Shield the Community: Meet LVT's 2026 Defender of the Year Winners

Every year, LVT customers do something most security vendors never see: they take a mobile security unit, drop it into a real problem, and turn it into a story worth telling. Defender of the Year puts those stories on stage.

What Is Defender of the Year

Defender of the Year isn't a popularity contest or a sales award. It's LVT's annual recognition for the customers who've used LVT Units to build a genuinely safer environment for their employees, customers, and community, and who are willing to share how they did it.

Nominating your team gets you three things:

• Recognition. Your company's security strategy gets showcased on a national stage.
• Influence. Your story can push other organizations to take security and community safety more seriously.
• A trip to Snowbird. Finalists get an all-expense-paid trip to LVT's Safety and Security Summit, February 28–March 3, 2027, at Snowbird Resort, Utah, plus public recognition in front of the industry.

The bar isn't "biggest deployment." It's impact and proof that visibility, deterrence, and a fast response actually changed what happens on your property.

Submissions for the 2027 award are open until October 31, 2026. Your story doesn't need to be from this year. LVT accepts success stories up to three years old. Miss the deadline and your story rolls into the 2028 award instead.

Submit your story here.

Meet The 2026 Winners

In 2026 we had four winners in four different industries. The unifying theme? Each one stopped reacting to crime and started deterring it.

EG America

EG America runs one of the largest convenience and fuel retail footprints in the country. They have more than 1,400 locations across 30 states which gives criminals numberless opportunities to cause problems. EG America had people loitering in their parking lots and using their locations as a place to commit illegal activities. 

"Not only does it make our team members feel less safe, but it impacts sales," Joshua Nylander, Manager of Investigations for EG America explained. What made the difference wasn't just having cameras up. It was the immediate response. When someone loiters on an EG America lot now, they hear, "This is a no-loitering area. Leave the area now." 

As Nylander put it, "For the criminal that comes to your store, they're getting instant feedback that they are not where they're supposed to be. Without that real-time deterrent,” he said, “the alternative was continued loitering, continued loss, and poor employee retention."

Schnucks

Grocery retailers live with a specific version of parking lot crime. A few years back, Schnucks watched it spiral around their St. Louis-area stores. "Cars were being stolen, cars were getting broken into, violent crime and crimes against persons," Matt Redmond, Director of Security at Schnucks said. "To be honest with you, it was a little out of control." Guards and off-duty police weren't holding the line.

LVT Units changed that. "It's on the lot, it's highly visible, it's a flashing light, and no other tool out there is going to be able to give you unblinking coverage on your parking lot 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," Redmond said. The result was a real drop in incidents, and a message sent to criminals employees that someone is watching out for them. “And since we put these units in,” said Redmond, “we have absolutely seen a downturn in events. We really want to provide the most secure location for them to come and work, and for our customers to shop.”

WaFd Bank

Banks have to open clean, safe, and on time every single day, no exceptions. WaFd hit a wall with transient theft and vandalism, damaged ATMs, vandalized vehicles, and more. "There would be somebody sleeping in our doorways, tents put up in the parking lot, graffiti, drug usage," Rochelle Herteg, Division Sales and Service Manager at WaFd Bank said. "When you have that reputation of being a bad area, people don't want to visit your branch."

WaFd needed a fast fix, not a construction project. LVT Units went in for a trial, and the results showed up immediately. "By the end of the first week, we were at 100% reduction in the activity that we were seeing," Jim Hall, AVP Corporate Facilities at WaFd Bank reported. 

The change wasn't just operational. "Now that we have LVT, I can start my day knowing that I'm in a safe space," Herteg said. Branch staff stopped calling in sick. Emergency calls in the middle of the night stopped. "The location is so much cleaner, it's much more presentable, and it continues to operate seamlessly," Hall said. "So, all around, it's been hugely successful for us."

Brookfield Properties

Brookfield's logistics division manages a rapidly growing portfolio of commercial properties, and growth brought vacant sites that were magnets for theft, vandalism, and squatters. One incident alone cost Brookfield close to $200,000 in damage and $750,000 in lost rental income while the property sat offline for 14 months.

Brookfield's team doesn't just want cameras rolling, they want a deterrent that works before anything happens. "What I like about LVT is that it is a proactive deterrent," Nicole Ivers, Global Head of Health and Safety at Brookfield Properties said. "A criminal coming up on a building like this and seeing the LVT Units out in front, the lights come on, they immediately know that there is somebody watching. They know that they're going to be detected." Given what a single break-in can cost, Ivers added, "the cameras are basically paying for themselves."

Brookfield now runs 57 LVT Units across 42 locations. Since October 2023, those units have generated 101,241 alerts and prevented 1,013 suspicious incidents, savings that add up to millions of dollars.

Why Shield the Community Isn't Just a Slogan

Every one of these companies decided that protecting people matters as much as protecting assets. EG America, Schnucks, WaFd Bank, and Brookfield Properties didn't just buy security hardware. They built a proactive shield around their employees, customers, and their communities.

That's the whole point of Defender of the Year. LVT isn't handing out an award for owning equipment. It's recognizing the customers who used that equipment to make their corner of the world measurably safer.

Have a Story Like This?

If your team has turned an LVT Unit into a real result, fewer break-ins, safer parking lots, faster response times, and more. That's exactly what this award is for. Submissions close October 31, 2026.

Submit your story and shield your community.