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00:01Hello, police emergency.
00:08I'm pleased to be here!
00:21We'll work around the clock if it means putting criminals behind bars.
00:24It only takes that one mistake for us to catch you.
00:27Crime doesn't pay. You will be caught.
00:36More than 400,000 houses in the UK are burgled every year.
00:41The aftermath can be devastating for those whose homes have been violated.
00:47When investigating these crimes, detectives come across all manner of sly tactics,
00:52from the use of disguises to staking out houses.
00:58Wrexham, Autumn 2023.
01:02The North Wales police were facing a series of burglaries
01:05where gold jewellery with sentimental value was being targeted.
01:09It felt like a violation.
01:19You feel unsafe, you feel angry.
01:22They felt like someone had totally invaded that space and our sense of home and belonging.
01:31Cleaning products had been used indicating it was a well-organised crime rather than an opportunistic burglary.
01:37In September 2023, two burglaries sharing striking similarities took place within 24 hours and just two miles from each other.
01:56Both were reported to North Wales police.
02:00We could tell almost immediately we were different to what we'd normally see.
02:05Expensive items such as laptops and computers were left, but specifically the gold jewellery was stolen in these fences.
02:11First offence, a quantity of gold jewellery worth around £17,500.
02:18And then the second offence, again, gold jewellery, this time worth around £3,000.
02:23But specifically, and really distressing for the victims, was some engraved wedding rings were stolen during these offences,
02:31so real sentimental items that are difficult to get back for the family.
02:39Investigators discovered the offenders had taken steps to avoid leaving fingerprints or DNA.
02:47As they entered the address, they could smell a faint smell of bleach.
02:50During that examination, they could see on windows and clear surfaces that there was evidence of dripping cleaning fluids down the windows,
02:59so it was really clear that something had been sprayed over those surfaces.
03:04If there's something in your nose that it's not a one-off, you usually do get that feeling that there's going to be a few more to follow.
03:12And there were, a few days later on the 2nd of October.
03:17We have the third offence.
03:18It was clear to investigators, as soon as we could see the MO and what we saw at the scene, that it was linked to the previous two offences on the 28th.
03:26It is organised criminality, and they are targeting specifically Asian families, knowing that there is family gold.
03:33It is passed down from generation to generation, so there's clearly a lot of sentimental value to that property.
03:38This time, investigators were able to gather vital evidence about the car the burglars were using.
03:50CCTV in the vicinity identified a maroon Vauxhall Vectra, which was very similar in style and shape to the one scene in the other offences.
03:56We know we've got three to four offenders. We know we've got three to four offenders. We know they're masked up, and now we know that they're driving a maroon Vauxhall Vectra to these offences.
04:06So, as the offences go on, the picture around it is building for us.
04:09Police established that in all three cases, the break-ins were carried out within a couple of hours of the owners going out, suggesting the offenders were scoping out their targets.
04:22And there was no sign of them stopping.
04:26So now we're on 3rd of October, and we have two further offences. Again, both within the Wrexham area.
04:39This home is a safe place for us all the time. It's a comfort.
04:47And it's where family belongs. Then it was shattered by the burglar.
05:03Arlene Alano, her husband and family, were on the offenders' hit list, but this time the gang were caught on CCTV.
05:12This really is the first time as an investigation team where we see the offenders, we see who we're dealing with,
05:16you know you're looking at your offender in the eye, but you still can't identify them.
05:23For the family, the break-in was a terrible shock, especially as they'd just returned from collecting their son Koki from hospital.
05:30It was a tough time. I was mid-cancer, mid-treatment, but the surgery had finished.
05:37Came home hoping to finally be back in my bed, be home with family, home-cooked meals, everything.
05:44But that is, that's not what happened.
05:50And I heard my dad screaming. We just got burgled.
05:54Someone came to our house, destroyed everything.
05:57There was glass everywhere.
05:59What we saw in our room is, everything is all over.
06:06Clothes, boxes, everything is a mess.
06:14I just sat there, and I just do that, and I cried.
06:19I feel like, I feel sorry of myself.
06:24It's like, why of all the time?
06:28Why this is the most vulnerable time for us to have this experience?
06:36Valuable laptops and phones were left behind,
06:40but the thieves had taken £12,000 worth of the family's gold jewellery.
