While we are used to vendors, especially in downtown Kingston, hustling their wares away at high speed at the approach of Metropolitan Parks and Markets (MPM) employees, as well as the police, the similar flight of porn movie vendors is relatively new.

Of course, the proliferation of DVD players and the capacity to replicate DVDs is relatively new. However, the cat and mouse games played by the police and the porn movie vendors in downtown Kingston, as was reported in Saturday's STAR, have their forerunner in the porn magazines that were once sold in various spots downtown, among them near the post office.

With pornography available through a cable box and payment of the right fee, the problem seems to be that the covers of nude and near-nude women are being displayed openly. This, of course, is abhorrent, especially as downtown Kingston is a transportation and commercial activity hub, with many children and those who are opposed to pornography being exposed to the explicit material.

From books to phones and film, technological developments inevitably broaden the reach of sexual material, as the basic human drive finds a new avenue of expression. Although the police say, and rightly so, that no minor crimes, including the sale of the porn DVDs will be tolerated, it is also ludicrous to expend scarce security force resources on running down men with shiny discs.

And lest we forget, the police seem to have largely given up on the prostitutes in Kingston.