SAS Catching the Criminals S01E09 (2024)
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00:00Covert surveillance, reconnaissance, deception, stealth, and disruption.
00:07These are the skills I learned on the military front line,
00:11and they can be used to combat a different enemy.
00:15Britain's criminals.
00:17Police! Police!
00:20That's the team thrown into position now.
00:22My name is Billy Billingham, and I spent over 20 years in the SAS.
00:29Now I'm going to show you how SAS tactics are helping to crack down
00:34on anti-social crime across Britain.
00:37All teams now in position.
00:39Strike, strike, strike.
00:40Some enforcement agencies are already using SAS tactics to hunt criminals.
00:45Check this out. This is exactly what they were looking for.
00:49Hey, presto.
00:51And I want to find out how much the police are doing too.
00:54Go, go, go.
00:57She's going to pick up a target right now.
00:59You're lying, aren't you? And you know very well it's illegal.
01:02Let's go. You need to move quick. Stand by.
01:04Banged up, job done.
01:19One thing I was taught in the military was to look closely at intelligence
01:24and decipher what it is telling us.
01:27Small clues can be an indicator of a much bigger problem.
01:38Here on the streets of the Midlands.
01:40In fact, we're in Staffordshire with the Staffordshire Police.
01:42We're going to take down a cannabis farm.
01:45In fact, we're going to take down four.
01:47Simultaneous raids, very similar to the military way of life.
01:50We're going to hit them hard and take these drugs off our streets.
01:57I'm heading to a briefing with Staffordshire Police.
02:00A very specific piece of intel has led them to suspect serious criminal activity.
02:06Thanks, everybody, for coming in today.
02:08Essentially, we're looking at executing four drugs warrants in the Tunstall area,
02:13focusing on the cultivation of cannabis.
02:16Obviously, the number of cannabis grows that we've got at Stoke North is going through the roof.
02:21And we've identified, through intel, four addresses that are linked
02:24that either have a cannabis cultivation inside
02:27or are being used to house growers responsible for that cultivation.
02:33Cannabis grows have become a serious problem in the UK.
02:36Drug dealers can now grow plants and sell it without having to smuggle anything into the UK.
02:42But that means cannabis gardeners are now active in Britain.
02:46If we do locate people inside, let's make sure that we do get them secure.
02:50Let's get them in cuffs as soon as we can. Let's get them searched.
02:53I served in Afghanistan, where a lot of these type of drugs used to be grown.
02:58I know it's big business.
03:00In one nationwide crackdown, police found 1,000 working cannabis farms across the country.
03:06And cannabis seizures are up 7%.
03:09We're not talking about one person that smokes a little bit of cannabis recreational at the weekend.
03:15We're talking about proper organised crime, people that will take over an address.
03:20Some addresses aren't even rented. They literally just take over an empty property.
03:25So doing four warrants all in the same area that are no doubt linked,
03:29for me, is going to send a real message out.
03:34The team will split up now.
03:36In the army, we call this a shake-out, with multiple targets.
03:40OK, the thing with this is it's quite a risky situation when you think these organised gangs,
03:45they're always expected to be raided by other organised gangs.
03:48They're not so much thinking about the police, so they'll protect it, they'll have booby traps,
03:52they'll get quite aggressive at times. It can be a risky moment, but let's see what happens.
03:59SAS operations are covert and quiet,
04:02but this team want the cannabis gang to know who they are.
04:06We will get organised crime groups taxing each other, so in essence robbing each other.
04:10So when we go through this door, they won't know whether this is an arrival organised crime group
04:14or the police, and that's why we have to make sure that we advertise that
04:17and articulate that as best as we can when we go in,
04:19because they won't know the difference until they come face-to-face with us.
04:22So that's us just rolling into the RV now.
04:25As you can see, the team are forming up.
04:27The enforcer at the front there, that's the guy that will open the door when required.
04:39The team sweep through the street silently in case suspects have spotters.
04:43The silent approach stops once they get to the target's addresses,
04:47two properties, SAS and the cannabis gang.
04:50The approach stops once they get to the target's addresses, two properties, side by side.
