SmartWater Drives Criminals Out of Cumbria
A Cumbrian initiative to deter criminals from stealing farming equipment has proved so successful it’s driven crime out of the country
The Smartwater scheme - part of Cunibria Police’s Farmwatch programme — has proved vital in cracking down on thefts from the county’s farms. Now, police in Scotland say offenders are being forced north of the border as a result — prompting Dumfries and Galloway police to roll out the property marking system across their region.
PC Alistair Mitchell, crime reduction officer for Annandale and Eskdale, said: “Smartwater has been a success with Farmwatch in the Cumbria area and what we’ve seen over the last few months is an increase in our rural thefts. Interviews with criminals we’ve caught indicated that the reason they are travelling into our area is the fact that we didn’t have Smart- water — and it’s taking them less than half an hour to travel into our area and commit crime.”
Smartwater is a liquid- based solution that is designed as both a crime prevention and detection tool. It can be used to mark property and equipment, marking them with a forensic liquid which can then be used to return stolen property and catch the culprits responsible for thefts.
It is almost impossible to remove SmartWater from clothing and shoes, and UV lighting in police custody and property suites are used to identify offenders who have come into contact with it.
Now that both Carlisle’s Durranhill station and the main station in Dumfries have the detection systems, PC Mitchell hopes the expansion of the Smartwater scheme will see criminals caught on both sides of the border. He added: “Because it is cross-bordering they might not have committed a crime here but might have done it in Cumbria, or vice-versa,”
“If we’re getting criminals from one side of the border coming to the other, then when they get back home and are scanned there they will be caught at that point.”