06 Apr 2026
It’s the early hours of the morning in St Albans city centre, and the few remaining late night venues are sending their last customers on their way, spilling out into the streets and heading for home.
A woman in her late 20s hugs her friends goodbye and promises to text when she’s in her taxi, heading in the direction of the St Peter’s Street ranks and hoping she won’t have to wait too long.
Across the road, a man has been watching her from a shop doorway for some time. He sees that she is somewhat inebriated, and clocks that not only are there are no taxis queuing for trade but the streets are now deserted.
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he’s just about to cross the road when he’s suddenly approached by two police officers. They have been alerted to his suspicious behaviour by colleagues who have spent the evening conducting covert patrols outside nearby bars, pubs and clubs…
This fictitious scenario is very much grounded in reality. Project Vigilant is an ongoing police safety operation aimed at identifying and intercepting men who may be acting in a predatory way as part of their Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy, a commitment to keeping women safe across St Albans and beyond.
Undercover officers integrate themselves among the public to identify anyone of concern before they have a chance to strike, contacting their uniformed counterparts when necessary.
Locally, the initiative has been running a couple of years, after being launched by Thames Valley Police on their patch, with training then introduced in Hertfordshire.
Community Safety Unit Sergeant Mike Saunders, who works alongside Response Sergeant Lisa Marshall on the initiative, explained how Vigilant works in St Albans: “We’ve got a very busy night-time economy in St Albans. Probably one of the busiest in the county, and we saw that we could probably do with having the project going on here.
“We like to have a minimum of eight officers out on an evening, two pairs of covert officers and two pairs of uniformed officers. Because it’s quite a big city centre, this means we can spread them out, maybe even as far down as The Horn and London Road, just to make sure the whole area is covered.
“We operate when the bars are kicking out, and then through to early morning on Saturdays and Sundays because nightclubs might be open until 3 to 3.30. Not everybody wants to go to a club, but those who do tend to migrate to the top of town, and so our busy periods are generally speaking when people have finished drinking in the pubs and bars.”
Vigilant officers don’t go inside any venues, but hang around outside watching interactions between members of the public, and liaising with the team in the council’s CCTV operations suite, who help to highlight anything worthy of their attention.
Lisa says: “We’ll be in the station running the operation, using a radio channel to communicate with the officers out there so we can carry out any checks on people. We have an app on our laptop which links into the local CCTV, and we also give them advanced warning that we’re going to be running a Vigilant operation, and they’re happy to work with us.”
An obvious red flag for the Vigilant team might be a lone male, probably seeming somewhat out of place, maybe sitting on a bench or looking into bars, and ideally they will speak to him before he approaches any women.
Mike explains: “We try and identify them prior to this, and of course many people are quiet innocent bystanders just passing the time of day, but generally speaking if we see somebody who’s just sat there for quite some time we would get our covert officers into position somewhere close by so they can hear conversations as well and pick up on what is being said.”
Just recently, officers overheard a man asking for the home postcodes of two women sitting on a bench, claiming he wanted to pay for their taxi fare home.
Mike reveals: “Once we knew there was something going on, we had a CCTV camera looking straight down at them, and because we had people close by we could hear what they were saying, and it all seemed a bit strange.
“His intention was to drop one of them off at their home in Harpenden, and then go on with the other girl to where he lived in Luton, pick up his car and take her home to Watford.”
Uniformed officers intercepted before the group left their location, and carried out checks on the suspect, discovering that he had a previous conviction for domestic violence, and that he flagged up as being quite high risk.
“Generally speaking, when we challenge people, they’re normally very compliant, even if they’re up to no good. But this guy was in the faces of the officers at the time, spouting off about complaints and being picked on, which gave the impression he was very anti-police.
“I’ve now banned him from the whole of Herts between certain hours, which is obviously a positive thing.”
It seems as though it’s often the case that potential victims have no idea that they are at any risk? “More often than not. In this particular case, he had been with these girls for a number of hours, and when he was spoken to he said that he knew them, but it transpired that he only knew their first names and nothing more than that.
“At the end of the day they had been quite happy for someone to pay their taxi fare, but when our officers spoke to them afterwards the light went off, this might have been a luck escape.
“Generally speaking, it depends on a person’s approach, and in this case he was quite casual and prepared to work over a long period of time in order to take his cue about what he was going to do. Other men are more forthright in approaching females when they come out of licensed premises, especially if they’re intoxicated and on their own.
“Some of our officers have even been approached in the past. That happens quite a lot as they blend in well. They look just like normal people on a night out.
“I was around the bottom of town once when this guy came over and started talking to me for ages and ages. I thought he was going to offer me some drugs at one point, but he had absolutely no idea at all that I was a police officer, because I was wearing a woolly hat which covered up my earpieces and it was dark.
“The predators think they’re safe, but actually they’re being watched quite closely. We have our targets as well, people we know from our own intel who have that sort of predatory behaviour and may be living in the community, so we make sure we get to them early when they’re spotted before they start anything at all.”
For anyone, particularly women, out at night in St Albans, there are obvious measures they can take to protect themselves, such as not leaving their drinks unattended, but what advice would he give to them when they leave the premises?
Mike elaborates: “Before you go out, plan your route home. The thing about being a safe city centre is people then tend to be complacent and over-confident in their surroundings, and that’s the last thing we want. It’s about finding the balance between going out and having a good time and making sure you don’t make yourself vulnerable at the end of the night. You can’t beat your own sixth sense, so listen to it and react to it.
“There’s also the general advice of not leaving your friends to walk off on your own, try to have at least one person in your party who isn’t drinking or at least isn’t as intoxicated as the rest.
“Obviously we don’t want to stop people from meeting someone they might form a relationship with, it’s just looking for the red flags and encouraging people to be wary of that sort of behaviour.
“If someone’s offering to pay for a taxi then ask yourself why they haven’t been in the bar, why were they waiting outside? There’s a fine line between seeing an attractive person and speaking to them and somebody displaying predatory behaviour.
“The good thing about our covert officers is that they’re listening to conversations going on, and making sure there’s some integrity and honesty in the approach to whoever they’re speaking to.
“You know, it’s springtime now, and as we head into summer it’s going to get really busy.”
With many nightspots having closed down in neighbouring towns like Watford, Luton and Bedford, St Albans is also bringing in visitors on the trainline, putting added pressure on already stretched police resources.
“It’s a nice place, a very safe place, and that’s why we get so many people coming here. We don’t want to scare people, but we have Project Vigilant operations on a regular basis so it’s going to be even safer.”
Fortunately, officers enjoy a good relationship with local licensed premises, as Mike explains: “We work very closely with them, and when we do have problems they get sorted out very quickly.
“The owner of Club Veeda, for example, is very proactive, he has a good set of door staff and he won’t tolerate any rubbish.
“If we had more issues in the town we would do operations more often, but with the low level of crime in St Albans we don’t need to do any more.
“We can pick up people and we can keep them away, we can put them prison or whatever else we need to do in order to keep people safe.”
How does he judge their success when often it’s only a case of stopping people for a chat?
“It’s difficult. Last week was very successful as we got a couple of people on the risk matrix last week, and we also got a lot of intel.
“But what people need to realise is that there are always police out there on the streets, you might not see them as they won’t always be in uniform, but all the officers that are deployed are ready to go.”