06:45Dad's wedding ring, he lost that. That was quite a painful gut punch.
06:56After a fifth burglary, DI Chris Owen launched Operation Guard
07:02and assembled a dedicated team to track these offenders down.
07:08It was during this early stage.
07:10Some really good work done by the local intelligence team here
07:12identified a voxel vector that may be of interest.
07:16It was involved in a suspicious incident in another force area.
07:20While the team worked to establish if the cases were linked,
07:24they also scrutinised the CCTV from the burglary
07:27at the Alarno family home,
07:29and they had an extraordinary stroke of luck.
07:33It was almost impossible to make a facial recognition
07:36or identification of a suspect,
07:37but what we saw quite clearly was that they were wearing builder's gloves.
07:41They were aware of the internal cameras,
07:43and within the living room, we've seen one of the offenders
07:45who'd actually removed the camera from the wall.
07:48In doing this, he's given us a really good view of the back of his glove.
07:54This led us to a local hardware store in Wrexham.
07:58It was one of the only places locally
07:59that you could pick up that specific make and model a glove.
08:02It was whilst making this inquiry that a member of staff overheard the conversation.
08:08He's identified two males walking from the direction of the store,
08:12and he's observed them pulling gloves from their trousers.
08:15It was a real breakthrough in the investigation,
08:19and even better than that, he actually had a dash cam in his vehicle
08:22that recorded this incident for us.
08:24And you see the two males walking from the direction of the store,
08:28appearing to remove items from the front of their trousers.
08:30We send that out for an identification bulletin locally,
08:34and a police officer from Wrexham then identifies these two males,
08:37one being Q Delaney and the other being Todd Wickens,
08:40both known to police locally here in Wrexham.
08:43The two suspects were seen getting into a BMW,
08:47which police discovered had recently been bought in Merseyside.
08:52As investigators traced its movements back to Wrexham,
08:55it appeared to be in convoy with a silver Audi.
08:58That Audi is registered to a local male from Wrexham.
09:03None other than Q Delaney, who was already on their radar.
09:08Next, the team uncovered footage of the two suspects buying the Vauxhall Vectra,
09:14spotted at the time of the burglaries.
09:15And what this shows us there is that, yet again, we've got Q Delaney and Todd Wickens involved in the purchase of that vehicle.
09:24Investigators were confident they had identified two of the men involved and three of the cars being used, but they needed more.
09:36I'm really conscious that it is purely a circumstantial case.
09:40I've got to be able to convince a jury that the only reasonable explanation of this circumstantial case is that those people are responsible.
09:47So to make arrests too early would only highlight our knowledge of what's going on, send the offenders more underground and potentially frustrate the investigation.
09:57So to find them in possession of either some cash or some jewellery really would be that final nail in the coffin of this case.
10:04As officers in Wrexham hatched a plan on how to catch their gang of thieves, 140 miles away, another prolific burglar working alone was about to be exposed by the police.
10:25He was a predator.
10:28He had a hunting ground.
10:29Without technology to help us solve this, he would have been free to carry out his crimes and we would never have caught him.
10:45In November 2023, police received a report of a burglary at a block of student flats in Cardiff.
10:53Detective Sergeant Andy Coakley and his team were assigned to investigate.
10:57This burglary specifically related to a male gaining entry to the premises pertaining to be a maintenance worker or painter.
11:08One student didn't think to challenge him because he had a paint pot with him and seemed legitimate.
11:16He was gone for 10 minutes.
11:17When he returned back to his flat, he found his room had been ransacked and quite a substantial amount of money and other items were stolen which were worth hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
11:29As you can imagine, he was quite devastated.
11:32The game changer was the CCTV and looking at that CCTV, we knew a male was responsible. We knew he was on his own. We knew he was using a bike to travel from place to place. What we didn't know is his identity.
11:47The fact that the man had clearly planned the theft using a disguise made detectives suspect they were dealing with an experienced thief.
12:03When they searched for reports of similar crimes across the city, those suspicions were confirmed.
12:12The more we looked into it, the more we saw a pattern emerging.
12:15That then was a massive eureka moment because we realised that he was actually very active and he was committing quite a lot of crime.
12:27The CCTV evidence that we were obtaining was overwhelming.
