MONTEGO BAY, St James — Often pilloried for seizing vendors’ goods and chasing them from the streets in an unending proverbial game of cat and mouse, municipal police in St James want the public to know that they do a lot more.

The municipal police dedicated a week of activities to get that message across when they celebrated their 20th anniversary as part of the St James Municipal Corporation.

“It’s not only anti-vending we do, we do a lot more. However, the perception out there is that all we do is chase down vendors and that is why we used the week to highlight this to the public and make them be aware of what the municipal police officers do,” Pamela March, commercial services manager at the St James Municipal Corporation, who supervises the department under which the municipal police unit falls, told the Jamaica Observer.

“There are a lot of things that we do like, for instance, we deal with public nuisance. Persons who put their building materials on the roadway, persons will call us from the community and complain. We will go and investigate when they are having challenges with neighbours and so on,” March explained.

“We do entertainment as well, we enforce the places of amusement regulations to ensure requisite permits are obtained and advertisement signs are erected in the city in an orderly manner,” she added.

One vital aspect of their role is to also be on the lookout for breaches by individuals and entities that need permits for certain activity. These include oversight of butchers, barbers and hairdressers in addition to ensuring that burials on family plots are done in accordance with the law.

“We go out to see that persons are compliant because these persons have to get their license to operate,” said March as she argued that the push by the municipal police to build awareness has been strategic.

“For our week of activities, one of the highlights is that we included the children. We realised that if we try and reach the children you can get the message out,” said March.

“We targeted the primary schools and we got them in one area. We know that the children’s attention span is short so we did role play,” she added.

She said the children were actively engaged and she thinks their efforts have paid off.

“When the children were asked what they think the municipal police do, they said, ‘Fight down poor people and take away their goods’. When we were finished with them, they understood,” March told the Observer.

She theorises that municipal cops are associated with anti-vending activities because they are most visible to larger segments of the public.

“Vending is the most visual and it is the most challenging and, as a result, a lot of our resources are used up in trying to regulate what is happening in the road,” said March.

“We want to ensure that pedestrians can walk the road freely, motorists can move around freely and that is why we have to be out there; because the vendors want to be on the front page. They want to take the goods to the people rather than the people coming to them,” she added.

Municipal police supervisor Gillian Rodney, who has been with the unit since it started, welcomed the effort to change public perception.

“It is good for us that persons know what we do. We are also trained as first responders and we also have undergone fire warden training,” Rodney told the Observer.

She said it has been a challenge, especially dealing with members of the public who often chastise them as they try to clear the streets of illegal vending. She said past efforts to change public perception have included a weekly feature that examined their roles and functions.

“The theme was ‘Know you municipal police officer’. Every Wednesday a municipal police officer would be featured in the paper to highlight officers so persons get to grasp their role,” Rodney explained.

Her colleague Zephaniah Allen was also eager to stress some of their lesser known duties.

“We are special district constables with the power of arrest and we attend court as well,” said Allen.

Their colleague O’Brien Daley thinks the word is getting out and public perception is slowly changing. He attributes some of that to the way the team approaches the job.

“We have been getting compliance from the people based on the level of work that we have been putting out,” he remarked.

However, the work continues to change even more minds.

“We have other programmes that we are coming with so that the public can be more aware of what we do. This might come in advertisements on social media, on billboards. We are working towards other things to let the public be aware of the many roles and functions of the municipal police other than anti-vending,” said March.