Police use of SmartWater leads to 69% reduction in domestic violence incidents
Risk management company, SmartWater Group, is working with police forces to fight domestic abuse and help victims feel safer.
Image courtesy SmartWater
This follows a widely reported increase in domestic violence during lockdown due to victims being trapped in their homes with their abusers.
To help this UK wide situation, SmartWater’s forensic marking liquid, which has traditionally been used to deter offences of theft and burglary, is now being used to protect victims of domestic abuse.
One police force that is already seeing results from this new initiative is South Yorkshire Police, where they are seeing a 69% reduction in reported incidents and a 94% reduction in harm from those incidents reported.
The police are remaining tight-lipped on the various methods they are using to deploy SmartWater at the time of an incident but perpetrators who are marked with SmartWater will be forensically linked to the scene of the crime. This is helping the police to build a strong evidence case against them in circumstances that can often be difficult to prove.
Gary Higgins, COO of SmartWater Technology division, commented: “SmartWater is delighted to be supporting the Police with this innovative and very effective use of our products. SmartWater maintains a 100% conviction rate in contested court cases, powerful proof of our effectiveness in linking perpetrators to the scene of their crime.”
Lee Berry, Detective Chief Inspector for South Yorkshire Police, added: “We’ve seen significant reductions in relation to repeat offences, that’s dropped, up to 69% less offence has been recorded, but significantly what we’re really pleased about is, that those people we are protecting feel more safe and they’ve got more confidence in the Police as well.”
SmartWater is also currently the only forensic marking system that is compliant with the Government Forensic Science Regulators Code of Practice.