tonight reckless riders who dice with death persistent bike beeps running the people of South Yorkshire racket putting themselves in mortal danger if they don't collide with a vehicle they are gonna get hurt and they're gonna get hurt badly [Music] the roads across the Moors and dales of South Yorkshire have long been a magnet for motor bikers of every shape and size [Music] off road as well as on its joyed tinged with tragedy [Music] motorbikes account for only 1% of all road users but for 20% of road deaths and that's not the half of it the police here are being run racket by joyriding kids on bikes most are barely in their teens kids who get their kicks by terrorizing the people who live here [Music] is now pushing the bike take your next left you'll be visual with hippies in the middle of the road and is struggling to sponsor it's becoming a growing nuisance so you can imagine that you know difficult pleasant Sunday afternoon you ever want to sit out with the family in the garden and then a couple hundred meters away you've got these kids on usually in stolen bikes there were no insurance not worrying the correct head gear etc box box is a major problem at the moment is it's very high-profile you'll get to a stage where kids can't play on certain parts in Sheffield because there's too many motorcycles racing around at the least they're an anti-social behavior problem and the most obviously somebody could get seriously injured the police in South Yorkshire have had enough and have launched an operation to put those who steal ride and endanger their neighbors as well as themselves out of business but they can't chase them in police cars but try not to pursue if at all possible only the very extreme cases where we engage in a pursuit so it's very important that we got the upsala copter to help us catch these people [Music] thank you if you leave please got a call from an officer in relation to three off-road motorcycles in the front line of this operation to stop those bikers is Sierra Yankee Lily Noah finding illegal or nuisance bikers isn't usually difficult as long as you don't look on the main road another on trade is the next ones to the left yeah a little bit of grass one behind the rear off Clips the road of it very hard to stop the drive down alleyways you drive around backs of vehicles they drive on fields into Garland's and run over fences and it's very difficult for you to catch when you're in a traffic car itself Yankee nine-nine can follow the bikers from the air high enough so they can't be heard or seen it's the prime police weapon in operation crackdown 99 is hovering a thousand feet over the heart of Sheffield at least one of the bikes they are following has been stolen and at least one of the pillion passengers isn't wearing a helmet they have no idea on board 99 are two police officers and a civilian pilot the bikers are not being pursued by ground cops the strategy for dealing with them in South Yorkshire is to follow them until they either give up or run out of gas [Music] using the helicopter you you standoff away from the actual motorcycle you take some of the pressure off he's not got a police car following him feeling a real urgent need to get away from this vehicle so the a little bit of speed is taken off the follow we're in a position that we can better evaluate in the situation and decide whether it's safe to continue or whether to just abort the pursuit altogether this missions backseat observer is PC walls a sky cop for more than six years it's an off-road motorcycle it's not it's not designed to be on the road it's a 14 15 year-old loud theez no lice and it's never been trained to ride on the road it's got a pillion passenger on that's got no nowhere for his feats ago so he's got no foot pegs on there so is it dangerous obviously dangerous exercise he'll get worried for them because if they don't collide with a vehicle they are going to get hurt and they're going to get hurt badly not wearing protective gear not wearing helmets the boys still don't know they're being caught on camera or that PC walls is surrounding them with officers on the ground the boys now no 99 is on to them but by hiding in the underpass they are unwittingly giving the police a better chance of catching them I mean yeah they were hiding from the aircraft we couldn't see them because of us said they were underneath of the underpass there's only two exits they weren't going anywhere without we're seeing them [Music] the containment hasn't worked one bike is out and away the one with the pillion passenger who hasn't got a helmet as the arrests begin nine nine now has less officers to help them catch their bike it's lunchtime and the riders are becoming even more reckless they're riding through the grounds of a school giving the crew video proof of dangerous driving he wrote through school grounds which in itself is obviously a dangerous dangerous thing to do your sole concern is maintaining a good evidential picture on the camera this essential that's why you're there so that if something goes to court you've got the supporting evidence on film Frederick Street area he's gone through the school playground and unfortunately there's nobody out I don't think it would have changed his route had it have been break time and playground full of children the crew of nine nine are worried operation crackdown is supposed to put bikers off the road not in hospital [Music] but evidence for for dangerous as well at this stage of it watching me watching you watch it be the pursuit progresses and seeing the level of risk-taking the increase you have to start recalculating whether it's actually safe to continue but as 9:9 backs off it's clear the bikers aren't going to slow down unless something goes wrong with their bike or it runs out of fuel by continually riding where bikes aren't allowed the lads are making