Now, tell me what might bug you two about people

and antisocial behaviour.

Sure. One that occurs most is drinking in public.

-Yeah.

-It's a real shame. It's not good for the neighbourhood.

and it's a real issue we need to counter from that aspect.

-OK. What about something you find disgusting?

-Peeing.

-Yeah.

-They've tried to cut it out.

I have noticed in London they have these things that you can go up

against, but you still find it in small towns like this

with people going around, and it's not good for people walking past

from that aspect, if you have your kids or something.

And that actually is against the law.

You will get fined for it if you get caught.

Exactly, and you still find people sort of want to go and breach it.

So that's a bit of a shame.

-Zac...

-Nice to meet you.

Lovely to meet you, and you too. Have a lovely day.

-You take care.

-Cheers, bye-bye.

One type of crime we don't hear very much about is rural theft,

but it's becoming increasingly common.

We're not just talking about a few scoundrels scrumping a few apples,

but organised criminals who are using highly-sophisticated methods

to steal from our farmers.

But now some farmers are taking the criminals on

with some hi-tech tactics of their own.

Hidden amongst the hedgerows of England's green and pleasant land...

..a dangerous new breed of antisocial creature is lurking.

A dark February night,

and two people are caught on camera in a Lincolnshire farmyard.

It was 1:30 in the morning, and it was two people.

But these two visitors to the Dobneys' farm are not there

to enjoy the view.

They pull on this wire to try and pull the CCTV down.

They fetch a long metal bar, then they start hitting it to the point

where they actually get the camera to dangle down.

The smaller of the two goes on the shoulders of the bigger of the two,

and they actually, by going shoulder on top,

get hold of the camera and manage to wrench it down.

And that's when the footage goes blank.

The incident deeply shocked farmer Neil Dobney,

especially because most of the time

the farm is run by his elderly father, Ralph, who's in poor health.

I mean, they were waving iron bars around to get the cameras off.

If it had happened to be the same time that my father

had walked down the yard, who knows what would have happened?

Nothing of value was stolen that night,

but Neil believes these weren't just vandals.

They were definitely here, having a look around

and assessing what they could come back for, or planning what

we'd call a big job, and I think we were the next hit.

It's a terrifying thought.

Thieves so organised they raid a property twice -

once to destroy the security systems,

and then again to take whatever they want.

And this is just the latest in a long string of crimes

to hit the farm.

I think in the last, I'd say, two to five years,

particularly on this farm, we've seen more and more hits.

And it got to a point where you could almost set your watch,

that you were going to get hit every three months.

Thieves targeting the Dobneys' farm have stolen metal for scrap,

tools from sheds, batteries,

even building materials

and every loss is at a cost.

When they damaged the cameras, it was nearly £500 worth of damage.

Insurance is increasing the excess because of all the crimes,

so you can't claim for these smaller crimes,

so it's all coming out of your own pocket.

What's more, these attacks are taking an emotional toll.

I think most people in this rural area will tell you,

early hours of the morning,

you don't feel safe walking round your own yard,

because you never know who's around the corner, with an iron bar,

who may be there to take a battery

that they're going to get £5 for down at the scrapyard.

Across the country, farm theft is becoming a major problem.

Last year, almost £44 million was stolen from the farmers who

put food on our tables.

Over in neighbouring Cambridgeshire,

PC Richard Moore is all too aware of the increase in this kind of crime.

It's generally not your common petty crime

that you'd find in the cities, where it's opportunistic.

With rural crime, it generally tends to be a lot more targeted,

and, as such, premises are put under surveillance by criminals

before they go about their business.

Our biggest problem is things like theft of plant material -

tractors, combine harvesters, that sort of thing,

along with the theft of red diesel

and its subsequent sale on the black market as well.

Red diesel is supplied to farmers very cheaply,

for exclusive agricultural use.

Thieves who steal it can sell it on the black market.

This crime wave is spreading fear amongst the rural population.

What you can generally find is that a lot of the people who

live on the farms are relatively elderly as well

and it certainly appears to me that they can be quite isolated

and feel victimised and, you know, just kind of feel a bit helpless,

really, because they're so far out of the way from everybody else around.

But the feeling of danger on a remote farm does not just

affect the elderly.

A younger generation of farmers like James Peck

feel every bit as vulnerable.

People are afraid.

Because five of us live here on the farm,

when you hear noises, or the alarms go off, there is fear.

And someone's got to go out there

and hopefully not come across five men.

James's state-of-the-art set-up in Cambridgeshire

requires copious amounts of diesel.

This made him a target for a brazen attack.