04:56Police, open the door!
05:16Two side doors smashed.
05:18The shouts are to confirm this isn't a rival gang raiding the house.
05:25Why didn't you answer the door?
05:27You didn't hear? Why didn't you answer the door?
05:32Not sure I believe that, but there's a shout.
05:43Police!
05:45Check this out.
05:49So this, this is exactly what they were looking for.
05:52As suspected, this unremarkable house is hiding a cannabis grow.
05:57Off camera, the man suggests someone else is in the house,
06:01but now he says there's no-one.
06:03Is there any other person in here?
06:05No.
06:06He's now saying that the house isn't here.
06:08With a large amount of plants and kit downstairs,
06:12police think this is the work of a gang.
06:15But so far can only find this guy.
06:18I wonder what he knows.
06:23I've been on missions where I've been heavily outnumbered.
06:27In that situation, you have to find a way to push through the fear
06:32and still do your job.
06:36It takes bravery, and in one case, the will to protect animals.
06:41Stu Grant works for Bedfordshire Police's rural crime team.
06:46So as part of the wildlife and rural crime team,
06:48we deal with wildlife and rural crime.
06:50Which breaks down into things like poaching, illegal haircoursing,
06:53fox hunting, basically anything that deeply impacts the rural communities
06:57and primarily the farming community.
07:01They're a small team with a lot of ground to cover.
07:04We cover the whole of the county with nine police officers,
07:07and having the right resources in the right place at the right time
07:10is a big ask.
07:14Large parts of Bedfordshire are rural,
07:16so Stu and the team are often out and about.
07:19I've always had a fascination with wildlife, nature and animals anyway.
07:22I grew up watching all creatures, great and small,
07:24and ironically wanted to be an agricultural vet,
07:27but, yeah, things changed.
07:29Different career aspirations between then and now,
07:31and now I can combine wildlife, animals, nature and the police,
07:34which is a fantastic opportunity.
07:36And it doesn't get a lot more beautiful than that.
07:41And haircoursing is a big part of the team.
07:45And haircoursing is one of the biggest challenges
07:47the rural crime team face.
07:50This is the sort of area where we have a lot of haircoursing problems.
07:53Hares, unlike rabbits, live on top of the ground,
07:55so during the day they're laying down on the ground in their forms
07:58and probably not visible to the human eye.
08:00So what you'll find with the haircoursers
08:02is they use equipment like thermal imaging,
08:04where they'll pick up the heat signature of hares
08:06laying in their forms in the field,
08:08and then once they've identified that heat signature
08:10then they'll either use people on foot walking a line,
08:13a beating line at a pheasant shoot,
08:15to put that hair up, ready for them to slip the dogs
08:17and let the dogs chase them,
08:19or alternatively, which seems to be the laziest option,
08:22is to use the Subarus or the like 4x4s,
08:25and then that's where you get significant crop damage.
08:28Haircoursing involves setting dogs out to track and catch hares.
08:32It's an extremely cruel activity,
08:34but the scale of one incident
08:36took even experienced officers by surprise
08:39and took considerable courage to deal with.
08:43This footage was seized from a person attending an illegal event.
08:47It was filmed near Bedford
08:49and is actually a funeral cottage for a local man.
08:52He was a notorious haircourser
08:54and by way of a send-off,
08:56his relatives organised a haircoursing event
08:58on the way to the crematorium.
09:02When we first turned up, there was haircoursing on a couple of the fields
09:05and vehicles parked on the far side.
09:07That was the point where we realised the scale of what was going on
09:10was such mass attendance, something I'd never seen before,
09:13and the numbers of people there with dogs in vans
09:15ready to go out after the first dogs had been run.
09:19Haircoursing is illegal.
09:21Coursers usually flee when confronted by police,
09:24but not this time.
09:26And the number of spectators that were there,
09:28vehicles left on the roadside,
09:30it was something I'd never experienced before.
09:32We realised we were never, ever going to be able to arrest anyone.
09:36We had three police officers on the field
09:39with the haircoursers.
09:40That was a fight we were never going to win.
