Tracking Down A Cannabis Farm | Sky Coppers | Channel 4

The criminals will do everything they can to escape and it is quite fun to see them panicking and not knowing that we are up there. Sometimes you just want to say hello and say: Hi, we're here. We can launch in seconds and go for miles. minutes, that's why we get cold feet with jobs, criminals have always had to look over their shoulders, now they also have to look up in the air, take off, go on, go on, go on, calm down, look as fast as you can Can you please, literally. Now all the houses are on fire.

The Dr. has his eyes in the back and we are recording RC. He successfully executed the arrest of the boys in custody. The drowned man wins again. Great result. This job seems to be a fairly rapid development job. A take-off order for drugs. Take one out there just for information we are on air received about friend there are three big bulldogs and they all stayed in the back yard two now two in the back there is also a big dog wandering around this private private PC Matt Barsley and Ross Dudley they are monitoring a property that is part of a drug warrant please open the door now someone at the back door is not open yet yes someone came out the back door yes someone came out the back door yes , jumping, only Chu.

The description of Go Over The Back Fence was a bold man with the no. up in b m no up in the upper window now talking open open the door before you smash C down down there down there well we'll open it and then go out the door yes M to the backyard again with another package draw one AAL again ha returned to the garden holding another package he just placed on top of the trampoline, now carried it back to the back window a mile dropped another package out the window into the back garden, I opened it and deposited more items in the back garden. also optimer, I'm over the property, nobody else, nobody else, okay, it's money, it's money, right?

It's money and there was a lot of money flying around, so right now what's happening is they're just waiting for the occupant to secure the ones in the back of the yard and hopefully locate these packages. They are happy? They have not deposited anything else in their garden locations. It's just that side, that's what was thrown over the fence. the occupant who left the property received that, so you have the officers there, yes. The items that were discarded are simply being confiscated now inside, the residents are being questioned. We have images of a courier, yes, yes, throwing things. windows, so you'll have to ask him some questions about the officers having seized bags of drugs and cash, including money thrown from the window above.

It's about £5,000 having videotaped it we can 100% say it came from a courier at that address which threw the property into the next door neighbour's garden some of it fell like confetti and some of it hit the bushes here it's like a money tree great result brilliant result so if someone had said 28 years ago Zoom, fast forward to 2020, you will be flying small drones to help catch criminals and help find people. He knows, it was absolute science fiction at the time, but now he knows it's gotten to a point where it's kind of scientific fact. I am Sergeant Keith Bennett and I have the privilege of being the Lead Drone Pilot for the Westman Police Drone Unit.

I joined the police in 1994, so I'm about to complete 29 years in the police service, something I've always wanted to do. by Year Dot from I don't remember wanting to do anything else, a lot of that came from my dad, so my dad was a police officer and he was kind of an inspiration, my hero that I just wanted to follow, he had come home. and tell me about yourself, you know all these cool stories. I think my family thinks I'm a hero. You are drowning. I say the truth. I think they think we're real. Tech geeks nerds nerds nerd geek is often a word I hear from my family, my kids, constantly telling me to go away during Sunday dinner back in the day when there were a lot more offices on the ground, you'd have the kind of resources to being able to flood an area and search. a criminal, we don't have that luxury anymore, police forces are shrinking, so it's more about smart use of your officers and getting that drone into the sky, there's a lot of organized crime, a lot of criminal street gangs, if you will, within the midlands. within Birmingham involved in all types of criminal activity lost, do we have your plates reversed for a personal, whether it be drug dealing, knives, criminal weapons?

It can be quite a complicated environment to work in. It's quite hostile, understandably, so we got the best drone. technology we can, all the gadgets we can, but don't think criminals won't try to do the same to us, oh that's sneaky, that's mean, it's anything they can use to hide or disguise themselves. your tracks will use it, that's not fair, sorry guys, but there's no way I was doing that blindly it really pissed me off. What do you think it's like to be some kind of police in the West Midlands? different people from different backgrounds, you know you have robbery areas where you have lovely houses and then you have no crime areas where maybe I wouldn't say poverty, but they are definitely more deprived areas.