They came at about two in the morning.

The lorries were parked down just below us

and the individuals concerned came across the fields.

Like the raid on Neil Dobney's farm,

this attack seemed highly organised.

The intruders came equipped with 4x4s and fuel pumps.

They were after just one thing -

as much diesel as they could get away with.

There were five of them, they were putting pumps onto the lorries

and they were drawing it back to the central tanks.

The 4x4s drove away from the farm to unload the stolen fuel

into a waiting tanker truck.

Then, they came back for more and more.

They were very organised and very quick.

We believe they emptied 5,000 litres

and the whole operation was under an hour.

5,000 litres - that's enough to fill up about 100 average-size cars.

The thieves took it all before James even realised anyone

was on his land.

I was absolutely amazed that they were able to come in

and commit that crime.

I thought we'd put enough security in place to prevent it,

but they must have been fully aware of everything we'd done

and the knowledge of our site was extraordinary.

Although James had some CCTV cameras in place,

the images he recorded of the crime

were not good enough to identify the perpetrators.

Now, along with many other farmers, he's fighting back

with security systems that wouldn't look out of place in a bank.

We are being watched effectively where we're stood now.

If anybody was to walk around in here, the alarms would go off.

We've put up 18 security cameras, CCTV,

which are controlled from my iPhone.

James also now has multiple defences against intruders,

remote monitoring of his fuel and fertiliser tanks

and electronic data-tagging for his expensive equipment.

You are just trying to make your farm more difficult to break into

than another's, as awful as that may sound.

But along with these hi-tech deterrents,

James is teaming up with police

to help develop new crime-prevention strategies.

Local Police Community Support Officer Carly Freed

is South Cambridgeshire's business watch expert.

She realised that with crimes like these on the increase,

it was time for a new approach.

Because of their business type, the nature of their world is

so different to what police officers normally deal with

and I don't feel that perhaps it's been as well understood as it could.

So, myself and a colleague, we got together

and we arranged some training sessions for police officers.

So, we wanted to borrow one of James's tractors.

James instead said that we could borrow his farm.

The police now take their teams on to James's farm to help educate

officers on the impact of these types of crimes.

So, we had police officers come here and we effectively took them

around the farm, showed them the tractors and the machinery

and the problems we were having and the value of the equipment

and I believe they got a lot out of it.

Today, Carly and PC Richard Moore are visiting James to check out

the new security he has put in place.

So, we're effectively funnelling, hopefully, the crime to an entrance

if they get in, and we'll be able to see them.

Do you feel from a personal-safety point of view

-that that was a benefit?

-I feel better, much better.

Together, police and farmers are determined to stamp out

this antisocial thievery

and leave the farmers to get on with their vital work.

And any thieves who still think that remote farms aren't moving

with the times would be wrong.

Neil Dobney has taken to social media

to track down the people who attacked his father's farm.

So I decided, spur of the moment, to post four of the images,

the still images from the CCTV footage,

hoping that if ten of my friends could share that image,

then potentially, with 100 possible friends on each of their pages,

that could hit 1,000 people.

1,000 local people and if it's a local person that's done it,

hopefully we'll be able to identify the person.

For me,

it was satisfying knowing that I'd done something to help my father.

If we can stop one of them, then I think we've achieved something.

If there's one thing

that's proved successful in the fight against crime,

it's the neighbourhood and community schemes

that encourage people to band together

and keep an eye out for criminal activity in their area.

And you're never too young or too old to get that message across.

Antisocial behaviour can blight the landscape,

causing communities to live in fear.

Perry Common in Birmingham

might not look like a place where that's the case,

but it was once an area beset by crime, burglary and fly-tipping.

Residents like 93-year-old Mary Harvey

remember well the dark times,

when houses being redeveloped were boarded up

and antisocial behaviour moved in.

The whole area of Perry Common, it was nasty living here.

Everyone you met had got something horrible.

My husband and I felt very vulnerable.

Mary had to face the terrifying experience

of being burgled three times.

We used to go out dancing a lot and, you know,

"Oh, is the house going to still be all right when we get back?"

We were broken into.

The first time, a lot of things were broken the first time.

Then one local resident decided that the community needed to

pull together to get rid of this antisocial menace.

Community Watch is my baby, I suppose.

It was set up really to allay the fear of crime

when the houses started to be demolished.

I suppose, along with me, people were complaining that the police

weren't standing on every street corner for 24 hours a day,

and that's what they wanted,

and we were never going to get that because it wasn't possible

so I took the, I suppose, leap of faith

and said, "Come on, let's do it ourselves."

OK, guys.