09:42With police so heavily outnumbered on the day,
09:45they knew they couldn't win the battle,
09:48but saw a way to win the war.
09:50So we turned on our body-worn video cameras
09:53and we engaged with the haircoursers and the guys spectating,
09:57using a bit of banter and a bit of boyish charm,
10:01just chatting with them, but catching those images
10:04of their faces, of the people that were involved,
10:07but also the acts that were going on.
10:09These images filmed by police were used as evidence
10:13of who was in attendance at a brutal and unnecessary event.
10:17Stu and his colleagues made sure his footage told the tale.
10:21One of the hares was killed probably only about 20 metres
10:24off the bonnet of my police vehicle.
10:26In the background here, so you've got two dogs on a hare.
10:30The vehicles are coming round the outside, presumably to video,
10:34and prevent the hare from going to cover,
10:36which is going to be the hare's natural instinct.
10:38You've got people hanging out at the top of the sunroof, videoing,
10:42and that's the point where the hare gets killed.
10:47The coursing was filmed by us too.
10:49The coursers who had turned up believed they were present
10:53in such numbers that the police simply couldn't do anything.
10:56People spectating the harecoursing were basically shouting at us
10:59to get our vehicle out of the way,
11:01otherwise our vehicle would get smashed up.
11:03So the implications of us being there were quite real
11:06and that's quite an uncomfortable place to be.
11:08But all the time, the team kept the cameras rolling,
11:11knowing the way to beat the coursers was to film and prosecute them.
11:15On the day we've exploited their overconfidence,
11:18they were there in such sheer numbers and they were so confident
11:22that they could get on with what they were doing
11:24without us being able to do a single thing,
11:27that us being there talking to them just quite frankly
11:30didn't sit on their radar as a threat to them.
11:32So the fact that our body-worn video cameras were recording
11:35and it just wasn't on their radar,
11:38and then we've used that footage later on to generate stills
11:42to then do all the hard work to identify those individuals afterwards.
11:50After finishing up at the field, the coursers drove through Bedford,
11:54many vehicles in convoy, and with the hares they had killed on display.
11:59They didn't realise that the clock had started ticking on them.
12:04We have six months to prosecute under the Hunting Act
12:07to work through that footage,
12:09gather stills of all those individuals and identify them.
12:12He'd been outnumbered, but like a Special Forces soldier,
12:15Stuart had fought the criminals nonetheless.
12:18So off the back of that, I was then going through
12:20the National Wildlife Crime Unit
12:22and getting those images sent out to all the wildlife crime-trained officers
12:26that we have within the UK.
12:28So we then started to build a case of,
12:30actually, we've got quite a few identifications here.
12:32We worked our way up to 15 identifications,
12:35and that was backed up with the use of facial recognition software as well.
12:39The Rural Crime Team officers' decision to walk in
12:42amongst the brazen hare coursers had paid off.
12:4515 people identified from this footage were taken to court
12:49and convicted for their part in this brutal activity.
12:52When it came to individuals being convicted at court,
12:55there was no challenge to the evidence that we'd built up
12:58and the case file we'd put forward, so that was great in itself.
13:01Off the back of that guilty plea,
13:03they all received fines of about £300, £400,
13:06which almost seems inconsequential.
13:08But the actions of the police meant that the cruel hare coursers
13:11were punished for what they did.
13:13It was a victory for the Wildlife Crime Team
13:16and for Stu's bravery.
13:19Is that all clear?
13:21I'm back with Staffordshire Police
13:23on a raid against illegal cannabis growers hidden on a suburban street.
13:27Police have found young plants growing in the basement
13:30and a suspect who won't talk much.
13:33I think I recognise the man's accent
13:35from the time I spent in the SAS serving in the Balkans.
13:39Do you speak English?
13:42It's OK.
13:44Where are you from?
13:46Albania.
13:48Are you here alone, in the house?
13:51Some more people here?
13:58Come on, you do know.
14:00You're not here alone. We'll find them.
14:03We'll find them.
14:05We'll find them.
14:07We'll find them.
14:10We'll find them.
