Joe Portrey looked more like a tourist than a police officer,but he was not officially either on Friday as he stood on the sideof the road in eight strategic spots around town with hisclipboard.

Motorists well-traveled areas in Brookhaven might have noticedPortrey, a lieutenant for the Brookhaven Police Department, wearinghis beach hat and shorts, waving to the many passers-by in betweenwriting on his clipboard. And they might have wondered what he wasup to.

For 12 years now, Portrey has been a part of a seat belt surveyconducted by Mississippi State University’s Social Science ResearchCenter. Portrey said once a year he has to survey eight spotsaround town for 40 minutes each and count the number of children hesees who are wearing restraints.

“I have to survey areas with different demographics,” he said.”I’ve found there are trends in how often people put theirchildren’s safety restraints on, depending on where I am intown.”

Portrey, like others throughout the state, is instructed each yearto pick two signal-controlled intersections; two areas that wouldensure a lower-income demographic such as health departments orwelfare offices; two areas hear hospitals, schools or pediatricianclinics; and two near shopping centers, fast-food establishments,or other areas where the general population can be known tofrequent.

People in Brookhaven are often more likely to belt their childrennear areas such as schools and hospitals, he said, while thenumbers show sometimes people in the low-income areas are not asmeticulous about it.

It all began in the 1980s when he was working with the MississippiAlcohol Safety Education Program, Portrey said.

“I was working with MASEP and they asked me to do these surveys,”he said. “It started as a survey of adult seatbelt use, but then itevolved to mostly children. I haven’t done an adult survey in about10 years.”

The point is not to write tickets or to correct the public, Portreysaid. He gets to do enough of that in his full-time job. But hesaid the data is compiled to chart trends in safety and awarenessof seat belt laws.

“They put it into a system to see if people are getting smarterover the years,” he said.

And while his participation in the surveying has nothing to do withhis being a police officer who has seen too many wrecks, Portreysaid it’s interesting to observe how many people actually do payattention to things like child restraints.

“We as adults have to keep our children safe,” he said. “Childrencan’t always think and reason like we can, and they can’t determinedanger, especially under the age of 4 years old. An easy way tohelp is to put on their child restraints for them.”

Portrey said most years he has taken two days to do his surveying,but that this year he’s been busy enough that the July 1 deadlinesnuck up on him.

“I took a day off my regular job to get this done,” he said. “I’llgo home tonight and compile the data.”

And while standing in the sun all day in popular areas of townwaving to the cars might make for a hot and tiring day, Portreysaid it was also a fun way to spend a day.

“You’d be amazed how many people have called me wanting to knowwhat I’m doing,” he said, explaining that he didn’t have time totell them all the details of his project. “I just joke with themand tell them, ‘I’m looking at you, not wearing your seat belt, andI just wrote down your tag number.”