Wow, we've got a lot of people out tonight. Thanks ever so much.

Now, Linda and the Community Watch members regularly gather

to patrol the streets, visiting over 300 homes on their watch.

Getting involved has given a boost to some of the more

vulnerable members of the community.

When I lost my husband, I was lost.

We'd been married nearly 60 years.

Linda stopped me one day and said,

"Mary, why don't you come and join Community Watch?"

It had been going a month then,

so I came out and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Community Watch team aren't there to replace the police,

but keeping their eyes out

and ears to the ground for crime is vital.

I always say we're the missing link between residents

and neighbourhood policing.

I think there's a relationship built here.

I think that's the difference.

-Hello, Brenda.

-Hello, Brenda.

Oh! Don't take photographs of me! I'm in me nightie!

'It's the fear of crime that upsets people'

but people are not thinking that way now.

We're feeling safe in the community, which we're very, very proud of.

The police increasingly recognise the value of working hand in hand

with residents to keep antisocial behaviour at bay.

It just builds a good, strong link-up with the community.

It allows us to get a clear understanding

of what is concerning the community.

It allows us to get an understanding quickly of individuals that might

be responsible for local issues and concerns.

It allows us to straightaway develop a working strategy as partners

to target that behaviour.

Neighbourhood Watch schemes have sprung up all over the country,

with police and residents working together to keep their areas safe.

And in Romford, Essex, the Met Police are starting them young.

Right, police cadets, my name is Sue. This is my colleague Ben.

We are from Romford Town Neighbourhood Policing Team.

What we are going to do tonight is go to two residential streets.

We're going to knock on the doors

and encourage neighbours to join up to the Neighbourhood Watch teams.

In front of you, you have a clipboard with some sign-up sheets underneath.

You need to encourage them to join

so you need to be enthusiastic, you need to smile at the people

and do what you normally do.

In behind the other pair. Yeah, pairs, there we go.

These police cadets need to do ten hours' volunteering a month

to show their commitment to policing,

and that starts with helping get residents involved.

'Priority crime in Romford is burglary.'

Most of the residents are worried about that, so joining up

to the Neighbourhood Watch allows us to give them crime-prevention advice

in regards of burglary, we can let them know what's going on in

their road, we can let them know what is going on in surrounding roads.

Good evening. We're from the Romford Town Neighbourhood Policing Team

and wondered if you'd like to join the Neighbourhood Watch scheme.

-Yes, I would.

-All you have to do is prove your name...

'We were out one Sunday, and when we came back'

somebody had broken in and stolen some jewellery.

We never got it back.

When you go into people's houses, you hear about people getting

burgled and stuff like that. You feel like you're helping people

by giving them that crime-prevention advice.

My daughter's house got the windows broken at the back

and completely ransacked.

Anything that will help is good by me, yeah.

We actually got the garage broke into when we first moved here

and everything, like me motorbikes and that, got taken.

Do you have an e-mail address you could put on the sign-up form?

'Two things, really. One is, you get to know your neighbours.'

From a financial perspective,

it is good for insurance purposes, so I save money.

Right, cadets, we're finished now

so if we can all make our way back to the station?

Job done, the cadets have helped another community get connected

to their local police.

I'm not sure they really understand

the full impact of the job they are doing,

but it is certainly a worthwhile job from our perspective.

To be able to communicate so easily now with all these residents

really is going to make our life so much easier.

If we have a burglary down that street now,

we can, just by sending an e-mail out to a co-ordinator,

can feed all that information out to all the residents.

And back in Birmingham, Community Watch veteran Linda

can vouch for the huge difference

schemes like hers have made to the residents' quality of life.

Some research was done by the police as to the reduction in crime

in Perry Common, almost since Community Watch had started, really,

and burglaries in Perry Common had reduced by 46%,

car crime by 26% and assaults by 9%.

It's not just us that's done that,

but I'd like to think we've played an integral part in that.

Antisocial behaviour, be it intimidation, excessive noise,

fly-tipping, graffiti or vandalism,

is just not what you or I should expect to have to put up with.

But there are people all over the UK whose lives are ruined by it,

so it's just as well there are people we can turn to.

We're on the front line

with the highly skilled teams of council workers...

It's my job to get the evidence.

We'll find her and she'll pay.

..police officers...

I saw you urinate on the pavement.

..and volunteers who are committed

to keeping our streets safe and clean

and taking on our antisocial battles on a daily basis,

to make sure our lives are not blighted

by other people's bad behaviour.

This is Street Patrol UK.