14:12If the dogs come in, they're likely to get hurt,
14:14so you need to tell us.
14:16No-one's going anywhere now. We will find them.
14:24You are here alone?
14:27You sure?
14:30OK.
14:32You speak good English as well, huh?
14:34You do speak good English.
14:36You understand?
14:40Are there any more people in this house?
14:44Any more people? Are they hiding?
14:46No-one else in this house? You're sure about that?
14:49Do you have any weapons?
14:51Any knives? Any guns in here?
14:53There's guns? Any guns?
14:56No guns.
14:58Knife? Nothing in here?
15:00This guy ain't saying much,
15:02but upstairs there's evidence of a major illegal growth
15:06and a clue as to what gave this otherwise normal-looking house away to the police.
15:11Whoa.
15:16So, downstairs you've got a small nursery, if you like,
15:19and up here you've got a mature nursery.
15:21Look, as you can see, there's probably about 60 or 70 plants at least here.
15:25All the power source along the back,
15:27which I'm pretty sure they didn't go for health and safety on that one.
15:31What you can't appreciate here on camera,
15:33the smell from the plants is overpowering and I have to get out.
15:37But the amount of wiring and power being drawn by a grow like this,
15:42with the lights and the fans, it's gigantic.
15:45And the truth is, that's what gave the gang working here away.
15:49So one of the pieces of information that we had around these grows
15:52was that National Grid had picked up that in this area
15:56there was a huge amount of strain being put on the network.
15:59So far more than people just watching Natalia boiling a kettle,
16:02what essentially is a small residential area,
16:05which obviously then, along with the other intel, is why we're here today.
16:09Intelligence is crucial.
16:11The police had a good idea of what was happening
16:14when they saw a sudden spike in electricity usage.
16:17When they tap in illegally to the mains,
16:20obviously we contact National Grid,
16:22they'll make it safe to work in here and obviously look at disconnecting them.
16:26But it's not just dangers from electricity.
16:29I'm hearing that homegrown drugs are more dangerous than they ever used to be.
16:34Marta De Forte is a consultant psychiatrist at King's College London.
16:39She has been studying people who use cannabis
16:42and the effects it has on their minds.
16:45So my particular focus in relation to my work in psychosis
16:50is actually the role that cannabis plays
16:52and seeing that those who actually have used cannabis,
16:55particularly in their teens,
16:57are more likely, when they come to their early 20s,
17:00to actually suffer from a psychotic disorder.
17:03And many clinicians are worried about the actual strain of cannabis
17:06that is being grown here.
17:08It's a strain that is far stronger
17:10than ever seen on the streets of Britain when I was young.
17:14There is lots of interest for high-potency cannabis,
17:18and for high-potency I intend type of cannabis
17:21where there is a sort of high concentration,
17:24particularly of one of cannabis' ingredients, which is THC.
17:28And THC is what tends to give potency to cannabis
17:31because it's what is responsible for the high and for the adverse effect.
17:36The THC is also responsible for people being more likely to become dependent.
17:41Then, of course, if you are a drug dealer,
17:43you're more likely to push for a type of cannabis that gets you people back.
17:47And so you're more likely to want to sell high-THC type of cannabis.
17:52People seek the high, and so you're more likely to be driven
17:55for a type of cannabis that is highly concentrated.
17:58A sample of this cannabis will be tested,
18:00but the health risks it poses mean illegal grows need to be targeted.
18:05It's certainly easier to tattle drugs grown here
18:08than it would be in Afghanistan.
18:10The majority of the cannabis that you can buy in UK,
18:13and I know particularly in the London area,
18:15is actually cultivated in our country,
18:18when before, up to six, seven years ago,
18:21it was predominantly imported from places like Morocco or Afghanistan and Pakistan.
18:28Drawing a massive amount of electricity gave the grow away.
18:32But just like in the military, police now need to look for the ringleaders
18:36to make sure they don't grow any more.
18:40Thinking outside the box is often crucial to special forces missions.
18:46And that approach works just as well
18:49when you're fighting crime on the streets of Britain.