12:32What he was doing interestingly and uniquely in relation to this was he was pretending to deliver food for some quite well known organisations.
12:43The thief would gain access to buildings and then steal parcels that had been left outside residents' flats.
12:51All whilst pretending to be a food delivery driver.
12:55For an offence of burglary to be committed, a person has to enter a building as a trespasser with the intent to steal, commit criminal damage or commit GBH.
13:05And in this instance we were looking at the offences that were potentially thefts because in an apartment block the thefts could be committed by other residents as they are not trespassers, it doesn't constitute a burglary.
13:19However, once the team had started digging into these investigations and getting CCTV, they were able to see that the person was carrying out the same actions on each occasion.
13:29This individual was waiting until the coast was clear, placing the bag upon the floor and filling it with the parcels.
13:40He was trespassing, he was stealing, he was burgling.
13:44The thief targeted some buildings more than once and appeared to be doing everything he could to avoid being caught.
13:51He is aware that there are cameras and tries not to look at it, but he's trying to partially hide his face. Other times he looks at the CCTV camera directly, which eventually led to his downfall.
14:07Now with a clear image of the thief's face and concerned he would strike again, detectives opted to use facial recognition technology, comparing the suspect's image to those held on the police database.
14:20So retrospective facial recognition came into force a few years back.
14:27What it does is it gives us an opportunity to identify persons potentially responsible for any incident as long as they're captured on CCTV or photograph and we will then submit a still image of that person to our identification unit and then they can run it through the software and then it'll give us a potential of who we should be looking at.
14:44Retrospective facial recognition software provides us with a suggested name, it'll give us a strong link of a profile, somebody who's potentially been in police custody before and then it leads it to us then as the team to do the investigation around that person to see if they're out of prison, if they're active in the community, if they've got like offences and also to compare that image with our CCTV footage as well.
15:10The facial recognition was a success and identified the man captured on CCTV as Philip Thompson.
15:17Looking into Philip Thompson's history, police have been in contact with him in the past but we also crucially identified he was a convicted burglar and that he was extremely active in a certain part of Cardiff.
15:35But face recognition technology is not admissible in court, so whilst it gave detectives a strong lead, they needed to gather further evidence to be able to charge him. So now the hunt was on to find him.
15:50It was a case of going to known associates addresses, family addresses, addresses that may be linked to him and ultimately trying to get him in before he caused further damage.
16:03Thompson was arrested in November 2023 and brought in for questioning.
16:08I saw an individual who was furious at being caught.
16:15And in the footage it does show, OK, those parcels being put into the Justice Bank.
16:23Thompson was very confrontational, had his own idea as to where and when he's committed a criminal offence to what he considered to be a theft and be a burglary.
16:35I must have been inside the property to deliver for a reason. Once there, if I have taken something, then yes, fair enough, I've taken something.
16:45What was my reasoning, though, for being at the property? That's all I'm saying to you. I'm not denying that I've taken stuff whilst there.
16:52Didn't go over anyone's personal threshold and anything. I went in the communal area.
16:57It was explained to him, no, no, you're entering the building, you're a trespasser. You shouldn't be in there.
17:02But then you've stolen things, so you've definitely committed a burglary.
17:06And it took a while for him to accept that.
17:09He was charged with 11 offences of burglary and remanded in custody.
17:14It was then that the case took a new twist.
17:18Following the caution, he made an offhand remark that he may have committed further offences, but didn't elaborate.
17:26It opened then a new line of investigation for us.
17:30Suspecting Thompson was responsible for even more offences, they offered him an opportunity known as TIC, or taken into consideration.
17:41These are offences where we wouldn't necessarily have enough evidence to charge a person with the offence for which they've committed.
17:47The pros of TICs are a victim will know that the person responsible for committing the offence against them has been identified.
17:54From an intelligence perspective, it gives the police an idea of who is committing a specific type of offence in a certain area.
18:01And it also gives us an opportunity to identify other offences that that person may have committed.
18:07And in the future down the line, we can see when that person has come out of custody.
18:10If it starts happening again in the same areas, it gives us an idea of who is potentially responsible.
18:15If Thompson admitted the scale of his offences, the judge would take this into account during sentencing.
18:22Suddenly, Thompson began to talk.
18:27He was a lot more receptive.
