New Police Chief Pedro de Jes?s Candelier is definitely not seeking to win any popularity contest. Last week he dismantled the press department at the National Police, leaving reporters to fend for themselves. And then despite a reported agreement with the City Hall to give city hall authorized street vendors 15 days to clear up their shacks from city streets, he ordered his men in at 3 am on Saturday. The orders were to clean up areas of the city that are a deplorable mess with shacks and vendors hawking their wares on sidewalk and street sides. The vendors protested the move, appealing to their status as "padres de familia," or family bread-winners, but the press and news commentators favored the clean up given the unruly takeover of several city corners. The most deplorable spectacle of all was that at the Avenida Duarte and Avenida Paris, which was cleared up with policemen stationed to avoid a repeat. Vice Mayor Peggy Cabral, widow of former Mayor Jos? Francisco Pe?a G?mez said she would intercede with the Police Chief on behalf of the vendors. The Association of Store Owners of Avenida Mella and Duarte have offered to repair the Plaza de Buhoneros that former Mayor Rafael Corpor?n initiated at Avenida Duarte and then former Mayor Rafael Suberv? finished so that the vendors could move in there. The Plaza de los Buhoneros, despite being completed, has never been used because the vendors say it is appropriate as a food market but not for the variety of wares they sell. Meanwhile, the vendors are taking a philosophic approach. Several told TV reporters that it was not the first time they were evicted from the area nor the last. And that they would be back.
