IN recent weeks, officers from Gloucestershire police have won games of hide and seek with criminals hiding out in Jamaica, Gibraltar and Italy. Laura Churchill talks to Detective Chief Inspector Steve Bean about catching criminals on the run.
"YOU can run, but you cannot hide" is the message to criminals thinking of skipping bail and heading to sunnier climates.
Recently, officers from Gloucestershire police have caught criminals hiding out in Jamaica, Gibraltar and Italy.
And Detective Chief Inspector Steve Bean wants those on the run abroad to be warned they won't be forgotten.
DCI Bean was in charge of extraditing 34-year-old cocaine dealer, Vanja Crepuljar, back to the UK from Sicily, where he faced justice in the form of an eight-year prison sentence.
The major player in a drugs ring, which imported thousands of pounds worth of cocaine for supply in Cheltenham, had been at large since July 2011.
Despite him using aliases and moving from country to country, officers from Gloucestershire still managed to get him.
DCI Bean said: "Most people on the run leave a fingerprint, whether it's financial or through social media, and we use that to track them.
"We also use covert tactics such as looking at phones or computers. It is a range of techniques.
"A lot of people get complacent. They think we are not after them, when we are tracking them down."
Extraditions are quite rare for Gloucestershire police to carry out and in DCI Steve Bean's 16 years on the force, he has undertaken just four.
But officers have had considerable success recently. They extradited drug dealer Stephen Holmes from Gibraltar, where he was ironically found working in a drug rehabilitation centre as a carer.
He was jailed for seven years following his 12 years on the run.
Crepuljar was first wanted by police in July 2011 when he was in Belgrade on holiday. Knowing what awaited him, he never returned the UK.
Officers worked hard to find out his true identity and then managed to confirm his location on the Italian island. He was eventually arrested on September 28, 2012 and landed in the UK on Valentine's Day with four Gloucestershire police officers who went to collect him.
DCI Bean said: "We will not give up and to find people like Crepuljar it is worthwhile in terms of public money.
"It can be frustrating and it can be bureaucratic, but that is a necessity given in this country where you're innocent until proven guilty."
