A burglar who raided a police officer’s was caught after the officer recognised him from her security camera pictures when he asked her for change in the street.
Russel Wilson, 44, broke into Sarah Oaks’ home in Carshalton, Surrey, while her daughter was in.
He stole a silver watch and precious jewellery from the property
But Wilson unaware that he was being recorded on a CCTV camera that had been installed in the front room of the property on 10th May 2019, the Old Bailey heard.
Ms Oaks saw Wilson breaking in on her phone and called home from the office while working a night shift at nearby Sutton police station.
She told her daughter to start making a loud noise as she raced over with some colleagues.
When they arrived on the scene a few moments later, Wilson had disappeared with the jewellery.
A few days later, while Ms Oaks was shopping, Wilson approached her asking for change.
Jurors heard she immediately recognised him and he was arrested and charged with burglary.
Wilson tried to claim he went inside the house after becoming concerned when he found the front door and windows were open.
But the jury rejected his version of events and convicted him of burglary.
Opening the case prosecutor David Parvin said:
‘Her daughter Hannah was staying at home during the night-time at around about 11.30 pm whilst Sarah Oaks was at the police station she received a notification on her phone from her home security system.
‘There was a camera inside her home address that detects motion. If it detects movement, it will send a notification to Sarah Oaks.
‘She was immediately concerned because she did not know the person in the footage, and her daughter was at home alone.
‘She immediately spoke to her supervisor and a police unit was arranged to go straight to her address, and Sarah Oaks managed to get a lift to the address with the police officers, and she arrived at her house in a matter of moments.
‘Before she got there, she was able to call her daughter. She told her that there appeared to be an unknown male in the property. She directed her daughter to try and make some noise to try and scare the person off.
‘Hannah slammed the door, and that appeared to have work because when Sarah got to the property with the police officers, there was no sign of anyone in the property.
‘She noticed some property had gone missing from the inside her living room- a watch and some jewellery.
‘A few days later on 13 May she was at her local supermarket when she was approached by Mr Wilson for some spare change, and Sarah Oaks immediately recognised Mr Wilson from the footage on her phone.
‘Mr Wilson was arrested on suspicion of burglary.’
Wilson, of Regent Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, denied but was convicted of burglary.
Judge Anthony Leonard QC will pass sentence on 1 February.
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Interesting how old some of the people who feature on these pages are. They are not spotty teenagers being silly but rather middle aged, presumably career criminals. I should think that poor Hannah was absolutely terrified.
I am not in the least bit interested in the claims that prison does not work. It does. It keeps scum like Wilson locked up where he cannot prey on the general public and if prison was funded and used properly, career criminals would be locked up for longer and longer.
I am not that interested in their rights. They have the right to a fair trial and an appeal and that is the end of it. Thereafter, in they go and there they stay for increasingly long periods of time. I would like to see obligatory jail terms for burglars, starting with a minimum of two years. If the judge sees fit to make it longer, so much the better. Every subsequent term should be twice that of the preceding term, again as an absolute minimum with the judge able to dish out more if he feel it appropriate.
Two things would happen. Either the criminal would go straight or eventually die in jail. Either is a positive outcome for the law abiding community.
One of Sir Robert Peel’s founding criteria was that an absence of crime was the sign of an effective police force. Back in the day, it probably never entered his head that the judiciary would keep releasing career criminals back into the community so that they can commit more crime.
This saying now needs to be amended to read ‘an absence of crime is the sign of an effective judiciary and police force’. It is also about time we had an inspectorate of judges, scrutinising their sentencing.