<div>Admit it — you think you know what a groper looks like. You probably think you could spot one a mile off. A few weeks ago, I certainly thought I was pretty savvy about such things. But after spending a morning undercover with British Transport Police (BTP) officers, I’ve been forced to reassess.<br /><br />They’re able to predict with uncanny accuracy the men who will sexually assault women on Britain’s transport networks. And it’s fundamentally changed the way I view the passengers with whom I share my daily commute. The police insist this isn’t about prejudice, or profiling. How someone looks or what kind of job they have — or don’t — is no indicator. What is, however, is how they behave.<br /><br />I spent several hours with undercover officers on the London Underground, and started to see the world through their eyes. I hadn’t paid much attention to my fellow commuters before. But now, briefed by the lead detective, I looked around me. The vast majority of people stared into the middle-distance, listening to music on the phones, or perhaps reading a book. Very few had even the slightest interest in their neighbours.<br /><br />Those that did were immediately scrutinised by the BTP officers. Anyone lurking against the wall at the back of the platform, missing one train after another, before edging into a crowd would be followed by plainclothes cops. Some of course proved to be a false alarm.But one man we trailed was, police believed, a sex offender who had slipped through their fingers.<br /><br />I wouldn’t have given him a second glance in normal circumstances. But after my briefing from the officers, I clocked him as someone potentially suspicious. He was looking obsessively and nervously from one passenger to the next. He missed several trains, before manoeuvring himself behind a woman.<br /><br />Covert ops<br /><br />He boarded the tube, and so did we. I had a camera embedded in the arm of a pair of glasses, and my producer Tom had one fixed under his jumper. Then, something unexpected happened. In the crush of the rush hour, another man ended up wedged in between our suspect and the woman, “blocking or partially blocking his access to her” — as the undercover officer put it to me afterwards. The BTP detectives were convinced he was about to offend, so when they returned to the office, they logged details of his appearance, and the exact journey he took, so they could keep an eye on him in future.<br /><br />Does this all sound rather sinister to you — giving too much power to police who, we have learnt over the decades, are scarily fallible? Yet, as I saw with my own eyes, the detectives here are relying both on intelligence reports and close analysis of behaviour to tackle gropers. And they’re only moving in to arrest once they’re as certain as they can be that an assault has or is taking place.<br /><br />And it’s vital they do. Around 10% of passengers experience unwanted sexual harassment on London transport. As much as 90% of it goes unreported. Take the case of Cao Cooc, for example. If you’d been sharing your commute with him you’d have been hard-pushed to predict he was about to commit an offence. This was a man in a suit, a city worker, who’d said goodbye to his pregnant wife and young child not long before, leaving home early and building in extra time in his commute to find a suitable <br />victim.<br /><br />But plain clothes officers had cause for concern about him a few months earlier. So when they spotted him during a patrol, they kept a close eye on his behaviour. He immediately triggered suspicions, hanging back against the wall, before moving in behind a young woman in the crowd. The officers saw him rub his crotch against her, so they swooped in to separate him from his victim. He was put on the sex offenders register, and lost his job in financial services.<br /><br />The undercover detective leading the patrol told me: “There is no profile for the type of offender that we deal with. They are from all different backgrounds and different walks of life. “A lot of them are working people and quite a few of them offend on their commute to work. So when someone’s dressed in a suit, or seemingly looking like an ordinary decent member of the public, it’s the behaviours that we go on, which then pinpoint them to us as someone suspicious who we should be looking at.”<br /><br />He added, “Anecdotally there is a drop during the school holidays and that’s <br />because our offenders, quite a few of them, have families.” So, now you know what a groper looks like. Or rather, that what he looks like is irrelevant. But there is a pattern to how a groper behaves on his way to work, and it’s horribly recognisable — you just have to know the signs.<br /><br /><br /></div>
<div>Admit it — you think you know what a groper looks like. You probably think you could spot one a mile off. A few weeks ago, I certainly thought I was pretty savvy about such things. But after spending a morning undercover with British Transport Police (BTP) officers, I’ve been forced to reassess.<br /><br />They’re able to predict with uncanny accuracy the men who will sexually assault women on Britain’s transport networks. And it’s fundamentally changed the way I view the passengers with whom I share my daily commute. The police insist this isn’t about prejudice, or profiling. How someone looks or what kind of job they have — or don’t — is no indicator. What is, however, is how they behave.<br /><br />I spent several hours with undercover officers on the London Underground, and started to see the world through their eyes. I hadn’t paid much attention to my fellow commuters before. But now, briefed by the lead detective, I looked around me. The vast majority of people stared into the middle-distance, listening to music on the phones, or perhaps reading a book. Very few had even the slightest interest in their neighbours.<br /><br />Those that did were immediately scrutinised by the BTP officers. Anyone lurking against the wall at the back of the platform, missing one train after another, before edging into a crowd would be followed by plainclothes cops. Some of course proved to be a false alarm.But one man we trailed was, police believed, a sex offender who had slipped through their fingers.<br /><br />I wouldn’t have given him a second glance in normal circumstances. But after my briefing from the officers, I clocked him as someone potentially suspicious. He was looking obsessively and nervously from one passenger to the next. He missed several trains, before manoeuvring himself behind a woman.<br /><br />Covert ops<br /><br />He boarded the tube, and so did we. I had a camera embedded in the arm of a pair of glasses, and my producer Tom had one fixed under his jumper. Then, something unexpected happened. In the crush of the rush hour, another man ended up wedged in between our suspect and the woman, “blocking or partially blocking his access to her” — as the undercover officer put it to me afterwards. The BTP detectives were convinced he was about to offend, so when they returned to the office, they logged details of his appearance, and the exact journey he took, so they could keep an eye on him in future.<br /><br />Does this all sound rather sinister to you — giving too much power to police who, we have learnt over the decades, are scarily fallible? Yet, as I saw with my own eyes, the detectives here are relying both on intelligence reports and close analysis of behaviour to tackle gropers. And they’re only moving in to arrest once they’re as certain as they can be that an assault has or is taking place.<br /><br />And it’s vital they do. Around 10% of passengers experience unwanted sexual harassment on London transport. As much as 90% of it goes unreported. Take the case of Cao Cooc, for example. If you’d been sharing your commute with him you’d have been hard-pushed to predict he was about to commit an offence. This was a man in a suit, a city worker, who’d said goodbye to his pregnant wife and young child not long before, leaving home early and building in extra time in his commute to find a suitable <br />victim.<br /><br />But plain clothes officers had cause for concern about him a few months earlier. So when they spotted him during a patrol, they kept a close eye on his behaviour. He immediately triggered suspicions, hanging back against the wall, before moving in behind a young woman in the crowd. The officers saw him rub his crotch against her, so they swooped in to separate him from his victim. He was put on the sex offenders register, and lost his job in financial services.<br /><br />The undercover detective leading the patrol told me: “There is no profile for the type of offender that we deal with. They are from all different backgrounds and different walks of life. “A lot of them are working people and quite a few of them offend on their commute to work. So when someone’s dressed in a suit, or seemingly looking like an ordinary decent member of the public, it’s the behaviours that we go on, which then pinpoint them to us as someone suspicious who we should be looking at.”<br /><br />He added, “Anecdotally there is a drop during the school holidays and that’s <br />because our offenders, quite a few of them, have families.” So, now you know what a groper looks like. Or rather, that what he looks like is irrelevant. But there is a pattern to how a groper behaves on his way to work, and it’s horribly recognisable — you just have to know the signs.<br /><br /><br /></div>