Despite a failed attempt to nab a number of porn peddlers during a recent raid, the police in St James have vowed to clamp down on the booming sales of two bootleg recordings - one featuring a Westmoreland man having sex with another man - in this resort city.

The DVDs, which can be purchased for anywhere between $700 and $1,000, have an eager audience in several high schools, where several copies have been confiscated.

"Pornography is outlawed and this is something new to us where people from the local scene are involved in it. It is an offence for people to sell bootleg DVDs. We have arrested people for it in the past and we intend to clamp down even harder on it. We have an ongoing drive. our colleagues in Kingston have been doing it and we have replicated it," Deputy Superintendent Paul Stanton told the Observer West.
To this end, the police are asking teachers who confiscate these recordings from their students to turn them in so that they can question their parents.

The less explicit of the two features several well-known young men from Trelawny and St James in skimpy skirts, cursing and gyrating to a sound system pumping the latest dancehall music.
According to DSP Stanton, this was not in and of
itself illegal.

"It is only a situation whereby society is going to think of you in a particular way if a man comes out and dresses like a woman," he said.

He was, however, quick to point out that "the buggery law is still on the books. If persons are caught in buggery then certainly the law will have to take
its course".

Several policemen stormed out of Freeport Police tation last week in Montego Bay, after viewing the first few seconds of one of the recordings.

DSP Stanton said this was going to make it difficult
to investigate.

"It will be difficult to have anybody look at the tape because from the first second of viewing one's stomach churns," he said.

In the meantime Linton Smith, a Kingston educator, is recommending that parents seize every opportunity to affirm
their children.

"Everyone needs affirmation, a lack of it will create a void in the individual. This void then becomes available to sop up any and everything. This is why it is so important to emphasize the good, no matter how small it seems, that our children do. Much of my experience with children tells me that they get involved in these activities because they take place in company where they are affirmed and feel good about themselves, so it's not so much the porn watching, the smoking, etc, but the fact that they are able to feel comfortable around people who make them feel good about themselves, " he told the Observer West.