“Multibillions of dollars’ worth of agriculture is pushed across the world,” Boudreaux told me. “With that, you have a criminal elements.” Two years ago, Boudreaux ordered his four-man Agricultural Crimes Unit to scour the internet for a new technology, “something innovative, really obscure,” to wrangle the county’s theft problems. One of them found SmartWater on the internet.

Boudreaux compared the product to a movie trick where a thief opens the proceeds from a bank heist to find that everything is covered in pink paint. SmartWater’s biggest asset, in his mind, is its ability to mark someone’s possessions. As Boudreaux explained, if your Rolex was found on a pile of other Rolexes, someone would be able to determine which one was yours.

Last year, Boudreaux’s office purchased $60,000 worth of SmartWater, and he is zealous about the initiative. He’s spearheading an effort to bring SmartWater to the surrounding counties and wants to introduce the product to high-value agricultural industries that have suffered newsworthy thefts, like bees and nuts. (SmartWater is not approved for consumption.)

Through the California State Sheriffs’ Association (Boudreaux is on the board), the sheriff has made public presentations about the product and hosted numerous law enforcement agencies that want to see the product in action. He said his office has distributed 1,600 vials of SmartWater to Tulare County Agricultural Association members, in addition to 500 more vials to other residents, gratis.

“The idea is that we would hope that the more the information gets out there, the more people become familiar with it, the more they will invest in their own protection for their property,” Boudreaux told me.

Since the product’s rollout a year ago, Boudreaux says there have been several success stories. Deputies used SmartWater to mark bait money in the county’s justice center, where cash was being mysteriously pilfered from individuals’ belongings. Boudreaux’s department watched via surveillance as the employee took the money from co-workers’ purses. After she went to deposit the cash in the bank, deputies swooped in, showing that the SmartWater on the money matched the SmartWater on her hands. (According to online court records, no complaint has been filed in this case.)

In another case, security guards employed by Union Pacific Railroad approached the sheriff’s office to help solve a series of confounding train horn thefts. In September 2017, Tulare County deputies applied SmartWater to two train horns and caught two men stealing the horns through surveillance and from the traces of SmartWater all over their hands. The men were arrested “without incident,” according to the official report. It’s not clear whether SmartWater is admissible in criminal court, because most of these cases, like the train horn thefts, involve multiple investigatory methods and confessions. Tulare officials told me that investigations into the theft by Union Pacific were ongoing, and the case has not yet gone to trial.

Everything, except the animals, was marked with SmartWater.

This case, according to Boudreaux, was a real game changer. “Our inmates said that they felt in the beginning [that SmartWater] was just propaganda and that we were just using it to fool them, until the train case… Then they went, ‘Holy smokes, this is real.’”

Vital to Sheriff Boudreaux’s vision is a statewide coalition of SmartWater users. Pete Alvitre, a sixth-generation Californian who owns multiple citrus farms in Tulare County, is an avid user of SmartWater and describes it as one of the many tools in his theft-deterrence toolbox. A large man who wears a button-down Hawaiian-style shirt covered in American flags, Alvitre owns three citrus farms in addition to a red retrofitted 1932 Ford Victoria, two small rescue dogs, and several miniature donkeys that his wife raises as a hobby. His farms are outfitted with solar panels, turbines, and various generators and tractors. There was a workshop full of woodworking and metal sculpting equipment. Everything, except the animals, was marked with SmartWater. Even Alvitre’s iPhone.

Pete Alvitre

Alvitre had dabbed SmartWater on parts of equipment that would not be painted over or that would be less obvious but nonetheless imminently touchable in a hurry — handles, steering wheels, gear shifts, and lug nuts. “You want to look for places where they are not going to spray paint,” he said. “I love it because it’s the silent one. It’s invisible.”

When asked if there were any downsides, Alvitre said possibly “the expense…but I think the people who own the technology and are developing it [will get] more and more people on board. Their prices will come down, and you will get the technology more refined.” Alvitre received his vial free from the sheriff’s office and said he still had plenty left over.

“I want to get the word out to as many people as I can,” Sheriff Boudreaux said. He encourages people to hang signs warning of SmartWater use on premises. There used to be an enormous billboard on the side of the highway just outside the city:

Thieves beware! Tulare County is forensically protected by SmartWater. The Invisible, Silent Witness

Part of SmartWater’s crime-fighting promise relies on the invisible deterrent — creating the sense that it is impossible to tell what might be branded, a dirty trap to catch a passing thief. Or, as Boudreaux frames it, “Not only are we educating our community partners and agricultural partners, but we are educating the criminal.” (According to SmartWater, the company has made no political contributions other than to support some of its initiatives related to identifying stolen artwork and other artifacts.)