18:30He was extremely keen to make sure that he was able to tell us where he had been active.
18:41For an interview for a TIC, what we need is for them to give us specific information
18:46that would only be known by the person responsible for committing the offence.
18:49And it was quite an interesting moment in that particular interview
18:54because he even volunteered information to suggest that he'd been burgering at other parts of Cardiff
19:00that we did not know he'd been doing.
19:02And that in itself opened up a new line of investigation.
19:07There was ones on Crewe's Road.
19:08OK.
19:09Witchers Road.
19:10Yeah.
19:11Cathedral Road, numerous.
19:12Yeah.
19:13Richmond Road.
19:14Yeah.
19:15A couple on Richmond Road.
19:17Yeah.
19:18I've never experienced anything like this in my service.
19:21Communal area has been entered on the 13th of August.
19:24And tools and a bike have been stolen.
19:26Are you responsible for that?
19:27Well, I was going to work.
19:28OK.
19:29But he made it clear he wanted all these matters to be dealt with
19:33because he didn't want new matters to be presented to him after he'd been convicted.
19:38After reviewing his new admissions, they re-interviewed him about a further 30 offences.
19:44He admitted 27.
19:46Do you remember what's happened to the bike?
19:49No, I saw the bike.
19:51We were looking at 11 charged burglaries and 69 offences that he would take into consideration.
20:02To be able to link this person to so many offences and him openly admit to committing those offences,
20:08it gives the victim of crime closure.
20:10Once that person goes to court, it's to the judge to decide on whether to apply any leniency on sentencing or not.
20:18Thompson pleaded guilty at Cardiff Crown Court in May 2024
20:24and was sentenced to seven years and one month imprisonment.
20:31I'm really proud of my team.
20:33It's vitally important for us to do everything we possibly can
20:37to identify persons responsible for burglaries, to support victims of crime
20:42and let them know that we do all we can to get to the bottom of it.
20:46Taking Thompson off the streets, for me personally, is extremely satisfying
20:52because I knew deep down that if we didn't stop him at the point that he was arrested,
20:58I could be looking at hundreds of burglaries.
21:03And Thompson was an individual who was never going to stop until he was caught.
21:08He made mistakes. He was caught.
21:11One burglar's behind bars.
21:16But back in Wrexham, detectives are focused on finding enough evidence
21:20to arrest an organised gang stealing Asian gold.
21:24Six houses have been burgled, over £41,000 worth of valuable, irreplaceable family jewellery taken.
21:35Although two offenders have been identified, officers need to catch them in the act
21:40or find them in possession of the stolen goods to give them the best chance of securing a conviction.
21:46Using advanced number plate recognition, they tracked one of the cars, driven by suspect Q Delaney, and it gave them a fresh lead.
21:57What really stood out to us at this time was that the silver Audi A3 was making trips down to Birmingham
22:03the days after the offences, which really looked out of place to us.
22:07It was a short, round-trip journey.
22:09They were in Birmingham for less than an hour before making a return journey.
22:13So we really wanted to understand what the nature of that journey was.
22:19I've sent my investigators down there with the painstaking task of meticulously piggybacking CCTV from the point we know the vehicle entered Birmingham.
22:27They spent the best part of a couple of days there working through CCTV from one location to the next
22:33until we get the breakthrough where we find the vehicle parked up in the jewellery quarter in Birmingham
22:38and we see males who are known to us exit that vehicle where they make a very brief stop within the local jewellers
22:45before returning back to the Audi and then making the return journey to Wrexham.
22:49So everything at this point is suggesting to me that this was a journey to try and sell the gold stolen during the burglaries
22:56and get some financial gain from their offending.
22:59Investigators checked the ANPR cameras covering each of the return journeys to Birmingham
23:04and one from the 30th of September showed Q Delaney with a new accomplice.
23:10Seen on that footage is a male called Michael Berry.
23:13Michael Berry again is known to us here locally in Wrexham.
23:17He has previous offending for burglary offences and is a close associate of Q Delaney.
23:22So at this point Michael Berry forms part of the investigation.
23:25And another gang member was identified when the silver Audi containing Q Delaney and Todd Wickens
23:31made another trip to Birmingham to offload stolen gold a few days later.
23:36So another male on this footage is Addy Piggott.