life virtually impossible for the police on the ground but there are first signs that their bike is beginning to feel the pace teenagers aren't finished yet they do have a plan the woods might be thick but yankee nine-niner thermal-imaging camera is up to the job motorbikes give off great hotspots the thermal image does penetrate through the canopy of the trees it doesn't give us as much of a picture but we can still see images we can see it still see flash of heat that come through the teenagers are again playing into the hands of the police another chance to surround them if possible good some of the officers trying to sisters to get this other one just make your way towards the edge of the wood it's a difficult one PC Humphries likes looking for needles in haystacks it can be very difficult directing people in a wooded area you can't tell them to turn left at the next tree cuz there's the surrounded by trees [Music] yeah Roger we are picking a heat source which I know might not help you but it's basically in the middle of the woods the bikers have spotted the ground cops this game of cat-and-mouse has now reached the critical stage 99 screw no the bike must be low on fuel they were obviously trying to get home they'd been out on this bike for some time before we got overhead they were obviously aware that they were running out of fuel if they are heading for home the bikers know some unusual shortcuts he wrote through a cemetery obviously showing total disrespect for anybody that was in there any funeral anything else that was going on there yeah offices is on it in some small a trees at the bottom of flipster Road they're now pushing it they will now fuel the wrong clip strip road at last Yankee nine nine can spring a trap there's a panda car just around the corner the crew were right the boys have headed home the reckless riders are now cornered in their own backyard the lads will be in court tomorrow morning charged with dangerous driving but this afternoon when mom gets home there's gonna be hell to pay in trouble with the law and guilty of ruining the washing at the end of day they are young lads young lads they're wanting to enjoy themselves honor on a bike that there's a time and a place to do that and on the roads and public fields and school ground isn't the place to do it last year in South Yorkshire 22 motorbike has died and 263 were seriously injured majority of bikes that we follow tend to be motocross style bikes that aren't Road registered therefore not designed for the rope they don't have lights don't have brake lights don't have registration numbers and certainly don't have rolled legal tyres which therefore don't give any grip on the road [Music] it's back to base to refuel a chance for PC Humphrey to reflect on the rights and wrongs of trying to catch young men on the run we need to really think about the shoot tactics I was thinking like a big gladiator net laid out where God shield today Humphrey has spotted yet more kids on bikes we were traveling back towards base and in the distance in the middle of an open field backing onto a school we could see a group of people that look like they were on motorbikes and they shouldn't have been there it was a weekend afternoon and as I brought the camera round to look at them it was three lads with off-road motorbikes [Music] one of the lads decided to remove a bag of something from his trousers and discarded when we're coming home from a job we don't just sit back and enjoy the in-flight movie your attentions drawn you're looking you can see so much detail things do jump out to you these lads are standing out in the middle of a field and one of them throws something and you know something's wrong these two friends decided they didn't want to hang around and they they decided to leave the area we turn around landing isn't an option ground officers are going to have to deal with this but how long will the lad hang around this guy just laid there pretending nothing was was wrong it was just out sunbathing on the school field all in the meantime we were directing resources towards him the suspect is not just sunbathing like a growing number of people who find themselves under 9:9 surveillance he's making a phone call [Music] yeah not making any effort to work to run all over the moments or will will remain with the aircraft obviously we just come here to stop it make it any move away over there is fluid 3 kitch so they could carve it out before you get to the plan think about 100 yards in front of the aircraft the relaxed suspect has no idea there's a police car motoring up behind him he's still on the phone and 99 is download [Music] [Music] right please you make excess excess - Siri can I know there's another urgent job not bikers an emergency there's been a bad road accident a woman might have been killed after being hit by a car the helicopter is needed it's been reported in RTC we just need your assistance in taking photographs ooh the scenic fashion oddity self / 99 carries a stills camera as well as video equipment they often take aerial photos of crash scenes where there are deaths or serious injuries at the evidence we can produce this vital therefore the coroner's office and many Persis may take place you know as to whose fault it was and whatever eventualities occurred PC Tim's garden is on the segregated has been got serious leg into its we've also the best one that plays another dad boys we got singly carriageway Road one vehicle trying to turn riot station right and someone will just were looking to just crash into the back of that vehicle but the impacts bounced him off to the left over the pavement and his hit two women and actually pushed 120 feet in the air and over a wall down the embankment in London some trees the other one was wedged against the wall so it got took quite serious injury pc walls we try and get