18:58In Greater Manchester, local resident Andy
19:01is about to start patrolling the streets where he lives.
19:05I started Crimewatchers because I found somebody trying to attempt
19:08to burgle my mum's next-door neighbour's house.
19:11I then put that on the local social media page,
19:13informing people that people's out burgling houses
19:16and that the next night I would be out to patrol the streets to deter crime.
19:20And ever since that night, we've been patrolling since,
19:23going out in the area from 12 and 6.
19:25Andy was so worried that he and his friends
19:28decided to go to the local police station
19:31Andy was so worried that he and his friends
19:34decided to go out regularly to deter crime
19:37and help the community they love.
19:39They're a new kind of neighbourhood watch.
19:42Yes, lads, you're good.
19:44Yeah, take it easy, boys. Nice one.
19:46Cheesing a bit.
19:48They work in conjunction with local residents
19:51and have a good relationship with the police.
19:54We operate in Drylsden patrolling the streets each night
19:57and the majority of the time we're seeing familiar incidents each night,
20:01such as people trying car doors.
20:03They'll be out all night walking round for any opportunity they can get
20:06and that could be car doors left open.
20:08If they see an open gate to the round side of your house,
20:10they'll go and have a look round the side of the house.
20:12They're going through your sheds.
20:14Andy and his team think they can deter thieves in their area
20:18by being visible.
20:20Police advise them they would need to approach their patrols
20:23in a professional manner to be accepted.
20:26So the group now has eight insured, trained, licensed and uniformed members,
20:33all working within the law to be a deterrent to crime
20:36in the community that they live in.
20:38And Dog Shadow joins the patrol too.
20:41We'll go and check this new estate where we've been asked to patrol
20:45because they've had a lot of activity recently
20:47and they're messaging us at the moment asking us to patrol their area
20:50and their estate because they've got people wandering round
20:52from ten o'clock onwards trying car doors and house doors.
20:55And a neighbourhood watch that has boots on the ground
20:58gets all kinds of results.
21:02The amount of crime we've prevented, the amount of people we've arrested,
21:05the amount of incidents we've assisted with,
21:07it really would make a big difference to an area over three years, definitely.
21:12We've recovered a countless amount of pill bikes, mopeds, quads,
21:16grandmas' bedding, sentimental goods and stuff like that, laptops, PCs.
21:21I don't think that everybody who's on the streets at 2, 3 in the morning
21:25wearing a hood is up to no good.
21:28You know, we was all teenagers once, we've been out and about on the streets
21:32and we don't judge everybody who's out,
21:34but we'll try and speak to everybody and interact with people
21:37and let people know that we are out and about on the streets.
21:40But when they first formed in 2020,
21:43some people were suspicious until the group won them round.
21:47We've got empathy for the people that we're dealing with every night
21:50and we do have to detain and treat them with respect.
21:52We've all DBS checked, we're passionate about the community,
21:55we care about the community, we want to do good.
21:58In the military, we call this a reassurance patrol,
22:01letting the good guys and the bad guys know that we're out and about.
22:06I take pictures so people can see where we've been on patrol each day.
22:09So we've covered different streets, different areas,
22:12and people can see if we've been on their street or in their area.
22:16And after patrolling until the early hours of the morning,
22:19Andy is convinced he's making a difference,
22:22right on the streets where he lives.
22:24So over the next few years, I would love for help over communities
22:28to help as many people as possible
22:30and things are going to stay as positive as they have.
22:32It's hard to know how many crimes have been prevented by the patrols,
22:36but Andy is confident that being out on the streets and visible
22:41is making the criminals in his town stay at home.
22:50I'm out with Staffordshire Police,
22:52hunting cannabis groves on Operation Leverdrome.
22:55They've raided two houses on a residential street.
22:58They also hit the house opposite and ran into resistance.
23:02One of the officers shouted for assistance.
23:04She'd looked through the front window and seen somebody
23:06trying to make off in the property.
23:08Obviously, we forced entry. He tried to escape out to the back.
23:11He was detained, luckily, by officers at the rear
23:13and gave quite a good fight in his attempt to get away,
23:15but he was detained by officers.