I know there is a stereotype. that we're a bit silly, you know, people don't tend to like accents very much, which is fine, you know, you might think I guess some of the stereotypes are that we're all Birmingham based, we all have Birmingham accents and , however you know we cover areas of Tipton Wolver Hampton the black country we cover centry uh sometimes we cross borders and help other forces but yes everyone in the West Midlands has a Birmingham accent apparently we have a warrant planned at smic, so I've come to review the intelligence we have and just to familiarize myself with the layout of the property at the West Midlands Police drone unit.

PC Dean Wright is part of the investigation team for an upcoming drug warrant based on intelligence gathered by one of his drones now these are thermal images from one of our Wreckers drones looking at this image uh the target direction is in the middle it's GL Orange um and it looks like some of the heat may be spilling into the loft next door which would suggest that's a major

cannabis

crop there hi that's West Midland drones are you okay could I please log in this house please? Dean comes out with candy for PC Williams, sometimes you just get a chance to go to the bathroom and it gets so bad, you can actually feel it like you're trying to get out of your eyes, you know what I mean, I wonder where that was going, so I honestly wonder where I was going, you feel it pretty good and you're like, oh my gosh, a lot of things that In

cannabis

factories we find that the people who are there to take care of the plants are sometimes trafficked into the country, so they tend to be victims and the way they pay for transportation to the country and their documents and things like that is by taking care of the plants and they are nothing more than a gardener, which is really unfortunate, we tend to refer to them as gardeners before we know the circumstances if we do.

They are doing it because they know it is a criminal act and they are doing it. for that purpose, to make a profit from it or if they are actually victims of a crime and they are doing it to pay a debt, so what we will do is stop a couple of hundred meters from the address. a couple of streets away and then we can fly across so we don't show up and not alert anyone to the fact that we're coming, what that way is, so okay, so let's not go down there, we'll go. around that was nearby could have been embarrassing drones the car we'll just stop at our takeoff point every once in a while we'll launch in about 3 or 4 minutes yeah um just confirm that all command resources that fire drones are in position because It's a drug warrant, we're going to go with the quieter and smaller of the two, um, obviously we want to be seen first, so we don't want to put the big plane up and make a lot of noise and alert people. about the fact that we're here, yeah, it's 2 minutes away, so we're ready to go, okay, cool, I'll get the map ready for takeoff. 10:40 I have not yet arrived with the Drone vehicle in the sky.

Now, remove the candy and Dean will be able to communicate every movement off the property with the officers on the ground. The officers coming out will let them know that there is a dog in the yard next door. Just one to be aware of. There is a dog at the back of the next door on the left. Looking at the front of the property, the police show police, no movement, no Windows door, we have, no, we have some lives, excellent police, no, it is clear that everyone else is, yes, everyone else places is clear, bathroom. I entered no one.

Of the 3 waiting for this, what worries me is that we have a cannabis factory one street from a school, you can hear all the kids in the background and it's that people just don't care, literally, nowhere now, AR , Yes Yes. On average, it takes around £2,000 to set up a decent cannabis factory in a three-bedroom house, but that pales into insignificance when you look at the damage left, everything that needs to be fixed and that's usually at the cost of uh, The owner, when we entered the property, noticed that the electricity system appears to have been bypassed.

A setup like this would suggest that it's more than just recreational growing, it's more than just personal use, it's an organized criminal gang activity, so it impacts other people's lives, the average number of plants you would get in a three bedroom house is about £3-400, potentially including the Loft, and if you're talking about the street value of each floor being about £1,000 um then that's a major deal that goes towards funding other criminal gang areas. Just remember that you're low, so anything you say can be used as evidence of some of the factories we've discovered. There will be several. gardeners um there and it's been treated as modern slavery in the past because they were bought um into the country for the sole purpose of putting them in a criminal environment to fund the reason they were bought. a pretty well organized setup, yet we're looking at there's around £3,000 worth of cannabis in this room once it's matured, three rooms, there's around 30 plants in each room, so someone quite clever has set this up, which which shows that it is a very well organized gang, however we know that at the end of the day, we have eliminated one from the game, if we arrive very early to the scene and get the appearance drawn right away, the F will do one of two things.