Earlier, enforcement officers Paul Morris and Martin Jones

from Carmarthenshire County Council were out on the trail of fly-tippers

who dumped shocking toxic waste all over the county.

People drive in, dump whatever they have in the back of their van

and off they go with no consequences, no witnesses.

Convenient for them, you know?

The council is determined to get tough on this sort of antisocial

and illegal behaviour,

which costs them a quarter of a million pounds a year to deal with.

So they have introduced a clever technique

designed to catch fly-tippers red-handed - hidden cameras.

We are trying to be one step ahead of fly-tippers now.

Because they don't tend to leave evidence within the waste.

What it is is a normal trade refuse bin,

but inside it there's two cameras, which are covertly hidden.

It depends on the application.

The scenario will dictate

whether this goes in or another piece of equipment.

This is just a tool in the toolbox, ready to be deployed if needed.

This is another device.

Similar sort of technique.

There's a battery source at the bottom,

and then there is a camera which is basically there,

which you can't see.

This hi-tech gadgetry has had some great results.

The secret cameras have been used over 100 times,

filming at hot spots in residential areas and out in the countryside.

The idea is simple.

The council's fly-tipper trap

is left wherever they suspect dumpers may strike.

And without even realising, the criminals are caught in the act.

We've caught a number of people who are committing offences.

We've ranged from people throwing out of vehicles,

we've caught fly-tippers there, commercial people there.

We're trying to gather the evidence to prosecute people.

CCTV cameras have been so successful that the council has started

looking at using other recording equipment in their investigations.

This is the other device that we use.

It's a body-cam, in effect,

and as you can see on there, it's highly marked "CCTV"

and how it operates is, pull the switch down,

it now becomes live

with video and audio.

This has become very, very useful when dealing with offenders.

It was used to interview this 26-year-old man, suspected

of dumping a large quantity of asbestos sheets in a river.

-Your words and actions are being recorded, OK?

-Sure.

-We've had a report of asbestos being tipped back in November.

-Right.

At first, he denies all knowledge.

I haven't done anything with no asbestos anyway.

But once he's shown a photo of the vehicle

and told there's an eyewitness testimony, his memory is jogged.

I might have been in the truck at the time, whatever,

but I haven't done anything.

And he recalls that some asbestos DID fall into the river after all.

And it all come off the back of the truck into the river.

Following this interview, the man pleaded guilty

and was fined £350 for his part in this crime.

So, for any thoughtless antisocial criminals out there

who might be thinking of dumping waste - watch out.

Someone could be watching you.

Countryside living.

Getting away from the big smoke,

waking up to the smell of fresh air and the sound of songbirds.

Sounds idyllic, doesn't it?

But what if that tranquillity was suddenly turned upside down?

In our last series,

we featured villagers from Meriden in the West Midlands,

some of whom told us their lives were turned upside-down

with the arrival of a group of travellers who bought

this greenbelt land right on the edge of their picturesque village.

The travellers were trying to develop the land

into a residential site,

which some of the residents claimed was disruptive.

To find, suddenly, one Bank Holiday Friday,

that tranquillity, that amenity,

is literally being devastated and smashed

by bulldozers, earth-moving vehicles, is hugely traumatic.

The travellers denied this noise was in any way excessive.

Some villagers were also concerned the travellers were breaching

planning regulations by commencing work before

they had planning permission, which they applied for retrospectively.

It was about planning and developing on a piece of greenbelt land.

If anyone could come along and just buy an agricultural field

and start developing it into accommodation...

Not right, it's not right. You've got anarchy.

Some of the villagers began petitioning the council

and formed an action group -

Meriden Residents Against Inappropriate Development, or RAID.

They created a human blockade

to stop lorries delivering onto the site, led by David McGrath.

This is where the residents' protest site was.

We had a brazier there, some flimsy awning over there

and this was maintained on a 24-hour basis for three years.

The 24-hour vigil led to tensions

and some villagers alleging that they were being intimidated

by the travellers.

These claims have all been strongly denied by the travellers,

who also denied that they caused any damage to the village.

Over the next three years,

we've fought 20 legal planning and technical decisions

to prove that it's an inappropriate development

and it shouldn't have been allowed.

That's cost £90,000 of the community's money.

It's taken three years of 24-hour protesting.

It's involved visits to Westminster,

the European Parliament, the council and the high courts,

all to protect what we cherish.

The travellers lost every appeal

and finally left the site after they were unable to develop it.

But this year, Solihull Council, who recognise

the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Irish travellers in the borough,

has provided them with access to a new site.

Let's hope everyone is happy.

Well, that's your lot for today. Thanks for watching.