23:39Again Addy Piggott is known to us here locally in Wrexham.
23:42He's an associate of Q and has been linked historically to offending of this nature.
23:46So at this point Addy Piggott became part of the investigation as well.
23:50Police continued to monitor the car's movements and on the 7th of November they were alerted
23:56after yet another burglary took place in Wrexham.
23:59This potentially was an opportunity for us to get that final bit of evidence to try and recover some stolen property.
24:07Coordinating his team from base, D.I. Owen watched the live feed of cameras during the arrests in Birmingham.
24:14It's clearly a very nervous time, everything has to come together.
24:19We saw the vehicle arrive in Birmingham in the jewellery quarter.
24:24We saw a number of males leave the vehicle, make a brief stop out of jewellers before getting back in the vehicle
24:30and then heading it would appear back towards North Wales.
24:35We then planned to strike on the vehicle as it enters North Wales.
24:39It only gave us about an hour at best to scramble the troops really and get enough traffic cars in the area
24:46that were able to effectively intercept that vehicle.
24:49And through the cameras we could monitor the movement of the vehicle back up into North Wales where we briefly lost it.
24:55It was a bit of a frantic search then of country lanes before an armed response vehicle eventually got behind the vehicle
25:05and we managed to intercept it and stop it.
25:081-0, vehicle has stopped.
25:10Q Delaney and Todd Wickhams were in the car along with Addy Piggott and another man.
25:15All were searched and found to have on them an equal split of £1,000 in cash.
25:21So at this point all four were then arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit burglaries.
25:30But there was one suspect missing, Michael Berry, and he was proving hard to locate.
25:36He's cut himself away from family and friends and off the network.
25:40Over the next month investigators identified phone numbers he'd been using and cars he'd travelled in,
25:46eventually tracking him to Southport.
25:49We know who he was associating with and this eventually leads us to a caravan site in the north of Southport
25:56where we identify the vehicle that we believe he is using parked next to a caravan on that site.
26:01Officers applied for a warrant to enter the site and on the 15th of December 2023,
26:07Michael Berry was finally arrested.
26:10I knew now that everyone I'd identified as part of this series was now in custody.
26:20I was quite confident that this would have a huge impact to the people in North Wales.
26:24In April 2024, Q Delaney, Addy Piggott, Todd Wickens and Michael Berry were sentenced to between two and four years, eight months,
26:37for conspiracy to commit burglary and handling stolen goods.
26:41Sentencing-wise, it's great to see that we've got custodial sentences for those involved.
26:45I would love to put them away for a lot longer.
26:49The psychological impact that these crimes have, the impact on victims, it is huge
26:54and I don't think any sentence could really ever do that justice, really.
27:00Attempts were made to return the gold stolen to the families.
27:06We entered and searched that jewelers.
27:08Much to my disappointment, we identified that almost as quickly as the gold goes into these premises,
27:13it's smelted down in the back.
27:15There's no paperwork.
27:16There's no trace.
27:17And unfortunately, I wasn't able to recover any stolen gold for the victims in this case.
27:22It's sad.
27:23It's really sad.
27:25The saddest is the wedding ring.
27:27Even though it will be replaced, it's not the same.
27:32It's only material things, but the memories of those things,
27:38that's the saddest things about it.
27:43And in the end, when they caught them, I think it was such a, it was good news.
27:52And I had just finished chemo.
27:55The suspect had been caught and it was like everything came together in one go
28:00and it was such a breath of fresh air.
28:04Yeah, justice has been served.
28:06We didn't need to feel unsafe or lonely anymore.
28:14I'm very thankful that how quick the response from the police
28:21and how they were able to really solve the case.
28:26My sister and mother, I was raised.
28:27I'm not sure.
28:28I can't believe that she was.
28:29I was able to hold the case.
28:30I'm the best friend of Bernal equation.
28:32I'm the best friend of Bernal.
28:34I was able to get someone out.
28:35I did my best friend of Bernal.
28:36I was able to get the case.
28:38And she found him and I was able to get myself out of the place.
28:40And I don't have to know.
28:41But I was able to run a lot of people out.
28:42And I was able to get in the afternoon,
28:43but on the floor,
28:45and I talked to my friends with the family.
28:46And I had to take it this time.
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