They will run, run, run until you know they have completely escaped or they will jump somewhere and try to hide by hiding in a garden, in a bush, under a trampoline or something like that. A shed is good. they got buried in all the trash on the side, come on, we had oh, it was in the salt container, you know, the salt that they squeeze in your ear was there and apparently when he opened it, this guy was like, yeah, yeah, I'm just having a teammate, don't think you're one, don't think you're sleeping, bless you, but yeah, nice try, we found them hiding under the insulation and lingering in The Loft space, they've been there for quite a while. so God knows how much they stung, but we still managed to find them in the Loft Police emergency, sorry and who shouldn't be there.

Drone 7, go ahead, yes this will be for record 4591. Drone officers PCs Ross Dudley and Paul Withers have been called in to assist in the search for a man believed to be in breach of the conditions of his licence, so there is a local unit that took the address and they say this is not on the property, the man is prohibited from visiting this address, if he is found he will go back to prison, so I think our request is just to check the grounds to make sure there is no no one hidden. Without a doubt, we take the drone and lift it up and see what we can find, a CL type climbing. a fence there, now we have officers in the backyard of the neighboring highway or highway, well, because there is someone in the backyard, it seems like he got into the back of an address here, he got into the back of a house here, oh, look at one of these two. here, so you may have returned here.

I'm just trying to figure out where that guy who jumped off the fence and went into the back of one direction and the person who went over the fences went to the back of the direction they just came out the back of and didn't I have seen no one return until you entered the garden. Ross stays in the Drone to make sure the man doesn't leave the area. Paul joins the ground search. The man has not been seen since Ross saw him running through the backyard. The direction they just came from earlier, obviously the two Bobes have jumped over the fences.

That direction they just came out of is where he dove in behind him. He went straight to the back, not through the door you came through, but through another door.a drone flight? Please, we're looking at the field, basically, it's obvious that he was able to get around Ben too quickly. He lost control of the car. He hit a telegraph pole and apparently ran away here, but they just want to make sure he didn't climb onto the field. field whole field full of horses scroll down see a horse there things that would catch my eye are smaller heat sources like that that are stationary would suggest something smaller that is still now I have moved angles I'm thinking it possibly isn't as big as a horse, but it's the size of a person, those are the horses that are much bigger compared to my heat source down there, now that I've moved angles, could I send an officer to check that one out? immerse yourself in you.

It looks like someone lying on their side, it looks like something my friend shines your light on so he can see where you are. It's difficult in thermal because it doesn't give you details, it just gives you a rough outline, but that could potentially be someone lying like in a fetal position on their side, it could be a baby horse lying down but it's not moving and it's much hotter than it considers it to be. in this R is a dog requested yes yes sir we have detected a heat source in the field Alpha Delta unit is the dog team we use so there is one on the way to us now so we can keep the drone warm .Source that we have in the field and then we have the dog come and try to see if that is the person that potentially got away in this vehicle that we are looking for, he could be flying, he got injured and he can't move or do anything else.

Hopefully that'll give us a little bit of range, so if we get down there, if you can keep me and my Oppo in sight with a dog in front of us, we'll let you know if there's any uh of the eoin variety heading your way. I don't know what it is, it's always better to be cautious and then rule it out. Dead Ahead from there, let him do Dead Ahead first, the first dog man, stay on that line. Straight Ahead yet because he's still there. I would say the dog. I'll be walking on it in about 10 seconds, hold that line right there, whatever it is, the dog is on it, the dog is on it, now buddy, whatever it is, smell it, sorry buddy, a really big pile of poop. of horse, it wasn't a person, so that's good news, it would have been nice to find them just so they can definitively say that they are okay.

We found a huge smoking pile of horse. Yeah, stay well, at least we know the heat jobs he does might be okay. up 40 m up we can find poop every day it's a hot school day yes Rel you are under arrest, right, suicide a thief don't ask anything my your defense if you don't mention a question something like the court, anything you do can G evidence just Chu something Pass through the back fence is money, isn't it money? Hey, no, buddy. The vehicles almost dragged me down the road. We have fire spread from one side of the building to the other.

It crashed. Pick it up. Out. now yes