How visible security supports police and public safety

Ensuring public safety remains one of the toughest challenges for police forces across the UK today. In 2025, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) recorded crime data identified 6.7 million annual crimes across England and Wales. While stable year-on-year, this is an increase from 4.2 million in 2015.

Violent crimes like homicide may be at historic lows – 2025 saw the lowest figure since 1977 – but serious crimes still carry political and social sensitivity.

So called lower harm crimes are also spiralling. Retail crime, including shoplifting which rose by 5% in 2025, vandalism, and anti-social behaviour, continue to pose threats while over 453,700 public order offences were recorded in 2024/25.

At the same time, police forces within the UK are dealing with resource strain. This has created a demand for scalable, cost-effective visible security solutions. Technologies like the Safer POD® family are well placed to address this.

As a result of their introduction by police forces, enhanced visibility, a drop in crime rates, and improved efficiency of community policing have already been experienced.

Police forces are not failing. Instead, they are being pushed to evolve and stretch to deal with greater levels of diverse crime with tighter resources.

While overall crime levels have been noted to be in decline, public safety and volume crimes are increasing in numbers, creating additional complexity for community policing.

Retail crime is just one example of this, with high frequency offences like shoplifting, vandalism, or anti-social behaviour including violence against retail staff making headlines across the UK.

Violence against women and girls, who are disproportionally affected by forms of abuse, has also been put under the spotlight by UK police forces.

This has led to the formation of a national framework to address what has been called a ‘national emergency’ by the National Police Chief’s Council.

These challenges reflect a wider strain experienced across UK policing, with forces responding by exploring new proactive crime solutions.

This has included trialling new technologies from the private sector, with the aim of enhancing public safety for all and adding strength to community policing efforts.

Academics point to the ‘pluralisation’ of policing. This relates to the way in which the private sector now commonly works to support the publicly funded police force.

Partnerships like this have played a notable role in combatting modern crimes like phone theft, with the introduction of data sharing and innovations like IMEI allowing police to track down devices and apprehend criminals.

The security industry, working alongside the police, have enjoyed some of the longest established examples of pluralisation. Private firms have long supported the police in event management, 1-1 personal security for high profile individuals, and modern crime prevention like corporate cyber security.

Within this landscape, Safer Group and our Safer POD® solutions sit at the forefront of innovative surveillance and intelligence gathering, offering a new layer of deterrence, detection, and capture.

While our devices offer support to public safety policing, they are not a direct substitute for the experience, knowledge, and human touch that officers directly bring to the communities they serve.

Instead, a collaborative approach is encouraged to provide police with the tools they need to effectively enhance community safety.

We work closely with government bodies, constabularies, retailers, and BID groups across the UK to reduce risk with our rapidly deployed Safer POD® solutions.

Examples include Gateshead Council, Durham Constabulary, Lancashire Constabulary, Northumbria Police, Warwickshire Police and Merseyside Police.

The Safer POD® family work by providing a visible presence that reassures the public and disrupts the criminal intent of potential offenders. This type of visible monitoring has been effective against social crime like violence and public disorder, theft, anti-social behaviour, and intrusion on private property.

Utilised in both urban and rural settings thanks to the adaptability and rapid deployment capability of our Safer POD® family, these solutions are equipped to defend communities against real-world threats.

Crime is increasingly hyper-localised in the UK. Trends present themselves in clusters, with a small number of locations driving a sizeable percentage of offences. Retail parks, transport hubs, and city centres are typical examples of areas subject to increased incidents.

Data recorded in 2025 highlighted a figure of over 50% (around 25,000) of London knife crime offences concentrated in around 4,000 hotspot areas.

The challenge is that police cannot keep a constant physical presence where it is most needed. With knowledge of these hotspots, a Safer POD® solution can be deployed to deter crime with a significant impact as a visible security measure.

The Safer POD® solution has delivered results in trial deployments. In collaboration with Durham Constabulary, a Safer POD® S1 reduced shoplifting by 95% and reduced anti-social behaviour incidents to zero from 18 over a 6-week period.

Total police cost savings were estimated to be £19,900. Both staff and customers reported an increased feeling of safety and security with the Safer POD® S1 on site.

In another deployment, Merseyside Police coordinated with Liverpool City Council, Liverpool BID group, and local hotel chains to implement the solution during the Isle of Man TT race.

The additional visible security provided by the Safer POD® S1 played a role in delivering an eradication of bike theft within Liverpool City Centre from 5 reported in 2024, to zero in 2025.

The primary benefit of introducing a Safer POD® solution is the visible deterrence that it creates. The robust nature of the solution cuts through inattentional blindness, a concept used to explain the reduced responsiveness towards traditional CCTV, which has become less effective at halting or deterring crime.

As our trial deployments have shown, visible deterrence in high-risk areas have been proven to reduce crime, making communities safer.

There is also less risk of escalation, with 24/7 live monitoring by in-house control room operators. Image capture creates evidence of a crime in progress, which can also assist police in achieving convictions.

Community confidence is improved because the Safer POD® solution is a visibly active deterrent within a high-risk environment.

This mirrors the control signal created by a visible police presence, reducing fear of crime and disorder.

This improved confidence can be transformative for staff in retail settings. A Safer POD® solution trialled within a retail space in Darlington, funded by Durham Police and Crime Commissioner Joy Allen after previous success with the device, was celebrated for its impact.

Visible security solutions can, therefore, play an important role when deployed as part of a coordinated community policing and crime prevention strategy.

By providing visible deterrence in high-risk or emerging hotspots, they help reduce offending and contribute to more efficient allocation of vital police resources. 

This informed approach to resource allocation, and collaboration with private sector security firms, can ultimately assist constabularies to create safer communities for us all.