The question of security has come to assume increasing importance in the Portuguese political life. In recent years the country knew a certain broaden of crime, involving in some cases extreme forms of violence, what is testing the police forces and judicial capacity of answer. However, the official registers of crime are not alarming. The media coverage of crimes and problems that affect some of the responsible institutions for the security, and cases such as the disappearance of Maddie, influence citizens and leave them permeable to feelings of concern and distrust. The generalisation of this feelings influences the perception of security in local contexts, independently of the criminal and victimisation specificity we find. We intend to analyse relevant perceptions about security with a representative survey to the population of the Portimão city. The study will detail the perceptions of the unreliability, fear of crime, identification of more or less dangerous zones in the city, the victimisation experience and perceptions of the police and institutional work in the city. We question how local distrusts of urban life can relate to the same perceptions in a national plan and other diffuse influences of the global scope.