23:17The other thing the bloke I spoke to earlier knew there was a guy
23:20at the house opposite too, but he didn't want to say.
23:23Wow.
23:24I'm now getting a look at what I suspect he was cultivating inside.
23:28So, basically, I'm surrounded.
23:30It's like being in a Christmas tree plantation,
23:32which is actually just weed.
23:34There's just over 100 plants in here.
23:37God knows what the street value is.
23:40In the next room, officers have started stripping out
23:43a source of great danger, and it's not the plants.
23:46This place is drawing out enormous power, illegally and unsafely.
23:51See that down there? Yeah.
23:53Something's been on fire there.
23:55Looks like some of the plastic's melted.
23:57Yeah. You can see the heat there, can't you?
23:59So, the risk to everybody else's life,
24:01and they've just got no consideration for it at all.
24:03So, you'd imagine if there was a fire here... Yeah.
24:05Obviously, this is a terraced house, isn't it?
24:07So, you've potentially got families either side adjoining to it.
24:10There's a huge amount of risk.
24:13Money drives people to risk their lives and get arrested.
24:17How much was this place set to make, I wonder?
24:20Hidden away on a quiet street.
24:23What sort of street value per household here, would you say?
24:26You're talking tens of thousands of pounds worth of street value,
24:29in terms of, as well, you've also got multiple yields as well,
24:32so they'll crop this and then go again.
24:34Oh, it's a continuing process? It's a continuing process, yeah.
24:37You can go into six figures in the street alone.
24:39How long does it take from start to finish?
24:41The idea is to grow it as quickly as possible,
24:43so you're talking a turnaround of a matter of weeks,
24:46you know, weeks to turn it around.
24:48For £10,000 a week, basically? At least, yeah, at least.
24:51And local growers like this use smart marketing ploys.
24:55One of the most commonly used type of cannabis in the London streets
24:59now is Kali.
25:00This is a very good marketing strategy,
25:02because Kali stands for California.
25:04So, there is this idea that if you buy Kali in London,
25:07it comes from sunny California,
25:09where it's grown in a natural way, without pesticides,
25:12where actually it's nothing else but skunk
25:14that's been in one of these indoor plantations
25:17that British police is seizing.
25:21It seems like the drug gangs have it all sorted.
25:24But the truth is, we're about to cost them a fortune.
25:28OK, so this operation now has gone into the next phase,
25:31so we've had the initial strike and detain.
25:34The initial search has been done.
25:36Forensics have now just been on site, done their piece.
25:38Next phase is the team are going to go in,
25:41take down all the plants inside,
25:43break them all down, break down all the equipment
25:45so it can't be used again, and then that's going to be taken away.
25:48Some of it will be used again for further evidence later on down the line.
25:54Each plant is worth about £1,000 per grow,
25:57so destroying all of these is pulling a massive sum of money
26:02away from the criminals.
26:04After all that clearing, I've got in my hands
26:07what a gang were hoping to sell on the streets of Staffordshire.
26:10There's the result. Job done.
26:16OK, so overall, a really good day.
26:18And, again, very much like a military operation,
26:20from the planning that you guys done, the surveillance, build-up to it,
26:23and then to the strike, the arrests and detaining,
26:28and then taking the whole thing out of production.
26:30Again, in military world, that would be a great operation,
26:34and you've just proved, with you guys,
26:36you've just done a great job there, mate. Thank you.
26:38Well done.
26:40No fines were made at the fourth property they looked at,
26:43but with all this evidence seized, there's no doubt
26:46that the man found inside one of the houses
26:49and the man arrested off-camera have questions to answer.
26:52Who's behind this grow?
26:54Police hope he'll tell what he knows.
26:57Operation Levedrone, here with Staffordshire Police, total success.
27:01Three cannabis farms taken down, two people in custody,
27:05one great operation, and there's more to follow.
27:18Some criminals think they're well hidden behind closed doors,
27:22but clever surveillance can catch them out.
27:25Just like in the military, we're always on the lookout
27:29for any giveaways the bad guys leave.
27:35MUSIC
28:05.