Well I found the cuplrit
Seems that the mechanic is working as it is meant to, the wiki was just not updated, which created some confusion. I've gone ahead and updated the wiki, so everything is working as it should for the safety feature?* Safety now only kicks in at security 4+ for feeding or skirmishing. This change was made because it was too hard for humans to find vampire IDs recently. The main point of safety was to stop people getting 1000+ bounties from one accidental misclick, but security 3 slip-ups won't give that much anyway.
The thing with Levi getting caught in a security 2 area may be anomalous. Whatever the case, it's a separate issue, as I understand it.