The trained soldiers – who, until recently, were deployed in global ‘hot spots’ including Helmand Province – are using their covert surveillance skills to monitor waste and recycling sites and landfill locations across the UK at the request of local authority and commercial waste recycling clients.
Determined thieves are breaking into the sites and trekking over several hundred acres of often hazardous terrain in the dark to capture their booty of scrap metal. This is often the residue left by the operation’s furnaces, which has a street value of GB pound 3,000 per tonne.
The non-incinerated metal scrap can reach higher prices of anything up to GB pound 7,000 per tonne.
The value of scrap copper is almost reaching these prices on world markets, which has become a major source of concern for other agencies including the British Transport Police (who have been tracking brazen thieves stripping copper from signalling hubs in rail sidings at great personal risk to passengers and themselves).
The media has reported these actions on numerous occasions: actions which have halted trains and disrupted the transport infrastructure throughout 2011.
Now, in what is believed to be the first deployment of its type, IRC Security Special Projects Teams and its Security Guard division have been working on combined operations for clients suffering from continual theft of their non-ferrous metal.
Over the last four weeks, IRC Security’s efforts has resulted in the arrests of prolific offenders. Accustomed to working in hazardous terrains, the former soldiers and the Gurkhas they work alongside can operate ‘under the radar’ of even the more organised and secretive gangs.
“Clients call us in because we think outside the box,” explained IRC managing director Niall Burns, who has recently returned from Afghanistan. “We use our experience and training from our time in the Special Forces to set up rural observations posts [with operatives covertly hidden in available foliage] to gather intelligence and evidence on the modus operandi of the thieves.”
He added: “As former Special Forces personnel, we also know how to deploy hi-tech infrared covert cameras to gather intelligence and evidence.”
DNA-style marker paint used
Another useful tool in the IRC Special Projects Team’s arsenal is a DNA-type marker paint only visible to a specialist detecting unit.
“Any person touching the painted metal will be marked,” stated Burns, “and so will their clothes and any equipment and transport they use to move the metal. All will be easily identifiable. The criminals are normally organised in gangs removing large quantities of non-ferrous metal from landfill and waste recycling sites, so we have to be one-step ahead at all times.”
Once the modus operandi has been identified and the intelligence collated, IRC Security moves into the second phase of the operation, the aim of which is to capture of the thieves in action.
IRC Security’s officers are former British Army Gurkhas deployed to patrol sites and interact with the covert teams strategically placed around the sites.
Team managers always liaise with the local police and, on several recent operations, this has resulted in successful arrests.
“The specialist paint alongside photographic, video evidence and written logs will be used by the prosecution to prove the cases against the accused,” added Burns, who is also an expert in counter-terrorism and a specialist in countering the threat from stalkers.
