Water smart plan to secure home (From Warrington Guardian)

Water smart plan to secure home

OVER the past few weeks Cheshire Police and Halton's Consumer Protection Service have taken an in depth look at doorstep crime and offered advice and tips to residents to help them protect themselves and their homes.

In this, the final article of the series, Cheshire Police examines the benefits of Smartwater.

As well as installing good quality locks and bolts on your windows and doors, taking the time to security mark your property can play an important role in deterring the crooks.

By marking your property it means that stolen goods, recovered by police, can be linked back to their rightful owners. It can also help to link burglars to particular crimes. Popular methods of property marking include etching, engraving or using an ultra violet pen to mark the post code and house number on valuable items.

Now residents also have the option of using Smartwater.

This high tech solution is being used by Cheshire Police to identify stolen property and to target those people who make a profit from selling-on stolen goods. And the Force is training more officers to detect the presence of Smartwater when stolen property is recovered.

Force burglary co-ordinator, Inspector Paul Davies said: "Smartwater provides a unique, traceable solution that can be painted onto items in the home, office or commercial premises. It's a chemically enhanced liquid that's invisible to the naked eye but when applied to property, or sprayed onto criminals while stealing or handling stolen property is virtually impossible to remove."

Each bottle is unique to the address to which it is registered and because of the DNA type properties of the solution no two bottles are the same. Each bottle is registered with Smartwater who match each solution to the individual purchaser providing a traceable path to the original owner of any stolen property recovered. And because of its unique identification abilities ,Smartwater provides the police with forensic evidence that places the offender at the scene of a crime.

So far, more than 400 criminals across the country have been convicted as a direct result of Smartwater being used in evidence.

The Force has installed special lighting in its three custody suites to detect the presence of Smartwater on an offender or on recovered stolen property. When Smartwater is detected at a custody facility the offender is interviewed in relation to burglary offences regardless of the crime for which he or she has been originally arrested.

In the coming weeks Smartwater will be introduced into selected private homes in Halton. Police have joined forces with partner agencies throughout the county to provide free kits to those homes thought to be most at risk of being targeted. Cheshire Police is using a variety of information about burglary, where it has been committed and who is committing it to identify the households where it's believed Smartwater would be most effective.

Residents living in the identified areas will soon receive a leaflet inviting them to take up the opportunity of having Smartwater in their home.