More than forty officers have been trained to prevent sexual violence as part of Operation Vigilance, including undercover and plain clothes officers.
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00:00 Saturday night in Canterbury. For some, a time for celebration. For others, a time for caution.
00:06 Between 2017 and 2022, there were more than 56,000 victims of violence against women and girls,
00:13 according to the Police Crime Commissioner, with nearly 50,000 male offenders.
00:18 The women I spoke to say they don't feel safe.
00:20 Do you feel safe, like, in a night out like this in Canterbury?
00:24 No.
00:25 Not at all?
00:26 Not unless we're together.
00:29 In a group, we would. We're in a group, so we would be in a group, but singly, we wouldn't.
00:34 No.
00:35 There's a lot of male presence, and as the night goes on, more people get drunk,
00:40 and it's just not as nice, and I feel like the culture of, like,
00:44 drinking and safety has gone a bit downhill over the years.
00:46 I think if I'm with someone, I do. If I was by myself, 100% no, to be honest.
00:52 Yeah, I have to wait on the car until you get me my...
00:54 Project Vigilance takes a multi-pronged approach focusing on preventing violence.
00:59 Through flyers earlier in the evening, and officers trained to look for concerning behaviour.
01:03 The officers will be deployed out in small groups.
01:05 They'll be looking for individuals who are displaying the behavioural traits
01:09 associated with sexual predatory offending, which might include pestering of groups,
01:15 loitering on street corners, and inappropriate touching, for example.
01:21 And then once they've identified those individuals,
01:23 they'll direct their uniformed colleagues to come over and intervene
01:27 and speak to the individuals that we've identified.
01:30 Here at the police station on Old Dover Road,
01:32 officers are getting ready to hit the streets in the lead-up to Christmas,
01:35 with undercover and uniformed groups being briefed on who to look out for
01:38 and where they'll be going.
01:40 One plainclothes officer who can't be identified for operational reasons
01:43 says surveillance is critical to keeping people in Canterbury safe.
01:47 So being a plainclothes officer, we're out there looking for people
01:51 acting suspiciously and inappropriately, loitering outside pubs, clubs and nightclubs.
01:59 Being plainclothes is quite beneficial to that because we can stand back and
02:04 observe people's behaviours and how they're moving compared to other people.
02:08 And having that step back from being in uniform,
02:12 we can then relay the information that we've seen to the police officers in uniform,
02:16 who can then go and engage with these people.
02:18 As the patrol heads to the city centre,
02:20 the night has already begun to get more boisterous.
02:23 These officers will make around 30 interventions in a night,
02:26 be it a quiet word or a stop and search or even an arrest.
02:30 It's about engaging with people, meeting people on the street,
02:33 having those conversations and then that helps people to look out for their friends
02:37 if they have got drunk.
02:38 It enables them to call a taxi, get people home or go home together.
02:42 Do you know what I mean?
02:42 And I think those kind of situations where people are on their own or left are becoming less.
02:48 I think it's, with for example the arrest we made last night,
02:52 we wouldn't have had that report.
02:53 If it wasn't for the plainclothes officers that had seen that encounter,
02:56 that would have been something that went unreported and he'd still be out there now potentially.
03:03 But it was the plainclothes officers that witnessed that
03:06 and then the uniformed officers went in to speak to them females and disclosed what had happened.
03:10 No arrests tonight, but there are plans being made to introduce a tactic into every district
03:14 in the county, with Maidstone and Medway being next on the list.
03:18 With project vigilance rolling out wider across Kent next year,
03:21 police will be hoping women will feel safer on the county streets.
03:26 Oliver De Sacks reporting for KMTV.