the best overview shot he can to be used in evidence later if any charges are brought or the woman dies appear to be doing them they do a triangulation shots and then they'll circle around and then obviously look at doing it well over the head total shot it gives us a good aerial view they were exactly how the vehicles are finished up if there is a fatality and it's much easier for people to look at a photograph then it is to listen to a description i'll look at it on a map there's good news paramedics have stabilized the woman she's in a bad way but they say she will live that was quite surprised this one to be hit and thrown that far from a car would suffer the newest you are not got worse a very very serious incident Ciara Yankee nine-nine returns to base to refuel and download the photos of the accident [Music] while P seawalls reviews the evidence from the scene another call is coming in bikers at it again nuisance motorbikes in the other area if you could attend please Captain mousse it and his crew will have to act fast if they want to catch the bikers at it a traffic cop has spotted two young men riding what is believed to be a stolen scooter [Music] 99 is in the nick of time the lads have dumped the bike the thieves are age 16 and 17 and are wanted for other offences including driving whilst disqualified so you can either do have any mobile Eric treat at that place they don't know 99 is above it's too high to hear the teenagers are heading through a primary school no sign of the children they're in class they startled a lot of young children and school teachers as they jumped into a playground oven Nursery run through the ground and climbed over the bottom fence bit naughty really bit upsetting for those kids as the lads head into the countryside the crude begin to realize that they're now going to be easier to follow but harder to catch oh boy as always the name of this game is to surround the fugitives [Music] easier said than done [Music] I'll go from sharing night-night what's just update the situation has taken a turn for the worse this is Sheffield's main railway line and no one knows when the next trains do it is a live railway line that they ran across and ran along for some time it's quite dangerous to go on obviously on the live rail along the railway bridge is also a danger for the crew they jumped over the edge of the fencing and tried to get away we thought at that point that they were actually gonna hide underneath the railway bridge but they didn't they just continued it anyway this bridge is only a means to an end a way out onto South Yorkshire smores [Music] as the scooter thieves had ever deeper into the countryside 99s crew start to wonder why they've run for more than two miles so far it's not normal that people just set off running across fields if anything it's all the opposite most people try and stay in the built-up areas where they can get a bit cover and hide away from us captain moose it can't even hover and deplane his sky cops out of the back this is marshland it's simply too wet too dangerous the runners seem to have changed direction and strategy they're now using their mobile phones and trying to find a vantage point so they can see exactly where they are this is the first sign that the teenagers are running out of ideas and options people get disorientated when they're on the ground in open areas that they've probably never been on before but they know the the larger area feel like but not necessarily the small area that they're that they're running through but then to be on the phone asking for somebody to pick them up they must have had an idea where they were you get to the very end of that truck you've got some big black wrapped bales of hay officers on the ground are closing in but they're not yet close enough as you can see these lines have like that again back into the elephant fields between the railway line and treaten do we have any other officers available to try and corral these places corralling the lads is something else that's easier said than done but they have now run almost three miles it was quite some way they did they've run a fairway so they must have been quite table so they must have been quiet for it yet talk on the distance of it all the time I'll say we're overhead with videoing and monitoring these these two lads we're directing other officers to try and intercept them if you continue now on foot to the very end of that half ahead of you you'll come on top of the pitch stack in front of these lads I want you to stay at the bottom just out of you PC Humphrey is setting an ambush president at nighttime these types of down slightly [Music] well you look at my road the ambush isn't quite working the way PC Humphrey wanted trying to break into the farmhouse is a mistake it's given time for the ground cops to catch up but for one of the lads at least there's one last desperate roll of the dice they then split up due to the fact that we've got officers more or less contained in the area one run perhaps about another 200 yards away from the other one tried to hide in bushes we now have the second you detain thank you it was a good pursue from our point of view obviously it and a good a good ending to that as well excess poops area midnight night to all offices involved in this one thanks pretty much for your efforts a job well done in the UK 70 motorbikes are written off every day on average 555 cos are injured each week as long as this statistic continues cert will operation crack down the juvenile driving the motorbike was given a court order and a driving ban the two youths on the run were charged with stealing a motorcycle and disqualified from driving they don't have any thought for the people and power themselves they are a danger to the public all right we're here to catch these people are getting removal from the most [Music]